Art making

My energy has pretty much returned to normal levels, and my digestive system, thankfully, is now working pretty well. A recent visit to my Naturopathic doctor reveled that the blood levels which he's been treating with diet and supplements have stayed at desired levels even when I was off supplements and diet during the operation and recovery. He was able to cut my supplements roughly in half, and I am on a maintenance program to keep my levels strong. I was recently sent this link for a TED Talk. It deals with some of the basic approaches that some of my treatments address, it's worth a look:

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html

As the school year is starting to wind down, I decided to bring my wet plate equipment back to school for demonstrations to my advanced classes and to see if making portraits of students was still something that appealed to me. My method of art making is to follow the flow of the work, taking my cues from what I am excited (driven) to explore. Throughout the winter and during treatments and recovery I often thought about what I might do if was able to work again, wondering if the portrait project I had been working on was still relevant. I'm a very different person than I was a year ago, so to test myself, I set up my equipment and started making pictures this week to see if it would click. On the first day, I made a picture a young man named Randolph who had a great afro parted down the middle. I like the picture a lot, and have realized that there is still a lot of work for me to do at school, and a lot more for me to learn, so I'm excited to keep at it.