New Zealand and Australia trip 2009 - Day 1

I had been hoping to get around to this a little sooner, but I thought I would chronicle a bit of the trip Michelle and I took to New Zealand and Australia to celebrate our tenth anniversary. To make it more easy to write up (and read!), I thought I would break it into the smaller chunks of days.

We left home on the morning of November 14 and spent a lot of time on planes and in airports before arriving. We did have a nice (though abbreviated thanks to traffic) visit with our friend Alfred Valrie at The Encounter Restaurant while on our layover in LA.

After a long 13 hour flight from LA to Auckland, NZ, we were treated to a beautiful sunrise from the plane. Landing in Auckland, you feel as though you are landing on water.

Customs wasn't a big deal. We were a little concerned at first because the declaration form asks if you are transporting nuts, and we had some packaged Planters nuts that we brought to have with us when hiking or walking around. To declare or not to declare? The form stated "raw" nuts, but we opted not to take any chances. It turned out that they were not concerned with the nuts once we told them they were packaged, but they were concerned with our hiking boots, which were not one of the questions on the declaration form.

The shuttle ride to the hotel (Rydges Auckland) was uneventful, though we were not able to sit together for a good portion of it. I ended up sitting next to a marine biologist from Falmouth, MA. We talked a little about the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute where he worked (and I used to go on school field trips as a kid).

While I was checking into the hotel, Michelle ended up speaking with a couple who was just finishing their trip around Australia and New Zealand. They claimed to have only had two good meals on their entire trip and told us we needed to pick up the book "Visit Australia and DIE."

After getting settled and cleaning up, we struck out to get some lunch and see the the Auckland Domain, which is home to the Auckland Museum and the Winter Garden. On the way to find the little cafe where we had lunch, we passed the Santa Claus statue at Whitcoulls bookstore, but his face was covered up. Apparently they make a big ceremony of revealing the face, which winks at passers-by.

We continued making our way to the Auckland Domain through Albert Park, which is kind of like "the Green" for the University of Auckland. When we arrived at the Domain, we took "Lover's Walk" from the Auckland Bowling Club up to the Winter Garden and Auckland Museum. At the Winter Gardens we saw some beautiful flowers and a guy burning weeds from between the rocks with a big blowtorch.

We spent some time at the museum, where we learned a bit about Maori culture and saw Sir Edmund Hillary's ice axe. The traveling and time change started to set in though, and we hit a wall so we made our way back to the hotel by way of the Centennial Walk and took a nap.

In the evening, we found a good Indian restaurant and wandered around the waterfront. For the first time on the trip, we felt the person waiting on us at the restaurant thought we didn't order enough food (though what we did get was more than enough). It wasn't like we could take leftovers with us. While we were there, the couple who took the table next to us ordered a ton of food. Not sure if we missed something there, but it happened several other times at some of the Asian restaurants at which we dined.

We didn't stay up too late, as we had an early morning departure for Waitomo and Rotorua.

See pictures from this and other days of our trip here.

Starving Artist Show 2009

Over the weekend, Michelle and I went to our first "Starving Artist Show" at nearby Mt. Mary College. The event takes place annually and has lots of great artists selling their work at a maximum price of $100 per piece.

We found some art that we really liked, and I thought I would show it off a little here.

The first piece we got is a watercolor on watercolor canvas by Peggy Engsberg Furlin from Lake Mills, WI. She had some beautiful work and we had a really difficult time selecting which piece to buy. You can see more of her work at her website. We really liked her style. I took the picture of the piece on our stairs, because we have yet to determine where we want to hang it.

The second piece we picked up is a limited edition print by artist Kae Taylor from Madison. We were first attracted to her stand by the batik work on display, but we ended up deciding on this work called "Autumn Celebration," which contains three prints: Autumn Oak, Autumn Ginkgo, and Autumn Maple. As with the first art work, we are deciding exactly where we want to hang the piece.

The next stop was for some pottery. There were lots of pottery artist present at the show with some beautiful work, but we settled on some bowls by Lisa Weber, an artist from Oak Creek, WI. Unfortunately neither she nor Kae Taylor have web sites so you can see other work by these artists. While we were at Lisa Weber's booth, she commented on the watercolor we purchased from Peggy Engsberg Furlin. Apparently they used to live close to each other. Small artist world. :)

Our last purchase of the day (that I will describe here, because other items are going to be gifts), was from an artist we discovered through a PBS auction at a home and garden show earlier this year. We ordered a piece from Dick Cooley for Michelle's Dad as a gift. He makes really cool sculptures using spark plugs as people and other various items to depict them in various activities. My father-in-law described it well when he let us know he received it:

"Got the package from you guys yesterday but I'm a bit confused, it was full of just a bunch of old junk parts.

