May 2013
4 posts
April 2013
3 posts
March 2013
7 posts
February 2013
1 post
January 2013
3 posts
5 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Palm Trees
Everyday I wake up and open my blinds to these palm fronds.
7 tags
An Accurate Depiction of My Mental State
A piece from a new series I’ve started. Working title: HAIR, FUR
(Photo by Centa Schumacher)
6 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Manuka
Growing up I was fascinated by the manuka, I short shrub with rose-like flowers. I would pick them and put them in my little ponies’ hair.
This plant is from New Zealand, where Captain Cook once used the flowers to make tea.
(photos by Centa Schumacher)
December 2012
4 posts
9 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Hibiscus
Hibiscus flowers are beautiful and make a righteous tea, but to be honest they weren’t really among my favorite flowers until my honeymoon in Mexico. One of the guys working at the hotel where were were staying showed us that iguanas love to snack on the flowers.
Now every time I see them I think of this little dude, who I must have given almost 10 flowers to over the week I was...
4 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Pine Tree
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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Friday Thing: Unghhh
Feeling like this guy quite a bit right now. It’s like I have a school hangover. I’ve had a good semester, but I’m ready for a little bit of a break. Let’s take one, shall we?
Wrap your Christmas presents in reusable grocery bags! Here’s how to make your own.
Heavy Holiday food got you down? This Pho recipe is a good remedy for that.
Albino animals are the...
11 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Carnations
Carnations don’t get enough love. They are delicate looking and come in a wide variety of colors, and they last forever when cut. Plus, they’re really inexpensive.
That’s not why I like them though. I had a dream about them: I was in a lab with a scientist in a white lab coat. She asked me if I wanted to know how she figured out the answers to her scientific questions, and...
November 2012
9 posts
3 tags
DOUBLE FREUD
No plants I have loved this week because I am buried in grad school land. But, to amuse yourselves, here is an image I made for a project. DO YOU SEE THE JOKE IN THERE DO YOU
8 tags
Attention Film Nerds
Do you remember the massive developing chart up in the darkroom at school? And running back desperately to see how long you needed to push Tri-X and thinking, “Dear god please let me not have let it go on too long,”?
Good, great, excellent news for you: Digital Truth Photo has made both an iPhone and Android app that has all of the dev times you’ll ever need. The full app...
Friday Thing: Thanksgiving Edition
You guys, Thanksgiving is next week. Next week! How did that even happen?
Posting will be light next week as I’ll be bouncing around all over the state. But, to hold you over, here are some links!
See that pie up there? Its pumpkin meringue, and I made it last year for Thanksgiving. It is the most delicious thing. The recipe is here if you want to make it yourself. Take note: Martha...
11 tags
Stillwell Show
I had the pleasure of helping put on the 25th annual Stillwell Student Show at San Francisco State this semester. Along with my friend Sarah, I was in change of the second-year MFA students’ portion. The reception was this week, and we had over 200 people show up!
Here are my two favorite pieces from the show:
5.5.2012.12 by Leslie Ann Rice
This piece was made from many layers of...
10 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Gerbera Daisies
I used to have a guinea pig named Daisy. She was an albino, with pink eyes and ears. These flowers remind me of her.
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Friday Thing: It's Back!
Bear witness to the glorious return of the Friday Thing! Have some links! A picture of some ducks! Waste a few minutes on anything but working, dear god, anything but that.
R.I.P. to my P.I.G: Daisy, you’ll be missed.
My husband, aka Satellite High, is playing a show in Oakland this Sunday. Go see him!
There’s an art gallery in Marin called Sam the Butcher. They show only...
6 tags
Dark Wings, Dark Words
This giant raven lives near SFSU’s art department and I feed him chips every once in a while. He tolerates me.
7 tags
Sandy
No new Plants I Have Loved this week (and light posting last week) because I found myself stuck in Manhattan after hurricane Sandy blew through. My friend and I were cut off from the world: no power, no cell phones, no internet. For 48 hours we didn’t even go outside.
It was a weird time, but we got out and we’re safe at home. The same cannot be said for some residents still...
October 2012
10 posts
10 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Marigolds
Marigolds are easy to grow and make any garden cheerful. They’re also edible. I know this because when my little sister was a toddler she often used to eat the marigolds out of my mother’s garden.
These were some of the biggest marigolds I had ever seen, so I scooped them up at wholefoods and took them home. They’re African Marigolds, I later learned, and one website I read...
6 tags
Third Ever Instagram Roundup
Online we’re all curating our lives, but I like to think that I have a pretty good eye for curation. I’m spacevalkyrie on instagram, if you’d like to follow my life’s odd minutiae.
Images, in order from left to right: Sad painting in my childhood bedroom, me looking cool, laser etched Bulbasaur, a self explanatory cake (Cersei can go to hell), my buddy the SF State art...
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Spooky Scary
It’s that time of year again.
As soon as the light lessens and the temperature begins to chill a little, the spiders come. There must be over 20 orb weavers in the plants in front of my apartment right now, all patiently waiting for their prey.
