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Sarah Cass has been photographing musicians, artists, and genuinely interesting people for 25 years. Almost 20 of those years were also spent working in the music business as the Production Manager for K Records and currently, the Senior Digital Operations Specialist/Photo Dept. Head at Sub Pop Records and Hardly Art.

Since 2019, Sarah has spent countless hours bending glass and learning to process neon tubes, though she still considers herself an absolute beginner. She loves color more than anything and seeks to create pieces that explore the magic of the world -- especially the sky and sea -- through the use of color and illumination.

Sarah lives outside of Seattle, in Bremerton, Washington, where she is learning to practice moving slowly and with intention. She is focused on creating physical art, while still practicing portraiture and astrophotography.

Sarah is available for travel worldwide, and would love to work with you! Please contact eric (at) sarahcass (dot) com for rates or to schedule a photo shoot.

SELECTED CLIENTS & PUBLICATIONS

Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, SPIN, NPR, Paste, Bandcamp, FADER, ABC News, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, The Observer/The Guardian, The New Yorker, USA Today, Atlantic Records, Island/Def-Jam Records, Universal Music Group, Saddle Creek, ATO, Kill Rock Stars, Thrill Jockey, Barsuk, RYKODISC, Fat Possum, Glacial Pace, Tomlab, Jagjaguwar, Dead Oceans, Polyvinyl, Anticon, Upset the Rhythm, Merge Records, Hardly Art, Sub Pop Records, K Records, and more!

RESIDENCIES & SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Light the Forest | Pilchuck Glass School | Stanwood, WA | 2024

Neon Residency | Pilchuck Glass School | Stanwood, WA | 2024

Radiant Neon Student Show | Radiant Neon | Seattle, WA | 2023

Neon Water Drop, part of an installation with Kacie Lees | WNSA | Seattle, WA | 2019

The B-Sides | The Whitney | Seattle, WA | 2016

Northern Art Auction | Northern | Olympia, WA | 2013

Portraits | Olympia Coffee Roasters | Olympia, WA | 2012

Northern Art Auction | Northern | Olympia, WA | 2012

Best of Art Vinyl | O2 Arena British Music Experience | London, UK | 2010-2011

Best of Art Vinyl | Art's Complex | Edinburgh, UK | 2010-2011

Best of Art Vinyl | George's House Gallery | Kent, UK | 2010-2011

Best of Art Vinyl | Cornershop | Paris, France | 2010-2011

Best of Art Vinyl | Jonas Gallery | Brussels, Belgium | 2010-2011

Best of Art Vinyl | Marten Art Vinyl Gallery | Gothenberg, Sweden | 2010-2011

Duo Exhibition with PJ Sykes | Northern | Olympia, WA | 2009

Portraits | The Climax Lounge | Denver, CO | 2005-2006

Love is for Fools, Light is Forever | Qube Visual | Denver, CO 2005

Portraits | John A. Jellico Gallery | Denver, CO | 2005

Roid Rage (Polaroid Work) | Qube Visual | Denver, CO | 2005

Portraits | 9th Floor | Denver, CO | 2005 - 2008

Hi!! I’m back with a fun life update to let you all know that I have learned a whole lot about my body over the past three + years of feeling lousy, and though I’m still feeling nauseous most of the time, it’s not as life-altering as it has been over the past two REALLY HARD YEARS (!!!), and after the last week of starting a new medication, I have literally asked out loud a whole bunch, “Is this what people feel like all the time???” Apparently instead of my body being in “fight or flight,” it is learning about “rest and digest,” and I can’t even begin to tell you about the energy I have now that I’m actually processing the food I’m putting into my body. I’m getting soooo much done!!!! I have normal sleep hours!!! My mood is waayyyy better!! I feel like this was the missing puzzle piece and now it makes sense why salads give me stabbing pain, but mashed potatoes don’t! 🥳 I’m feeling for the first time in my life what I think people probably feel like daily, and instead of being sad for how much time I’ve wasted feeling terrible (those feelings are there, too — trust me!), I’m more focused on the fact that I feel like I can do ANYTHING, and I am slowly chipping away at all of the projects I’ve been pushing aside for an unknown time that I have the brain space or energy or whatever. An added bonus is that instead of being bummed and hating the size of my body and that it feels like I literally can’t do anything, I’m just SO DARN STOKED to have a body that is letting me TCB and I’m over-the-moon, y’all!!!!!! 💓 I know I’ve been a weird and wacky mess if you’ve talked to me the past couple of years (or also worse, if you haven’t - sorry for that, too!!!), but wow - I feel like things are moving in the right direction, and everyone has been sooooooo beyond kind and wonderful in my life when I haven’t felt like I deserved it at all, and I’m soooo grateful for your patience and kindness and presence and love. I’ve never felt the kind of love and support like I have over the past year and have been surprised how genuine and gentle everyone has been checking up on me. 💗💗💗💗💗 So much love to all of you!!!! 😘

