Ah the city lights and busy streets...this is my home!

I'm sitting at the PDX airport right now, waiting for my flight to Japan. Since I won't have internet access or a phone there (I know, I'm cut off from the world!) I thought I'd update my blog before I left :)
I'm so exited to go back to my hometown, Tokyo! There's so much to do there...if you keep a bucket list, I urge you to put visiting Tokyo on there. My plan is to see my friends from elementary school, shop A LOT, sleep, eat the best food in the world, celebrate new year's (biggest holiday in Japan!) and work on art of course ;) I'll have tons of stories and pictures to share once I get back, but for now here's a tiny pictorial tour of my favorite things:

Shibuya, the busiest crosswalk in Tokyo and the absolute center of the night life and shopping!

Takeshita Dori of the Harajuku District - all those black specs are people! It's crazy crowded and it's one of the cheapest and coolest places to shop.

Design Festa - My absolute favorite art gallery in the back streets of Harajuku. Artists can rent rooms to feature their work - so  cool!

Ahoy!

Here's my super low quality, last minute picture of me and my dad with the AP Art poster...woot! Thanks daddy, for supporting us! :)

She's Baaack

I must say, my Thanksgiving break this year turned out to be the BEST one yet! There was a total of 16 men and 4 women there...I met many of my second cousins for the first time and they were all crazy football fanatics. Literally, a football game would be on by the time I woke up in the morning, then they'd play some football outside, check their football stats online, talk about football, watch a few more games, then when it was too late at night, play football video games....Nonetheless it was cool to be emerged in the  Southern culture (SO MUCH SWEET TEA!!!) and spend time with loving family :)

Oh, and remember my crazy, sassy Aunt Ginger's picture for the family portrait a few months ago?

Well I got a new one that's pretty funny!

Anybody else bored over break?

So here I am...12:30 AM the night before Thanksgiving chillin' by myself. I'm not going to lie - break's been pretty boring so far; I'm stuck in Midland, Texas (Good ol' George W. Bush's hometown!) with relatives who are all too old to even know what blogging is. So what have I been doing? Watching movies back to back and listening to great music! I just wanted to tell you all about my favorite movie which also has the best soundtrack ever. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly suggest you watch Garden State this break! This is one movie I can watch over and over again and never get tired of :)

Also, happy early Thanksgiving! Can't wait to hear about everyone's breaks!

Tradition!

The Lakeridge drama department just wrapped up their last show of the Fiddler on the Roof musical last night. For those of you who didn't get a chance to come see it, you missed one heck of an emotional and outstanding show...if I say so myself :) I can honestly say that being a part of this production has taught me more about myself and influenced me more than anything else I have done at Lakeridge so far. It's an experience I will never forget! Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you all because it has been a part of my for the past 3 months and it meant a lot. A thank you to all who came to see it and a big shout out to those who were a part of the show! Everyone rocked!

Concentration!

I hope everyone has solid concentrations by now and off to a good start! I'm nervous that we have to have two pieces done by this month...eek! My concentration is about human emotions and how people express them. I'm focusing on anger and frustration because those are the emotions that hit close to home for me lately. On Friday I got to have a mini photo shoot with some of the girls in the art class! Here's one of Eva and Allie that I think is pretty great. I'm a little torn on what sort of materials I should use and how to incorporate these images though!

Boo!

So here it is...our last Halloween at home forever perhaps! Mine has been the mellowest one ever though - we watched Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses last night which was grody but so hilarious! The clown man is one of the funniest character ha! Also, people told me 18-year-olds shouldn't go trick-or-treating but...psh whatever! I decided I had to go at like 8pm tonight and glad I did! All that matters is that people wear costumes and get into the spirit, not care about the age, right? Well I hope everyone else had a great halloween weekend too!
Happy Halloween!!

It's a Family Affair!

For our second Work of Art project we had to do family portraits...the first thing that popped into my mind was how my parents seem to care more about our cats now than me. Okay, I'm kidding a little, but it's still a funny concept. Below is an old picture of the family that I thought of at first, and the second one is the new picture I took of my parents, with my cat Sakura as the replacement child...It definitely shows some truth behind it haha

My Summer Work

So I finally uploaded pictures of the artwork I did over the summer! Here they are:

Sunset in Ixtapa, Mexico

 Eiffel Tower in Paris

 Tulip Farm in Woodburn







My cat Lucky

French Homework = New Artist Discovery?

Who would've guessed that doing my french homework to lead to finding a new artist! I came across an article about a French-American 3D artist named Arman. Ever since he was little, he was interested in what one may think as "useless" objects such as broken violins and garbage cans. So what did he do with those objects? Create art! I would definitely recommend looking him up, his artwork is so cool! Here are some examples for you to get the idea!

Blogging Debut

I'm really glad we get to blog in art this year, because I've actually been wanting to make a blog for months but never got around to making one...so thanks Ms. McB for making this a requirement! :P
I wanted to put up pictures of my artwork from this summer, but realized that I hadn't taken any pictures of them...oops! So I'll get around to that some other time.

In the mean time, here's a cool picture I took with my new Nikon D5000 I got over the summer. It's the view from the Portland City Grill, with the reflection of my dad in the window :)