A Yearly Fort?

I want to start a tradition. Around the holidays, every year, I will build a fort with whomever wishes to help me. A Holi-fort, if you will. When I was a kid, my sister and I and our friends loved making forts during sleep overs with unzipped, Disney character sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, and chairs from the kitchen table. This year, when I was home for Thanksgiving I was thinking back on those times and remembered it's magic. When I found out that my roommate Julia wanted in on wanting to build a fort with me...it was ON! When I got back to our little apartment for the last three weeks of school before winter break, the first thing we did....BAMMM! FORT! (Actually, that's a lie...the first thing we did was go to the 99cent store to buy holiday decorations. 10 decorations, $10. Yes please!)

Can I do it? Can I make this a tradition? I think yes. I also think it's something everyone can enjoy and helps bring people together.

So therefore, game on.

Photographic evidence of the 1st annual Fort:

Artist Statement and First Juried Show at LMU- Bellarmine Forum

I am in love with the art of photographing another human. I see it as a chance not only to get to know someone better, but also to learn something new about that person. It is something that could only be learned from spending time composing them inside the camera's viewfinder. I know for a fact that I have learned something new about every person I have taken a portrait of. It is a certain look in their eyes or a certain posture they posses in front of the camera that usually gives me a huge hint to what is going on inside their heads. People always act differently when they are in front of a camera and there is a certain vulnerability that comes with being the subject of a photograph. However, this is what makes a photograph interesting. To take a good portrait or just a photograph of any kind of a person is to see into their personality, but most importantly to see into their soul. We are all connected as humans, so there is no better way to share that connection than to photograph, to be photographed and to share those photographs with the world. It is important to see the similarities and discover the differences of people around the world. This is what I love most about portraiture.

(photograph from the Bellarmine Forum Juried Student Art Show-Theme: Vulnerability-Loyola Marymount University, Thomas P. Kelly, Jr.- Student Art Gallery-October 26-31, 2009)