Gallery NRC 2nd Annual Mobile Phone Juried Show - Juliet is In!

Welcome Back to The Blissful Adventurer! Our first post from sunny Palo Alto is to announce that Juliet's spectacular photo, A Bridge Eye View, was selected by a jury and is currently showing at the Mobile Phone Juried Show in Denver, Colorado.

The show actually comprises 3 unique gallery spaces and Juliet's image is showing at the Gallery NRC on 424 Tennyson Street.

The shot was taken from an old Venetian work boat in a neighborhood canal while we were working with two amazing women from the ancient rowing work boats preservation society (much more about them in a future post)

The only sad part of this news is we will not be able to see the photo in the gallery or attend the artists reception on Friday October 5.

If you are in the Denver area we encourage you to attend and tell your friends.

The images in the show will be voted upon by the jury for best in show as well as In addition there will be a People's Choice award as well which will be voted on during the duration of the event. For this vote each person who votes will be required to vote on one piece in each of the three locations. As the number of pieces in each location is not evenly balanced weighting will be done to ensure every piece has an equal opportunity to win this vote. As an incentive for people to vote there will also be a prize awarded randomly to those who submit their vote.

This is a very important step for Juliet, the artist known as Schmee, to her growth as a working artist.

We are all finally settling in a bit and will get back to our blogging routine very soon with new stories, photos, and humor.

Here is a brief bio on Schmee for those of you who do not know her personally

Schmee is a young woman seeing the world from rural roots across oceans to lands only dreamed of in her childhood. As a major contributing photographer for The Blissful Adventurer she continues to travel the globe offering yin to her husband’s yang and developing a style with modern visual media that interprets a poetic inner view with a fine realism.

Schmee is a full-time traveling nurse lending her skills to hospitals in need across the globe and in return she is rewarded a daily visual dive into her surroundings

31 years of age, hailing from rural Texas and painting from childhood, the camera is a tool that allows her to paint “on the fly” with light and lenses all the while staying close to her own base in art and design.

This is Schmee’s first show and these are the very first original prints on offer from this rising creative young woman.

More of her work may be seen on the website above and she would enjoy hearing directly from patrons and inquisitive guests.

Italy Thoughts - A Hipstamatic Journey

I woke up with Hemingway on my mind today and a future so uncertain I knew I needed to write. Is this going to be everyday? The world is changing and the groups want to do what I do and perhaps they are better at telling the world. I wanted to simply walk and take a coffee thinking about lunch and what surprises were in the little shops along the way.

So alive each step and going so diligently towards something I do not know is my nature. The path of waking, plugging, and filling a known entity with subtle joy is so daunting to me. I want to know what is behind the strange window and not how many eggs I have in the fridge.

I make the days sound so romantic and so full of careless walks and while there are these moments; to get where I am and have been, exhausts too much of me. I drive myself crazier than I drive myself to joy.

I lubricate every part of my brain and sometimes the road gets too slick and the turns so hairy I wonder if I will make the other bank. At the same time I come home again only to find each time I know the place much less than before I left.

I returned here even seeking that lost part of me and found only frustration at the things I love in disharmonious meetings. The light was so blue for the day and only again the morning I left.

I feel like I am narrating the Terrence Malick film of my life. I want the score to be Morricone and the direction to be my own. You see, that is what it is; the direction.

Maybe I am part north, part south. Perhaps I am a bit east and some west. I know my legs want to go but not simply for the sake of going and that even in the spring the light can be false.

I sat in a little enoteca here and ate salumi with cheese and a local white wine watered down by its own inferior grapes. I was rushed from the door by the servers wanting cigarettes, lunch, and to jerk themselves off before they went back to work. I would probably want me to leave too.

It was 20 years ago I set foot on this floor and I almost cried from something inexplicable when I saw the facade. My fleeting memories and poorly constructed philosophies pale to even a simple bit of flooring someone with superior skill laid to view before a single person ever claimed to be "American"

I should have just stayed longer in Rome and found a few parks to sit and a few berries to pop and soldiers' statues to ponder and lenses to change. I tell myself I want to spend quiet in Italy but I lie.20 years later I am still pondering the reasons I first came and what I will do again. Rome is hard and hard to grasp. Yet, it is so joyous to behold and the simple pleasure of simply making it somewhere on a hot day by a prescribed time is a joy like few I know.

Haiku Sunday - Venice, Italy (I'm Back)

Welcome back to TBA live posts! This feels so good to get back in the Saddle and with over 6000 new images and countless new stories I am thrilled to share with all of you.

I urge you all to click the images below and see them in full resolution. Juliet and I worked like starving artists (we are) to capture the photos along this journey.

Stay tuned for big new changes to the TBA site and I look forward to all your comments and my still very jet-lagged responses.

The first Venice light

of the day spotted a

strange cameraman

waiting to work

along the canals once plied

by men of vigor

Italians posing is

much more wanted than is an

invasion of privacy

cruise ship lovers will

pay any price for the company of

talented douchebags

little johnny boat

trolling the back canals and

offering candy

along our paddle

we saw the sunken dreams

of a man in pain

Mike's memory was

never far even in the back alleys

of Venetian barscolorful houses

could not hide the colorless

souls of their owners