a big one

well, this one might be a little long as there is lots to cover.

thanksgiving was a good holiday.
we had a great time at dinner with john, vanessa, and joe byrd, stephanie wood, and chris yountz. afterwards scooter latimore and kathryn salisbury came over. oh! old friends...new friends... it was a bit of a late night, and since then i am proud to report that i have only smoked one cigarette. it was just too much for me that late night, and i think i am moving ON.

we both have been home working and piddling around since turkey day. my studio electricity is off due to the arsonist that ruined the electrical panel on our building down in Carolina Lane. $40,000 worth of damage and many people out of work for a week. Hopefully, i will be back at work tomorrow because i have some jewelry to MAKE...and most importantly, Scully's, the restaraunt in our building....has some money to make! we hope they catch the firestarter.

Today i went shopping at Big Lots where i got some fabulous deals on craft supplies


and christmas presents. I am very excited about these plastic and felt flowers, as i am toying with the idea of making some less expensive jewelry to put up on the internet for sale on an ETSY account. I love the plastic red rocks, too...think i'll work on something with them for my NYC show....why not?

Jamie would love to know what presents i bought for him and others today at BL...but he was satisfied with returning to BL later to buy us a tree. we are very pleased and excited with the results of our 1st tree decorating.We are very much looking forward to having Debby, Larry, and Matt at our home with us for our 1st christmas! Fun stuff!

sadie and trudy now belong to a new clan...the Garlands. check them out in their initiation outfits.




Steve, on the other hand, is on my shit list. today while i was working on my new quickbooks account on my computer here in the living room(HELP!!!), steve began making biscuits on the blanket beside me. this gets on my nerves because of the repetitive, incessant small noise he makes, so i shooed him away. when he jumped off the couch, i saw something red in his hind quarter, so i went to check. he had a BONER! i realized that all these times i thought he was simply making biscuits for comfort, he was masturbating. now, i am very upset that he would do such a thing right in front of me. and to think, i let him lick my fingers yesterday! ew!

i spent Monday working on my website. i think i have all the glitches taken care of for now...until i re-organize it in january. but check out the new front page with susannah wejbro's photography and the gorgeous model kristen welch. i am super psyched about the pics! i think it makes for a great front page too. if you feel like it, please send me any comments you have about how to make my website better... www.joannagollberg.com
i would appreciate it!


ttfn,
have a good one!
jo

ebony and ivory

happy monday!

today was non-eventful. good, though.




i ran across this photo shoot on my favorite gossip website, www.pinkisthenewblog.com you guys might be as shocked as i was when i found out the age of this pretty young lady. this is lindsay lohan's younger sister, who, my friends, is THIRTEEN years old. i find this very disturbing and sorrowful. i hope you do, as well. you can click on the pic to make it larger for a closer look. whoa!








i thought i would post a few pics of our own beasts...sadie, steve, and trudy, AKA"Porker". for those of you who have know trudy for awhile, you might be surprised at her porky self. she is having some trouble fitting through the dog door recently, but she manages to shove herself through after awhile. notice please how nicely sadie (in black) and steve (in white) complement each other. we are lucky today that so one slept on our bed while we were gone and no one ate the cat food either! woot!









this is part of a new necklace i am thinking of making. it is made out of mica and fine silver. the necklace would most likely be a row of these boxes. i'm still thinking on it, though...

tomorrow is a busy day with vet, banking, acupuncture, and grocery store...errand day. bleh.

hope ya'll are feeling well...

fermelenge!

hunting island

oh! we had a lovely time as always down at hunting island. it is a state park, so there are no houses on the beach at all, and the stars shine brighter than the mirrors on the king's palace in bangkok!

claire, kate, brenda, stephanie, julian, and i all enjoyed ourselves. we walked on the beach, watched the dogs play, ate some good food, napped, drank beer, sat by the fire...what a fun time!

i woke up in the middle of the night to a racoon on our table opening our cooler...he also went through the recyclables. it kind of creeped me out, watching this fairly large animal, the size of a small dog, on our table. the ranger, "chief", told us he can open a jar of peanut butter! those damn fingers! this is the best picture i could get before he ran off.

then i came home to a lovely chicken being smoked for our dinner. jamie is an excellent grill man and the chicken was delicious. very sweet of him to make a special dinner for my return! (i missed him, too....absence can indeed make the heart grow finder, even if it is only for a couple of days...)

ciao!

outta here again

today i am leaving to go camping at hunting island state park in sc. jamie can't go because he has to work! sniff, we have been together so much recently it is going to be like losing an arm or something. but i am really looking forward to getting in some quality time with my girlfriends whom i haven't seen much at all recently with all the traveling and transitions i have had going on.

