High Contrast Grey.

  I was having a chat in a pub with a local who referred to the Sudley House as, "a Georgian home dressing up as Victorian." Apparently that is because of the owners of the home. The original owners were during the Georgian Era (1714-1837) when the house was built in 1821, but the last family to own it purchased it in 1883 and decorated it was during the Victorian Era (1837-1901).     Personally, I find the exterior to be a little dull. It's kind of blocky, like it just sprouts new cubed rooms as it ages and could do with a bit of ornamentation like the manor homes of the area around. I think this might also deal with it not really having neighbors abreast, nor really a streetfront, so it faces all directions while prioritizing none of them as the front. The second owners also changed the main entrance from the east to the north. Although, from not having a front, it does have a lovely back with a covered porch and glass greenhouse that looks out over a park with the Rive...

  When I was studying French literature, I took a course on literature from the Antilles. One of the literary devices that we were studying was that the people of the Antilles don't always think of time in a linear line, but as a web of causes and effects that blend together. One of the books we read was a detective story where the lead detective would talk to the suspects to trace after the clues. The direction of the dialogue with the suspects was always them sharing their life story with the deceased and how their interactions over time shaped them. It was this idea that actions in the past influence reactions in the future. As well as the idea that a person is not a solitary individual, but a composite of the surrounding society. Walruses of the Arctic Hotel.   Later, when I was studying architecture in graduate school, I liked to think of this concept when designing buildings how the past of the area could inform designs for the present that could direct images of the fut...

"God is in the details." The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. (wikipedia)   This was something that was said by my first art history prof in university. She was using it to explain the high level of detail used in a Christian painting we were looking at. Or perhaps it was that sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. I had grown up atheist, so I struggled with knowing the art history depictions of stories from the Bible and trying to keep track of saints. But it also meant that I interpreted this phrase differently. In my godless eyes this meant to me that the process of creation through repetition and the application of intricate detail was not dissimilar to meditation where the labor leads to deep self-contemplative thought. When I was in high school, I began to attend a Buddhist center in town once a week for a weekly meditation. Their meditation consisted of listening to a repetitive drumbeat while we focused on clearing our minds. This led me to thinking of...

I returned to the market this morning, although I read the internets wrong and thought that the market opened back up at 8h. In reality it opened at 10h, so I wandered the streets for two hours and since it was a Sunday and nothing in France was open, except for a few bakeries that I walk by in the chill morning air. I bought some pastry with apples that I had never heard of before. I used this purchase to break a larger bill in preparation for the market. Instead of euro coins I was given a small handfull of 50 centimes. I saw the bartender from the ‘crazy’ Breton bar [I walked by it to find out the real name; Distribil]. He smiled and said ‘salut.’ I think he lives in the bar and was going out for his morning shopping. I felt as though I was in a dance with the street sweeper. The Rue de la Soif was a mine field of broken glass and discarded plastic cups. I’m still not sure if all the red drips I see on the ground are blood or not… The drips that then smeared onto the...

I went by the market this morning to get a few item for making food. Garlic now hangs from my window latch. The decor is sparse, but that will change. [Hopefully there will be some cheap pots and pans at the flea market tomorrow. Until then I got some avacados, so french bread and avacados will have to do.] These beautiful overcast days have been perfect..

My assignment for my architecture class is that the class is extremely independent and that I don’t need to worry about such things as assignments. I have taken this to mean that I should build up a collection of photography and sketches of architecture in Rennes. I guess the class meeting times will be filled with discussions, although I am not too sure what this will mean. I need to return to this spot again though to capture the giant wall mural by Blu. First time I don’t have my camera when I come across it. Second time I thought that I had blocked the sun with my hand from leaving a spot on the picture, but when looking at it on the computer screen a small one had made it though, right to the center. This photo is my cliché contrast of old and new architecture.

I’m in France. Namely the town of Rennes in the Britany region. I’m not quite sure what to say about this place. The task of even starting the documenting of it on here was daunting with just how much there is everywhere that I would like to comment on, to share and express. The city is gorgeous, with different sections seeming to represent completely different eras, but yet allowing all the different sections to bleed into one another.