This past year and change has been overwhelming and hard, but it also blessed me with a two-person north-facing deck that I’ve discovered I can see the northern lights from, even when the KP isn’t very high!!!! I can’t begin to express the joy I’ve gotten from hanging out in my pajamas and taking pictures of the sky glittering at night from the comfort of my own home. Magical!!! 💝 I still haven’t actually edited any pictures (really of anything that isn’t work-related!) in the past couple of years, and I’m hoping one of these days I’ll have some time to take a look! For now, I made a timelapse of everything I took one night last summer from our deck in downtown Bremerton (even with light pollution from the shipyard!!!)! ✨🤩🌌💖✨

I’ve been spending most of my non-working time on preparing for @pilchuckglassschool’s second annual Light the Forest event (this weekend!!!), where I was very wildly and kindly given the opportunity to try to light some of the forest on campus with the neon that I worked on during Pilchuck’s first neon residency at the end of September! ⚡️💡⚡️

I haven’t even had a chance to post about that (though I will!) and what a bananas experience that was, or how amazingly kind and patient and thoughtful and talented everyone was (!!!!!), but if you’ve ever been curious about Pilchuck, this is apparently one of the only times that it’s open to the public, so feel free to bundle up tonight or tomorrow evening and head to Pilchuck to see some neon from some super supreme glass artists (!!!!), and walk through the wildly beautiful woods (full of tree frogs and mushrooms!!!!)! Tickets should be available on their website or at the door! 💝

Thank you to everyone at Pilchuck, but especially to @szwedzinski, @meganstelljes, @dani.kaes, @madawg2o2o, @m.i.n.h.i, @joehobbsartglass, @brichesler, @blob_blobber, and @chamagneee!! Extra special thanks to my BFF4L, Eric, for all of his time, patience, kindness, and the first video here. :) ✨💖⚡️💖✨

Hiiiii!!! Here’s the only picture I’ve managed to edit or really even look at from that magical KP9/G5 solar storm in May!! IG wouldn’t let me post the whole thing without cropping, so swipe over for the full version! :) I stopped by the @chimacum.cafe on my way home from Port Townsend after I thought things were dying down (and the moon was fully up!) to quickly snap a picture of their cute neon sign. To my surprise, the lights were still rippling across the sky in every direction possible, with the corona directly above (!!!!!), and I was able to get two of my favorites together. Who doesn’t love the Aurora and a neon sign??? 😍 100% one of the best nights of my life, and I’m worried that no other aurora will compare!!! 🤩😭 One of my very favorite parts of that night was receiving photos and texts from friends seeing it and trying to!! I LOVED that the weekend was full of sky photos on socials, and that for one night, it felt like the whole world focused their attention and energy on something so rare and special. What a gift! 💝

In other news, I’ve learned that the past year of feeling awful hasn’t just been the massive stress of moving, work, life events, etc., like I’d thought! I still don’t know what the heck is going on, but I am exhausted, nauseous, and in pain literally 90% of the time every day (among so many other things! I used to think about food 100% of the time because I love it, and I still think about it all of the time, but now because I have no appetite and everything I eat causes pain! It’s been a weird time!!! 🙃), and if you’ve interacted with me in any way in the past year+ish time, there’s a good chance I’ve been weird, distant, grumpy or impatient (and on and on and on!), and not that it’s an excuse, but hopefully it makes a little more sense overall? Thought I should say something, as I finally feel like mentally the clouds might be parting and I’m feeling a bit more like myself, but my facial expressions and body might say otherwise! I promise it’s not personal, and if you’ve experienced an unpleasant version of me, I’m sorry!!! 💓💖💓

Hi!! I’m posting this neon slug that I finished months and months ago to tell you that June 30th is the closing reception of the show at @radiantneon, from 6-9pm, and your last chance to see this and my neon shooting star IRL, along with the best pieces by some of my fellow classmates and new friends!! 😍

