Reindeer prints - in black, white and silver

Jackelope prints - Holiday cards

 

Deaths - head hawk moth

Last week I was in Michigan visiting my family for Thanksgiving. After rumaging through some old binders of mine, I found an anatomically correct drawing of a deaths-head hawk moth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s-head_Hawkmoth). I love it and think I may turn it into a print...

Case-Control Geographic Clustering for Mobile Populations: Methods for Infectious and Chronic Diseases

Several years ago, my Dad and I wrote a paper on the best way to study infectious and chronic diseases. Because people live in different locations during their life and spend a large portion of their life at work, spatial and residential histories must be gathered and implemented in time based software. The case for this type of methodology is made by illustrating its effectiveness with a bladder cancer study conducted in South East Michigan. Not only did I get to help write this paper, I got to collect water samples from the case and controls homes and work (2 samples, one frozen and one not), urine samples and toenail samples. Thankfully, I did not have to work with the samples in the lab, but reaped the benefits. Our paper can now we be found online (abstract below)!

http://www.geocomputation.org/2005/Jacquez.pdf

Abstract
Humans are mobile and constructs of Geographic Information Science have been used
to model daily and weekly activity patterns, as well as residential and work spaces. But
geographic epidemiology often ignores human mobility and employs methods that
assume humans are sessile rather than mobile. This paper first quantifies how relaxing
the assumption of sessile individuals might impact case-control cluster tests, and finds
the results are highly sensitive to when the system is observed. Recently developed
tests for case-control clustering that account for human mobility are then presented,
along with extensions to the analysis of infectious disease data. We conclude by
revisiting an analysis of bladder cancer in south eastern Michigan, and demonstrate the
ability of the new techniques to detect global and local clustering in case-control data
for residential histories. Statistical techniques that account for human mobility are
needed for chronic and infectious diseases where causative exposures occur at
locations different from ones location at time of diagnosis.

Oil? Acrylic? Abstract? Realistic?

One fish! Two fish! Red fish! Blue fish!

I am constantly influenced by the world around me and have a tendency to imitate other artists work or style. Most of the work I love is abstract, and as a result, my work ends up abstract. At some point, I was almost unsure if I knew how to represent the real world anymore! After flipping through a photo journal, I found a series of beautiful painterly images of dilapidated buildings and rooms and decided I needed to try something new. A painting is abstract in its own right: what you are looking at certainly is not two chairs in disrepair but rather an image (digital files) of an image (painting) of an image (photo) of two chairs. Who knows what they really look like?

After painting, someone pointed out how they looked similar to an oil painting, even though I am working in arcylic. Unfortunately, these images do not give the texture justice, but I used a specific textured paint that crackles after a few hours to give texture to the wall and to provide body to the yellowing chair stuffing. The result mimics the broken visual texture seen in the original image. 

Halloween costumes 2010

This year, on a business trip 5 days before Halloween, I began thinking about what I should dress up as. I remember years ago when I planned months, literally months, in advance to ensure I had the best costume I could come up with. In college, naturally, I wanted to fit in and dress in a sexy little store bought costume. Truth be told, the purchased outfits were 1.) overpriced and 2.) made me feel more uncomfortable than ever.

This year, I decided to ditch the same generic outfits offered nation wide and went for something practical, creative and easily recognizable. Its also way more fun to do a costume with a partner in crime or with a group. I recruited my boyfriend, two bubble umbrellas ordered from Amazon.com (remember, I am on a business trip and had little time to shop), translucent gift wrap from Michael's and bubble wrap generously donated from work. Oh and don't forget the tape (did I mention it was no-sew?)! Thursday night, I sat down, attached strips of bubble wrap to the tips of the umbrellas and hung thoughtfully cut pieces of gift wrap to the metal architecture. The result? An admittedly fragile, but beautiful guise.

Key to our outfits was color coordination... I utilized mainly purple items and wore a purple shirt whereas my boyfriend used the blue gift wrap and donned a baby blue American Apparel tee. The gold lame pants really finished the look.

Congrats Beili!

In college, I took a class with Beili Liu. She was, and still is one of my favorite artists. Her class was one of my favorites and redefined the way I thought about art. See the video below, she won a 50K artists grant!