this week has been pretty uneventful. i have been having a good time at work, making new things. one of my newest ideas is to make things that are pretty from both the front and the back. i have done this in the past, but i am focusing a little bit more on it this week, as i think it makes jewelry more special. also it is a challenge and fun for me to do. i'll get some pics next week when i get home.

i also sent some work off to the Philadelphia Museum of Art Store. i'm super excited to have them as a new gallery. www.philamuseumstore.org
I hope my work sell well there! and i hope they add some pics ofmy work to their website, we'll see.

here's a pic of me and jamie after the implosion. there was a lot of dust in the air, so we had to cover our faces. we have quite a nice collection of self portraits like this one.

see ya later! have a great weekend!

philadelphia

we have had a very good trip here to philadelphia. we began by visiting the Eastern State Penitentiary. This is a very old prison here built in the late 1800's. It was a model prison for several reasons: it provided the 1st architectural example of a prison that was built with a center hub, and originally 5 spokes of cell blocks coming out of the center. Furthermore, it was a true "penitentiary", meaning that it was a prison designed to inspire penitence, or true regret, in the prisoners. they attempted to achieve this through isolation,no contact with other prisoners, so that the inmates could think over their crimes and regret them, and then never do such things again. it was very fun to see this old crumbling prison. apparently they had a real kick ass haunted house there for halloween and we were sorry we missed it.







the craft show has been going ok. i have made several good gallery contacts and have had a chance to see some friends. the money is not the best but it is better than nothing. the hours are long and grueling, but having jamie in the booth definitely makes things more fun! we've been playing 20 questions and the name game which has been quite enjoyable.








this morning we were lucky enough to see our first building implosion. it was very exciting. they took the building down in order to make room for the expansion of the convention center.








the show is over tonight, and then we pack up and chill out for the evening. we have been eating some excellent food here, ao perhaps we will go out to eat again. last night we had delicious vietnamese food with a group of artist friends. Sadie Wang, Debra Adelson, Douglas Wunder...very good company and talks!

Fermelenge!

off to philly

well, tomorrow we are out of here. we are excited to go off on another trip, but this one is for work and it is going to be brutal. the main redeeming thing about this trip is that we hope to sell a shit ton of jewelry and make some good money. philly is a nice town too, but since we will be at the craft show from about 10 am til 9 pm we won't have much of a chance to do anything.

we cleaned the house today for our housesitter. jamie made quite a nice collection of my shoes that he found under the coffee table and couch. here you can see them, as well as trudy attempting to sneak out of the picture and sadie idly watching on the side.

Then i met up with susannah wejbro and kristin welch downtown at my studio for a photo shoot. susannah is the photographer, kristin is the model, i guess i am just the jeweler. susannah just won the big artist project grant from the Arts Council of Asheville! it is a big honor and very exciting as it helps fund a big new color printer for her.

anyway, kristin was a great model, a beautiful woman, and susannah got some amazing shots. it was super fun, looking around the alley and the courtyard for interesting places for photos. i got to see my work on someone really for the 1st time and it was really super fun. here are some pics i took of the process. check back on my real website sometime in the next month or so to see the final shots.
www.joannagollberg.com

don't go looking at it now because it is all a mess due to my reconstruction efforts that began last weekend. i think i am figuring out where i want to go with it, but seriously, it takes so long to do it i had to have a break.



i've been enjoying a few good podcasts. those of you who have ipods or listen to podcasts might want to check these out: the dan savage podcast (not for shy ears--a sex call in advice show--VERY funny!), Let's Talk Bigfoot (need i say more, very convincing though), Namaste Dosti (for those of you who want to learn Hindi, like I do), the Bill Maher show (not for the political right), and of course my favorite This American Life. If you go to download a TAL, you MUST get the "fiasco" episode. And the "babysitting" episode. fabulous. i can't tell you too much about them or i would ruin it for you. if you have never listened to a podcast, you can get them for free at itunes. or you can google the show you want and find it elsewhere on the web as well. this is great fun if you like listening to radio shows and stories. like when you are doing chores or something around the house...

here's a couple of websites i found recently that i liked:
www.ragandbone.com
a neat site with handmade letter pressed cards and papers and stuff
www.byus.dk
cool funky jewelry artist profiles with great pics of their work
niessingshop.com
one of my old favorites. please note the"spinning rings" (they call them something else) and remember my past potential lawsuit over these? ummm, that wasn't from this company. why doesn't the jack ass sue these people? i think perhaps he is afraid they might take away his patent. but who really knows.
www.stylehive.com
you have to look hard here, but it is full of GREAT stuff! interesting idea as well.

anyway, that's it for now. ttfn and have a great week. wish us luck up in philly!

fermelenge!
(my newest hindi word....it means "see you later!")