I’m pretty sure I said I’d post everyone’s pieces the last time I posted, then I promptly forgot, but I’ll try my best to actually do that this week, to either get you really excited to go see everything, or to just show off how talented and creative all of these folks are, just in case you can’t make it!! 💖💓

This is also a friendly reminder to go take a class with @radiantneon, @kaekittymcg, and @marisamanso, if it sounds exciting to you in any way, because they’re the best, and even if you’re losing your mind over how hard it is, they’ll make you feel supported, calm, and encouraged, and you’ll have so much fun that you won’t care how bad you are at it (really, I’m just talking about me — you might be excellent right off the bat!!!)!! 💕

I never posted this in the finished form here (though if you see my stories, you’ve probably seen it a bunch already! Sorry to bombard (haha!) you with it so much!), but here it is, all lit up and hanging at @radiantneon!! 💖✨ As always, a huuuuge thank you to @radiantneon, @marisamanso, and @kaekittymcg for their help with bending, welding, bombarding, the installation of everything, and answering endless questions, help, and support in general. They’re all the best!!! 🤩💓 Take a class with them!! ✨

If you’re not busy tonight, you can see this and my neon slug at Radiant Neon (2121 1st Ave., Seattle, WA) during the @belltownartwalk! 🎉 There will be one more opportunity during the closing reception on June 30th, which I will unfortunately be out of town for. 😢💗

I’ll post everyone else’s work from the show in my stories later today also, because they’re all so amazing, and even if you can’t go, I hope you can appreciate them, too!! 😍💝

We’re currently approaching a solar maximum (meaning that the Solar Cycle is expected to hit a peak next year, resulting in higher activity of the northern lights!), and I feel like every week this year, there has been some sort of aurora activity, whether we could see it or not (darn clouds!!).

On the night of March 23, I kept hearing all of the predictions for what was supposed to happen, and as the KP climbed and climbed, I (along with every other Astrophotographer I follow) was supremely bummed to know that literally all of Washington was covered in clouds!! I gave up on the possibility of catching anything and got ready for bed. That didn’t stop my phone from notifying me to “look up” every now and then, and I ended up going outside and trying to take photos of STEVE from my backyard, because it seemed like the clouds had parted a little bit and everyone was seeing it right above their heads. I still couldn’t see anything, but did have a bit of clearing from what I could see, and as the KP hit 8 (the highest I had ever seen it!!), Eric convinced me to just go look, and that he’d ride along and sit in the car. Since all of the posts in all directions of us weren’t seeing much, we just drove to Alki (the closest to us, but with probably the most light pollution in the state!! 💡). I didn’t go far from the car so that Eric could see me the whole time, but probably should have just gotten set up immediately where I wanted to be because there was PINK in the sky!!! I’ve never seen that at Alki ever, and can’t imagine how bright the lights must have been in a darker place. Incredible!!!

We didn’t stay long, because the clouds started rolling in again, but I am so happy Eric got me out of the house and that the clouds briefly parted for some magic. So exciting!!! The last image is my goofy timelapse (I need to bring a second camera just for that purpose, because I move the camera around a bunch looking for what I might be missing elsewhere!), with a few favorite stills at the beginning. It’s so hard to narrow this stuff down when every shot is different and pretty in its own way! 🌟 Thanks for reading this far!!💖🌠🌃🌌

I’ve been slowly finishing all of the rings and charms I made while taking a Lost Wax Casting class at @prattfinearts over the past couple of months last September. (I’m sure I’ll post those later too!), and have been anxiously awaiting finding the perfect stone for this one. This whole time, I’ve had a faceted stone in mind (but that’s it — no specific color or size), and when I finally went into @nwrockhounds to find the perfect stone, the wonderful folks working there (@benchcandy and @hollingerdesigns — thank you!!! 💓) threw out a suggestion I hadn’t even considered of choosing something uncut instead. They brought me containers full of turquoise, aquamarine, a bunch of random polished stones, and more, and as I started to look around a bit, I found a bunch of pyrite (fool’s gold!) and took home the two smallest pieces I could find that fit pretty well. They actually weren’t really small enough to fit perfectly, but as I was bending the top two tentacles over the top of one of the stones (and the bottom two underneath), the part that was too large and sticking out of the side randomly crumbled off, making itself into the perfect size! (Now, fingers crossed I can keep it safe moving forward!!)