"Lets see there is a old furniture caster, bottom half of a muffler clamp, 2 wood screws, an allen wrench, 2 kitchen knives, a teaspoon, 2 sockets, a couple of gears, a washer or two, 2 spark plugs and some other assorted odds and ends.

"Of course all these junk parts are put together in a really neat way."

His sculpture was of an adult and child on a red tractor.

We had a hard time deciding between the piano player or the baseball players and opted for the baseball players (a batter hitting a ball with a catcher crouched behind the plate. Unfortunately, our little point and shoot camera couldn't focus on the sculpture very well, so it is a little blurry. Maybe we will retake the shot when our new camera arrives later this week.

Overall the show was fun. Certainly not as large as the art fairs we've gone to in Sunapee, NH or Ann Arbor, MI, but very good nonetheless. I think we'll go again.

Digital magazines

I received my latest issue of Smithsonian magazine today, and it had an outer cover with the big label "Go green" to promote their new option to receive your subscription digitally. I'm all for saving a tree, so I thought I would investigate a little at http://www.smithsonian.com/godigital, where they have posted the August issue as a sample.

The service is provided through a company called Zinio, and let me start off with some positives: The quality is excellent. The text and the images are very clear, and presented just as the magazine is. I find it looks particularly nice on a good, big, widescreen monitor.

The ability to search is a very nice capability. I also like that they have linked the table of contents to go right to an article.

I won't get into some of the nitty picky points on the interface though, because there is a serious deal breaker for me when it comes to magazines: I don't read them at my desk.

I read magazines when I travel and don't want to turn on my laptop. I read magazines in bed before turning out the light. Yes, I read magazines in the bathroom. In none of these places do I have a computer. I might be inclined in some of these locations to read on my iPhone (or other type of electronic reader), but until they can get around the digital copy being read on other mediums, it is just going to have to be paper for me.

My apologies to the environment, but for now, make mine paper.

Wizard World.. er, Chicago Comic-Con 2009

Well, I attended my third comic convention yesterday. For the third year in a row now, I've gone to Wizard World Chicago, which was renamed to Chicago Comic-Con this year. I took a similar approach to what I did last year and spent most of my time trolling the artist alley, meeting creators (writers and artists) and watching them work. I enjoy seeing the different approaches various artists take toward their work. The remainder of my limited time at the show was spent attending sessions. I didn't even break for lunch!

For some reason this year, I felt much more restricted by time, even though I left the convention only an hour earlier than I did last year. I attribute this to feeling more comfortable walking through "the alley" so I spent more time chatting with different artists, especially some I met last year. It didn't help that I had a time by which I needed to leave the show to get back to Milwaukee to meet up with friends to celebrate Steve Grobschmidt's birthday. (I'm definitely not complaining - we always have a good time with them, and dinner was at The Silver Spur, one of our favorite restaurants).

I started at one end of the Artist Alley and made my way up and down each aisle so I could see the different work out there. One of my first stops was at Casey Heying's booth. One of his prints of Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) surrounded by glowing emblems for the other "ROYGBIV" lantern corps with a large Black Lantern emblem at the top. I talked with Casey a bit and ended up picking up the print along with the first couple of issues of his series The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles, which uses Dorothy and Alice grown up as protagonists. I will state right now that I have not yet had a chance to read anything I bought yesterday, so I will need to write about them more later, should I be inclined and able to find the time.

I thought I would take more pics of people in costumes along with the creators, but I never seemed to be in a good spot to get one (too many people making it too difficult to get a picture or the person in the costume too far away to get a good shot). I did manage to get one of someone dressed as Zatanna, which elicited some comments from Michelle.

Continuing my way up and down the rows of artist, the work of Stuart Sayger caught my eye. I really liked the work he had for display in his portfolio. After chatting with him a bit, I picked up his comic Shiver in the Dark.

After some time, I made it over to Freddie Williams II, who I have enjoyed following this year on twitter and his email list. We chatted for a bit while he worked on a commission piece, and I got him to sign my issue of Robin 183 (the final issue). I was able to stop back later to pick up his third sketchbook (which Freddie does comic sized - I wish other artists would do their sketchbooks this size) and chatted some more while he worked on a Flash commission. While working, I saw him looking at the piece in a mirror. He said he uses it for balance: when he looks at the art in the mirror, he can see if it needs more work somewhere to better balance it. I thought that was very interesting and one of the little things I enjoy about hanging out in the Artist Alley.