Say what you want about spiders, but there aren’t any flies in my kitchen right now. I think they’re pretty cool.
(photograph by...
10 tags
Plants I Have Loved: California Coast Live Oak
,
There are tons of oak trees surrounding my studio. To me the oak tree is half of the quintessential California landscape; the other half is golden grass on rolling hills. I grew up surrounded by these trees, I really do love them.
The latin name for this tree, Quercus agrifolia, literally means “sharp-leaved oak.”
(photograph by Centa Schumacher)
6 tags
Friday Thing: Yikes Edition
You guys, it’s been a week. A Week, even. I need some distraction, don’t you?
I had a dream that someone called me the Seurat of photography. Ok, sure, I’ll take it.
I found an amusing old picture of myself. Cute hair, though.
Go listen to some music by my husband.
Shiba inus: the smiliest of dogs?
After this week I need a drink. This drink.
The Brooklyn Museum has...
6 tags
Hummingbird
I spent this Tuesday working in my studio for the first time. I was all by myself in the building, and at once point I heard a strange buzzing sound. I looked up and a saw a hummingbird that had flown in through the open window and gotten stuck inside. He kept flying at the glass, thinking he would get out. For a while he wouldn’t let me help him, so I resigned myself to taking pictures....
7 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Japanese Maple
Growing up, there was a Japanese Maple planted in the middle of our front yard. It was such a beautiful and delicate tree, and for some reason the bees loved it in the springtime.
Note to self: take some pictures of the samaras, the winged seeds of the maple.
(photo by Centa Schumacher)
5 tags
Studio
I got the keys to my grad studio! The space is huge, and the location is beautiful. San Francisco State owns 30+ acres of land near Tiburon along the ocean. Most of the space is used by the Biology Department, but one of the buildings is just for us art grad students.
Now I need to fill it up! First up, some furniture (a comfy chair? or couch?) and, of course, I need to start making some...
I could be there, have been there, will be there again.
7 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Hemlock
When I originally shot this plant I thought it was Queen Anne’s Lace, but after a little internet research I discovered that this is in fact hemlock, which is considered an invasive species in California. Yes, the plant that killed Socrates is growing as a weed in my front yard.
My twitter pal Mike Sacco has an excellent blog called Plants of Ill Repute where he discusses hemlock at...
September 2012
13 posts
5 tags
Friday Thing: Fading Light Edition
Even if the temperature doesn’t reflect it, I can tell it’s fall because the light is a different color. It’s more golden and it’s fading away earlier and earlier these days.
Here’s some links for your Friday:
Fall is a good time for oatmeal, chocolate chip, and pecan cookies, right?
I’m in love with this outfit.
Autumn, according to Giuseppe...
3 tags
9 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Cottonwood
I adore cottonwood trees. Growing up in the country, we had a pretty big backyard (8 acres!) and there was essentially a forest of cottonwoods back there. When they released their cottony seeds it would really irritate my dad, and he would get out his leaf blower and clear off the whole yard. I liked it though, as it always reminded me of snowfall.
Cottonwoods provide food to a host...
6 tags
Friday Thing: Dolly Parton Edition
Oh hey, wow, it’s Friday again. You want some links? I don’t care, here are some links.
I’ve been so, so into Dolly Parton over the last few days. Listen here or here or here
Classic Dolly, what a fox
There is a theme park in Tennesse, much like a Great America or Six Flags, named Dollywood. Why does it exist? According to Dolly, “I always thought that if I made it...
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
How could you rise anew...”
– Friederich Neitzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (via loveage-moondream)
9 tags
Plants I Have Loved: Stock
I had to look up the name of this plant, because it my mind it is just the inexpensive flower no one buys at the grocery store, which makes no sense because it is pretty. It’s also known as a gillyflower but let’s not call it that, it sounds too undignified for such a nice little thing.
According to flower-arrangement-ideas.com, stock represents a happy life and a contented...
7 tags
Dogs
A twitter conversation I had a while ago:
@spacevalkyrie: my dog is sorta like a fat little burrito http://t.co/k4D6oePD
@lisa_lefteye:will pet photography be a successful genre in 20 years? reinvented and post-ironic?
@spacevalkyrie: if it is I will be it’s queen I suppose
(photograph by Centa Schumacher)
4 tags
Friday Thing: Game of Thrones Edition
A short and late Friday thing, but dear god I started reading Game of Thrones and now there is no going back. I’m hooked. I don’t even care if you’re judging, really, because that’s how much I’m enjoying it.
A Nike designer makes the house sigils
Albino canids
Sewing needle sword
The largest Ren Faire in Northern California is being held at the Casa De Fruta...
5 tags
Issues
Since school has started I really haven’t done any shooting at all. My head has been filled with art history and setting up gallery exhibitions, I haven’t given my own work much thought. I have, however, been looking through my older images, trying to define what makes my work my own.
Most of my recent plant/sun based work is shot wherever the scene naturally occurs. I’m...