I had originally pictured having to place a stone between the tentacles and the opposite end of the slug, but my instructor had suggested just slowly dripping more wax onto the tops of the tentacles and wedging it between. If I hadn’t been open to collaborating on ideas, between that and the stone, this would have turned out completely different!

I keep telling people that I’m not very creative, but that I’m okay with follow-through (especially things that aren’t my own projects!), and I really do think that’s pretty true, but I also have realized that I’m very lucky to be surrounded by very creative people who have a lot of really good ideas, and I’m grateful that they share them with me, and always help me make things better. Super grateful for all of that!! 🍀

(🐌🐌🐌 And finally, I really wish there was a slug emoji!!🤞Hopefully someday! 💘)

I hate deleting photos from my memory cards, even if I have them backed up, and I finally deleted a bunch of pictures of @orvillepeck (featuring @briasalmena!) this past week from what feels like a different lifetime ago! I stumbled onto the black and white versions last night and realized I never posted them!

The originals in color were on a bright green background that would probably be fun to edit someday, and these were a few of the final choices for their @subpop photobooth shots with the full band that they got to take home. It’s 100% one of the things I miss most about being in the office, and hopefully I can pop in again a little more often to take some more! 🤞💖

I’ve been doing some organization lately to make sure photos don’t fall through the cracks and that they get backed up, and realized I’ve got a tonnnn of old photos that were never posted and turned out pretty cute (definitely because of them, not me)!

I asked a co-worker if she thought it would be okay to post these since it has been years and years, and she gave me the thumbs up, so look at these cute photos of @girlfridaytm! We took a few @subpop “photobooth” pictures in the office, as well as a couple in the style of the Backstreet Boys to model new @hardlyartrecords hats, then walked across the street to the parking garage I used to park at to take a few photos of them wearing Sub Pop shirts for the MegaMart. So photogenic!! 😍💖

After the Grand Canyon, we took a quick afternoon detour to Sedona (not enough time!! We definitely want to go back!) and stopped at Chapel of the Holy Cross, which was excellent (scroll towards the middle to end), and then took a long time back toward home and ended up in Monument Valley for the night (a fun surprise — one of my mom’s favorite places!).

We got up at sunrise for photos (because you can’t not when you’re there, right??), and for a tiny bit of sunlight and color, but mostly clouds that turned into the coolest clouds later in the day! We’ve been a bunch, but this was by far the least amount of people we’ve ever seen taking pictures along side of us, which felt pretty wild (it’s normally packed)! There were only maybe four others, and a tiny group shooting a movie! I asked what they were making, and they said it was a “summer road trip movie.” Not a lot to go on, but it was fun to listen to them radio the car below telling them to turn on their lights, turn around, try it with the parking lights on, etc. I’m excited to keep an eye out for whatever it might be! 💖🏜️💖

I took over four thousand pictures on my very short trip to the Southwest with four different cameras (!), and have narrowed my favorites down to just a few, so thanks for dealing with so many posts of pictures of Arizona!! I’ve only got two more! 🙃

We only had a couple of days at the Grand Canyon, but spent the majority of it riding and walking around the rim, and tried to find the easiest/prettiest/least-populated spots to take sunrise and sunset photos, but oh boy, was it cold!🥶 My absolute favorite part was when the sun went down and the sky had layers of pink and blue and purple. Sooo pretty! 😍🌄🌅

One of my favorite things about the Grand Canyon was how dark the sky was!! I had it in my mind that I was going to try to take a night photo of the canyon while we were there, but it was pitch black, windy, freezing, and I couldn’t figure out how to use my mom’s tripod, so I gave up pretty quick! 😝

Since they try to keep the light pollution to a minimum, there was barely any light outside of our hotel (we couldn’t even read the room numbers!), so we decided to step outside of our room for a few minutes (until I broke the tripod…) and point the camera at the Milky Way to see what we could capture! Soo many stars!!! ✨🌟💫✨🌌 We just happened to be there the night that someone from NASA was giving a talk, and got to look through a few HUGE telescopes to see Saturn, the seven sisters, and a few other spots after the talk. Pretty neat!

