Animazement 2009

Hello there! I have been meaning to blog but have been a busy bee, not just a queen bee :P

The weekend before last Lauren went to the anime convention Animazement at the Raleigh Convention Center. If you are unfamiliar with the Anime world -- subculture, its like.... how do I say this? Those die hard Trekkies that go to Star Trek conventions and eat, drink, sleep all things Star Trek. Animazement is all about dressing up as your favorite anime character, and in Lauren's case it was Hinata from the Naruto series. Its also about all things Japanese pop culture. Like all subcultures it has its innocent, not so innocent, good and bad. Sounds like the real world.

Before the convention Lauren spent a lot of time online in the Animazement forums having discussions about the upcoming events. She created a forum called "Christians at Animazement" and to her surprise the forum filled with several participants who were believers and encouraged each other in their faith. There were participants that said, "I can't go to the convention but I'll be praying for you guys!"

After the sermon at church Lauren said she wanted to go talk to our pastor. When she returned, I was concerned something was wrong so I asked her what she talked to him about.
"Well, our church is always talking about how we want to reach out and serve the city of Raleigh and I know today, here in the heart of Raleigh is a whole group of people at Animazement who don't know Jesus. I asked Chuck [ our pastor ] to pray for this group."

"And?" I replied

"He was very excited for me and prayed right there."

You know what? It is by the grace of God that my child owns her own relationship with God. I'm good with this child never being "successful" with anything else in life. I'm good with this child in the hands of God without my interferance.

There is NO greater blessing than to have a child who knows Christ personally and owns their own faith and practices in places that would be scary. And I mean scary. Check out the picture here of her with the Japanese rock band at the concert whose influences are Bon Jovi and .... KISS who were all the rage at the convention. Those crazy Japanese!

Artsy Fartsy II

Well, here is some fun news!
Lauren won first place for juniors in her school's writing contest!
She got a nice little check for $25 from the PTA. Nice!
Then she won the overall best writer award out of 100 students who entered this writing contest!
WOW!
Another check for $50 from the PTA. Nicer!
What was most meaningful for Lauren is what her creative writing teacher said about her when he presented the award to her:

"No other student author I've known could layer so much sound and still maintain the maturity of the message."

Okay, I have no idea what that means but it sounds impressive!
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My Thursday painting class (with the hard-core instructor) will be exhibiting a group show at a cool hip coffee house Helios Cafe in downtown Raleigh in June. Our instructor was the one to organize this for our class and even though its really NOT a big deal, its sorta a big deal for me. It is requiring me to frame a painting to show, write an artist statement and get back into a little experience of showing my work.

Since the theme is "Landscapes" and I don't do landscapes, my instructor suggested I show my red square painting. (See painting here). Since its an abstract it can fall under the theme of landscape. I have titled it "Landscape of Red."

Artsy Fartsy

I guess you could say our family is artsy fartsy. Lauren and I are the artsy and Danny and Michael are the fartsy. Okay, I'm fartsy after dinner most of the time too.

This past Friday Danny and I went to the North Carolina Museum of Art for their Friday evening event which is basically food, wine, and live music and a nice stroll among art. Its pretty low key, fun, inexpensive way that fills the fine art bucket in my soul (you all have one too right??). Every time I go into an art museum I have pangs of missing working in one. It really is a culture all of its own with some interesting quirky people.

Right now most of the museum is closed due to renovations that will reopen in 2010 and it promises to be awesome. At least they have some of their modern art (my FAVORITE) on display. My hope is to some day be a docent at the museum. "A docent is a trained volunteer who serves as a tour guide armed with in-depth knowledge about the museum’s collections and exhibits and helps make museum visits special."

Well, as if we didn't have enough of the museum the next morning we returned at 8 am to participate in the museum's 5K Run for the Arts. This was organized by a group known as the Contemporaries. They are the 20 to 40 something members of the museum who organize events and raise money for funding the purchase of modern/contemporary art for the collection. SO COOL!

Well, this was my first race and Danny was bouncing off the walls he was sooo excited. He loves to do races and was so happy to do this with me. The course was through the museum's sculpture garden which was pretty neat. However, they failed to post a person or sign at the turning point and many of us ran an additional mile out of our way.

Danny and I were not expecting to win, but I did not want to come in last. I have some pride. I'd like to say we ran the whole course, because about 3 months ago I was running up to 4.5 miles on the treadmill. Yes, treadmill. A different animal. The park had significant hills and my out of shape self kept team Dulin back and in fast walking mode for a lot of the race. No matter, we still crossed the finish line in the first third of the runners. How fun! And painful.

The next day we could not walk. Oh well. Danny is getting ready to sign us up for Race for the Cure in June......