Next stop of note was comic writer Sean McKeever. I chatted a little with him (I enjoyed his recent work on Terror Titans and the Ravager backup story in Teen Titans). I talked with him a little about artists with whom he enjoys working most (Takeshi Miyazawa and Mike Norton if I remember correctly, because he likes how they are able to convey his words so well sometimes that he can take out some of his dialog). I picked up a copy of the X-Men Origins he wrote and got it autographed.

I finally made it to The Uniques booth and got myself caught up on this series by Comfort Love and Adam Withers. I first met them at last year's show and picked up the first issue of their book. I liked it so much I later ordered the next couple issues and the first graphic novel over the course of the year. I am now all caught up on the series, complete with an additional "Certificate of Awesometicity." Adam and Comfort have been fun to follow on twitter (@TheUniques) and their blog.

One artist whose work caught my eye was Chris Samnee. The art he was displaying (and working on while we spoke) is black and white and based on shapes and shadows. I've tried making art like this and found it to be extremely difficult. It was intriguing watching him fill in the light pencil sketch of Daredevil with the shadows to give it form. I suppose I am just to line oriented when I draw. I picked up his sketch book.

Other artists with whom I visited and spoke with some quick anecdotes (in no particular order):

Jason Sobol - I liked some of the work he was displaying and picked up his sketch book which is made up entirely of "Reflections" of enemies (Batman/Joker, Frodo/Gollum, Luke/Vader). I chatted with him while he worked on a watercolor commission of a dog.

Neil Chenier - Neil modestly describes himself as "an aspiring comic book illustrator" in his comicspace page, but I love the detail in his work. I picked up his sketchbook, which shows the art in various stages of progress so you can see it in its rough form and a more final state.

Josh Johnson - Josh has a different approach and mixes the drawing with printing and watercolors. He has a book called The Spindletons, and has pictures of the printing press he uses to make the prints he was selling.

Jeremy Sorrell - Jeremy was sharing space with Drew Jones. I liked both of their portfolios being displayed at their table and ended up picking up a watercolor Jeremy did of Batman.

Christopher Darden - edgy and dark, his work reminded me of a cross between painting and scratch board. He was working on a Batman piece while I watched.

Phil Machi - Retail Sunshine is Dilbert for the retail world. The art is just stick figures in shirts for the most part, but I like how he captures little anecdotes from his work in retail.

Gerald Cooper - Gerald bills his book Genecy as "Conan meets the Silver Surfer" and was proud to point out that the art was colored for the first half of the book in pencil while the second half was colored over ink. Hopefully when I read it I will understand why he really wanted to keep highlighting this point. Annoyingly, the bag that the book came is is filled with annoying little sparkles in it. Gerald is hoping for feedback to submit the book to DC. I hope that doesn't negatively impact my view of it.

Kurt Wood - Kurt wasn't there the first time I stopped by his booth (solo this year), and I didn't have much time when I stopped by later so I sadly didn't get to talk with him much.

I finished off the show with a stop into a couple sessions. First up was the Hero Initiative session which I unfortunately only caught the Q&A. I was curious to see what kinds of things are under work to support former comic creators whos work touched the lives of many, but for various reasons can no longer support themselves. Unfortunately, I was not able to gleen much from just the questions in the session to know what was covered in the session.

I finished off my convention day at the Comixology session. I have been using the website and their first iPhone app for the past couple months to track my pull list (not currently tied in with my retailer). The manager of my shop jokes around as the app being the "bane of his existence" because a couple times I've found out about issues that weren't on my pull list but I added so that I could check them out, but they were gone already. Or maybe he just thinks I'm checking up on him. Their other app is a comic reader that was released just before SDCC. I downloaded that to try out a couple nights ago and it is really slick for reading comics. Unfortunately there isn't a certain file format that could just be used to identify things like the transitions between panels today, so it does require some work to get the books readable. The session was a good overview of the tools, and I particularly enjoyed hearing questions from the perspectives of all their target audiences: consumers, retailers, and creators. At the end, I actually won the giveaway for the session (an iPod Touch loaded with the comics available today). I'm looking forward to receiving it!

On my way back to the car, I saw this license plate. Not something you would be likely to see in a French speaking country, but I thought it was funny and had to snap a pic.