If you swipe over to the end, I did the same outside of our room at Monument Valley, and it’s wild how different they are, even considering that there’s not a lot of light there, either! 🌠🏜️

Happy Valentine’s Day!!! ✨💖✨

I thought that today was the perfect day to light up this neon heart that I made last year for the first time (and is the only one I’ve ever made using only one tube — thanks especially for your help, @kfasshat!)!! 💗 I somehow remember it being more symmetrical in my head . . . 🙃

When I tried to upload it to Instagram, it wouldn’t let me do anything other than make a reel (Come on!! There must be a real way to post a video on its own, right???), so I was going to add one of my favorite Valentine songs, “Ode to St. Valentine” by Calvin Johnson and Mirah, but when I started it up, Eric told me that he covered that live over ten years ago (I think 2012??), and I told him I wished I could hear it. He did some googling and found it live on YouTube from a venue in St. Louis, so I added that instead. I love it sooo much. 😻💓

Swipe over to see the actual video, probably made sometime around when we actually met for the first time. FWIW, adding the extra video is letting me post the other in a non-reel format! (Edit: But it cuts it off at the minute mark — I guess nothing is perfect!) Lots of love and heart eyes from me today!! Feeling very lucky for such a fantastic life partner. @thehollyhockarchive 💕💝💕

I went to visit my parents in Colorado last November and of course took a short drive up onto the Colorado National Monument one afternoon after taking a walk below with my mom. We thought we’d missed the “good” light, but once the sun went down, the actual good light showed up! 😍

If you scroll a bit, you’ll also see a picture of petroglyphs on the way to the Grand Canyon, as well as photos from the last day of our road trip in Moab at Arches, and a quick stop at one of my favorite places, Hole N” The Rock (sooo good! Wish they let you take pictures inside, though!! 😍). Kind of out of order, but I’m trying to condense my favorite pictures into a few posts to not be too wild with the vacation pics! 🙃💗

Sorry for the double post about this, but I just got these photos from SYML’s super kind manager, and since it’s still pretty bonkers to me, I thought I’d post them, too! If you swipe over to the second photo, there’s another new billboard in Toronto, with more of the original photo! Exciting! ✨💓✨

SYML’s ‘The Day My Father Died’ is out today! I’m listening to it for the first time now, and it’s so beautiful! 💙🖤💙 Congratulations, @symlmusic and @phil.ek for creating something so special! 💓 I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to dip my toes back into photo work and to be a part of this project in the tiniest way. Truly so grateful! 💙

What isn’t tiny though and is truly bananas to me are these gigantic photos that we took showing up in Times Square (two of which are up now for the next week — I wish I could see them IRL!!). It’s hard to believe they exist, and it takes me back to the first time I lived in NY in 2005 for a photo internship, and I lived in a tiny shared room in the financial district with my photo school pals, @davegaslin and @jennaduffy, and I’m pretty sure one of the first things we did was go to Times Square at midnight after we got settled, and then again a couple of days later right before midnight to try to see the ball drop on New Year’s (😂 What were we thinking??). Hard to believe that something I photographed is up there now! Pretty neat!! ✨

I couldn’t be happier for you, Brian!! Thank you again for everything!! 💙🖤💙

Also, I grabbed these photos/videos from live webcams on YouTube, with the exception of the YouTube ad (ha!) that I got from SYML’s page. I’m hoping that I end up with better photos at some point, but even if not, still so bonkers!! ✨

Thank you also to @thehollyhockarchive for your endless help on all things and taking care of everything from emailing, coordinating, assisting, driving, etc. to make sure everything happened easily! You are the best!! 💖

In September, I finally ventured back into the world of portrait photography and had the opportunity to meet and photograph the wonderful and incredibly talented @symlmusic!! His new record, The Day My Father Died, is out February 3rd! His music is SO, so beautiful!!! 😍💕

Brian was above and beyond one of the nicest people I’ve met in years, and immediately put both Eric (who graciously assisted with all parts of the shoot) and I at ease, and was so calm, kind, funny, and professional throughout the whole day. I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him in general, and for the whole thing to have renewed my excitement about photography again.

At the very end of our shoot, we made our way downtown and stopped sooo briefly at the @thestatehotel, who literally handed us a keycard as we walked in, and told us the best spots to check out for photos. We only had time for two floors (they recommended the deck on the roof overlooking the Sound — wow!!), but they couldn’t have been nicer, and I can’t thank them enough! What’s so special about the State Hotel though, is that the most incredible illustrator, @kateblairstone, designed custom wallpaper for all of their floors (The first photo I posted is from the lobby by the elevator!). I’m dying to work with her on a custom project, so if anyone has anything in mind and wants to work together, you know where to find us! Please go look at her mind-blowing work in person, as well as on her Instagram. It’s SOOO good!!!! 😍💖 I’m hoping to hire her someday for custom wallpaper myself. I can’t sing her praises enough!!

These three are the only photos I’ve seen released publicly so far, so I’ll probably post more from the shoot later on (especially after I’ve had the chance to pick out and edit my own favorites!), and I appreciate you looking at them! 💓 Thank you all for being so incredibly supportive all of the time! 💘 Even though this is already the longest caption ever, more of my thoughts that couldn’t fit in the middle are in a comment below, if you feel like reading them. 😬

My first (and only! 😂) goofy neon squiggle from the first day of my first ever real neon class a year and a half ago found a place in our very dusty living room. 😬🤫🫠

Other than the rain drops I posted a while back, this is the only other neon I’ve actually finished and lit up, since all I had to do was hook it up to the transformer. I need so much help with mounting!!! I’m running out of room in my basement! 😅 Hoping to finish everything else up one of these days!! 🤞 Send me a message and show me what you’re working on?? 💖

💕〰️➰➿💕

I finally finished my stained glass slug a while back that seemed to take me fooorrreevvvveerrrr!!! It’s not even that complicated, but I kept running into problems grinding, getting frustrated, giving up, and coming back a couple weeks later. I was really winging it every time I started grinding a piece because my lines would wash off, so in order to make my pattern work, I would try to eye grinding a different piece to fit the first piece that was wrong, and so on, and so on.

I just bought a Cricut recently (thanks @thedonwan for the inspiration!), and I’m looking forward to grinding with vinyl as my guide next time, to see if that helps. I also purchased Mark Stay, chapstick, and a glue stick, so if you’re running into the same issue, those are cheap ways to keep your lines from washing away (also silver sharpie stays better than black — fyi!).

This was also the first time I used a ring saw (for the long teal part of the body), and game changer!! I’m excited to try some of the designs I had made when I first started, knowing now that this option exists!

I also ran into the problem of my foil not sticking as I was soldering. Did I wait too long to solder after foiling? Did I not wash my glass well enough before foiling?? I thought I did everything right, other than being very slow to do anything, so if you’ve got tips, send them my way!! 👏 I’d also love any and all tips for beading edges!!! I’ve watched so many tutorials, and it’s just not clicking. I did my best and finally gave up on this one. I’m hoping to try lead came soon to see if that makes a difference for me. Open to any and all suggestions there, too!!

Endless thanks for @thehollyhockarchive for always drawing my patterns and being so supportive!!! 💗💕💗

I just spent a bunch of time in Colorado, Arizona, and Utah looking at giant rocks outside and tiny ones in rock shops and fancy jewelry stores, so it seemed like an appropriate time to post my first cabochon I made! You can see the whole process in my saved stories, but it started from a slab of Brazilian agate and turned into this finished piece that I will hopefully turn into a ring or pendant soon. LOVED how meditative and calm the process was, and I’m antsy to get my own equipment to DIY it at home whenever I want. 🤞💍🪨

I spent a little bit of time a few months ago learning how to prepare Lepidopteran specimens for the first time and spread my first Sunset Moth. It was surprisingly quick and easy (minus waiting for it to rehydrate for two days, and waiting a couple of weeks after it was spread), and it was interesting to see the process!

I finally bought a small frame and used the holographic envelope that my @createwith.in aura photo came in as a background. I tried my best to make it straight, but it just wasn’t happening without worrying that I would damage the moth more, so I gave up and left it as-is! I also think I needed a little foam padding to really make it stay put, so maybe I’ll try to fix it again someday if I find some. I’m not sure if I’ll ever do this again since I feel so conflicted about where specimens are sourced from, unless I just find them randomly already dead outside (you can search through my saved stories to see a little more), but it was interesting to learn more about everything and give it a try! 🤷‍♀️🦋

I’m slowly posting some of the things that I’ve been learning and working on in the past year and a half, and if you look at my stories, you’ve probably already seen most of what I’m posting waaaaayyy before I put things on my feed. Sorry if you’re seeing this twice! It almost feels silly to post things things so long after I worked on them originally, but why not?? 🤷‍♀️ You can also see the process for everything in my saved stories!

But I’ve been taking some jewelry and metal classes this year and though I’m still superrrrrr new to everything, here’s a few of my first rings that I made. The one on the left literally took a month doing everything very slowly and learning to do things the hard way, but it also looks the best, by far!! The other two were after I learned how to do five different and new-to-me stone settings, as well as the easy way to do most of the work. 🤯

None of these are really my style, and I think I would change all of them in different ways, especially if I had known what I was doing before I started, but it has been fun and exciting to learn so many new things recently! I just finished a Lost Wax class, and have so many projects that I have to finish up, and even more that I’m excited to try out! Can’t wait to get back to it one of these days! 💓

Also, please ignore my torn up fingers and bad nail polish. I went hard on the new Lisa Frank polish mixed with pink and purple glow-in-the-dark. I don’t think my nails will ever be pretty again after all of these glass and metal hobbies! 😂

Here’s another stained glass piece I did as practice with my cheapie glass, since it had been so long and I was afraid to really dig in and go for it again! I’m honestly kind of embarrassed to post it, because i just don’t like it and can see everything that I did wrong. But that’s also part of learning, right? So I’m going to post it all — the good and the bad, and hopefully I can look back and see how far I’ve come! 🙂 I definitely needed the practice, as my cutting, grinding, soldering, etc. all needed (still does!!) a lot of work. Honestly, everything I do is practice!!

I really love seeing everyone’s abstract pieces, but I don’t think that style is really for me, as much as I wanted it to be since I’m so awful at drawing. I’m still trying to find my own style — really, not just in stained glass, but also neon, jewelry, photos, you name it. I’m so impressed by everyone who knows what they like and has a consistent style!!! I know it took a lot of work, and I see you!!! 💓

Endless thanks to @thehollyhockarchive for drawing pattern after pattern, even if I don’t end up using all of them. I’m sitting on some good ones that hopefully I’ll get around to one of these days! 🙌💕

I always wait to post things until I can take a “better” photo on a “real” camera, and then I never actually post anything! So here’s the first neon I ever made (captured via my iPhone) from a workshop with @kacielees focusing on water drops a few years ago, with help mounting by @studioglow (thank you both!! 💗💕).

I ended up buying a frame for it instead of what we had originally talked about, so the wiring is in the front with some black electrical tape front and center (instead of hidden behind the acrylic with the wires not nearly as close as they currently are or should be). It needs a little work, and I should plug it in more, but it’s a special and fun reminder that I can learn something new pretty quickly (you know, not fully!) and roll with it, and that it 100% doesn’t need to be perfect.

If I’ve learned anything about neon and glass, it’s that nothing I make is ever perfect or permanent, especially the “best” version of whatever it is I’m working on (because I always seem to break that version anyway! 😭😅). It’s a really good lesson in patience and perfection, and I’m grateful that it carries over into other aspects of my life, and gives me a little more perspective to just do the thing, period, instead of worrying about making something that is mostly unreasonable as a beginner. That’s still hard to remember sometimes. 💕

From my last post, I had said that I ended up hopping in the car after not getting much at the beach in Seattle and heading north. I made it to my location by almost 2:00am, and was greeted by a few people doing some crabbing. Everyone was super nice and ushered me up to the front of them, but told me that I missed the big show, and that all of the other photographers had left. They said that you could clearly see it with your eyes and showed me amazing phone pictures.

About ten minutes later, everyone left and I was all alone, just snapping long exposures one after the other, hoping to get something to show up! I don’t know about you, but I always feel a little scared being alone in the dark in the middle of the night with a bunch of expensive equipment, but after about 20 minutes, an older woman showed up with her phone and coffee, and we became quick friends. We were having such a nice time talking and had so much to talk about around autism, traveling, the aurora, and so much more, that she said she’d stick it out with me until 4am and then call it a night. As luck would have it, somewhere between 3:30-4:00am, the sky started moving again and we could clearly see pillars and waves with our eyes. We even got a little blue that showed up in the photos!! 🤩 The clouds started rolling in more than they had been, and I still had to drive an hour home, so I called it at 4am with her, which luckily, is also when the solar storm died down. So grateful that the stars aligned for my first aurora chase since the pandemic started, and that I made a new friend out of it, who is willing to meet me and travel to the farther away darker places.

If you scroll to the end, you can see my shaky Timelapse, but it stabilizes more at the end. If you made it this far, I’ll tell you that we’re entering a solar maximum (more chances for the northern lights!), and that I’m currently getting notifications of activity RIGHT NOW, so there’s a possibility that something might happen when it gets dark!! I can post in my stories with updates, if anyone wants that. Thanks for reading and looking and caring! 💙💗🌃💚💜

I finished a movie a few weeks ago around 12:30am and looked at my phone to see a few aurora alerts had shown up in my notifications and email, and the first post I saw was from five minutes before saying, “It’s happening!!! Go now!!! Now now now!!” So I grabbed my camera and was out the door in a couple of minutes. I wasn’t sure how long it would last and since I was alone, I decided to take the easy and fast option and try to see if I could see it from Alki. It worked last time, so why not try? I took a bunch of pictures and couldn’t really tell if I was seeing anything or not, so checked my phone while snapping long exposures, and it looked like I had missed the “big” show before my movie had even finished. Bummer!!! The numbers were still high and looked like they might be until 5am, so I decided to hop in the car and drive an hour north with my fingers crossed.

I’ll post more about that part in another post, but for now, it turns out that I did catch a little glimpse of the aurora over the city, and here are a couple of pictures from that tiny window where it showed up, even if it was pretty faint! 💚🌃💙

I’m on my way to the neon class I’ve been taking, and have been working on the same shooting star for a couple of months (through two classes and extra practice sessions! It’s not even a complicated design!! 😅 You can see the steps in my story highlights!), and I’m hoping we’ll be able to light it up tonight and finish it (at least until I can mount it) and move on to something new. Putting good thoughts into the universe for easy parking and to have my head in it tonight! Here’s Monument Valley in neon that I made last Fall when taking a different class with the wonderful @afielitz, who jumped on board with me to give glass bending a shot! Extra special thanks to @wb_kirtley and @marisamanso for the expert level instruction and literally making this a reality piecing this together at the end! 🏜💕

I didn’t think I’d ever get to photograph the northern lights over the city since solar storms have been less frequent, and light pollution is so high, but a couple of weeks ago, the clouds parted (Literally! It has been cloudy and raining ever since!), the moonlight was low, and for 20 exciting minutes, the green bands came and went. I saw other photos from the night in darker places with explosive colors and huge pillars, but for driving 15 minutes away at 10pm and not being near anyone, I don’t think I could ever have expected anything better (and I certainly didn’t expect a little pink in a few of the photos)! This brought back some photo excitement that has been missing for me since the pandemic started, and I’m so grateful that this is even a reality here! ✨🛸⛴✨ Oof, but that photo compression!! 🤦‍♀️

I’ve been staying off of Instagram since the pandemic started and dealing with life poorly and in the most boring ways (but so grateful to have a job still and for Animal Crossing!), and the closest life has come to feeling normal was the hour we spent out of the house the first night Comet Neowise was visible, which happened to also correspond with the only northern lights activity that we’ve had in what seems like forever. I knew that my normal spot up north would be packed, so crossed my fingers and went to Alki after it got dark. We didn’t spend much time, but could clearly see the comet (even better with binoculars!) and took a couple of pictures before it started getting busy and we got nervous. We tried to go back two days later and it was BONKERS busy and nowhere to park or be away from anyone, so I’m thankful for getting to see it at all. I’m trying not to be on here too much (or at all, if I’m being real!), but I hope that you’re all doing well! Let me know if you want to connect sometime off of social media! 💖☄️💫💕

One of the last shoots I did before quarantine was headshots with Tracy and her sweet friend, Sarah. 💗

Happy Belated Birthday to @kvivalarev / @theshivas! 🖤

The incredibly kind and talented @dannybarnesbanjo announced his new record on @atorecords this past week with an interview in the @fretboardjournal. I took the promo photos and a back cover image for this one, and it feels even more special since The Fretboard Journal was the first publication to give me and @weinrauch a shot at photographing a feature on @omebanjos in the early 2000’s. Inspired to pick up my banjo and learn to play it! Thanks, Danny and ATO! What a dream! So stoked to see and hear the final record! 💙

I took a neon workshop a few months ago, and that same week was asked to photograph the incredibly talented neon artist, @studioglow, who has created so many beautiful neon pieces and spent a few hours showing us her studio and how she does what she does. I’m obsessed, and so excited that she happens to be a fellow South Park resident! 🤩 Thank you, Koko, for being so endlessly talented and optimistic, and for challenging me to step outside of my comfort zone! 🧡

OHMME + NNAMDÏ stopped by this morning! 🖤

Comedy Bang! Bang! 2019 Tour: Seattle - The Core 4. 🖤

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