That was Saturday afternoon, around noon. The drive was hot, but thankfully not as long as the trip back.

We arrived in the Eugene/Springfield area (and, yes, we strongly believe that Springfield, OR is the true Springfield where the Simpsons are from: it doesn't matter what a silly online poll says) late Saturday evening to spend the night at Faith's mother's house. She just recently had hip surgery and so Faith needed to be near to the hospital. Thankfully the drive to Oregon wasn't overwhelming. It was a nice start to the week. The cool shadows of the evening made the drive less painful in our very un-airconditioned car. But Faith's mom lives out in the sticks, where no street has a real name, or at least none which we were told: everything is identified by landmarks and the forest is all around the house. We woke Sunday morning and went to church, visited Faith's mom in the hospital and had a nice breakfast for dinner (with real bacon from a pig named Lucy...bacon tastes better when you know the animal's name).

But we didn't really take this trip to spend time with friends in the Northwest -- although that was a definite side plan for the trip. We drove further out into the country to Amity and spent the night with Sara and Jarem. Sara was terribly cute about having us as guests. She left chocolates and homemade chapstick on our pillows. Although we got there late and left early Monday morning, we had to stop by because we were borrowing Jarem's cooking stove for the week and we intended on spending more time with them at the end of the week. Without that cooking stove we probably would have been sunk. Although we did get a fire going every night, it was never easy and we couldn't cook much on each fire. The rain forest is wet. How's that for an obvious statement?

But we ran into a couple of early problems with the cooking stove. First of which, it had no fuel and only REI carries the right fuel, which we learned after we checked at Target and Wal-Mart stores. But things worked out in our favor because we had already planned a lunch visit in Seattle with Rebecca's sisters and we were able to pick up some cheap fuel before we left civilization. While in Seattle, we took Amy (who was in town visiting Suzie) and Suzie to our old haunt, Mr. Villa's. And it was just as good as I remembered. Sort of. The food is a different kind of Mexican cuisine, a little more exotic than normal taco shops. But the service and the price and the comfort of the restaurant is unparalleled. At least in our experience, it still measures up to a great restaurant.

Monday turned out to be a bit of a call back to 2 years ago in Seattle because we also spent the night at Collins campground on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula, where we were introduced to the area by Rob and Camille. Collins campground is one of the best we've seen. It is cheaper than most places, right alongside a beautiful river, in the heart of the forest and if you manage to get campsite 13 like we have both times you will find that it is completely isolated. We've tried to make careful notes so that anyone who wants to recreate the trip we made will be able to, but for the passing visitor, Collins campgrounds are top notch.

So we woke early Tuesday morning (the only morning we actually woke early) and found the one small flaw in Collins campgrounds: the only water pump is a rusted hand crank pump from a well over a mile from the campsites. So we filled our 2 gallon tank with brown water (from rust or dirt, we knoweth not), and drove around the bend to Murhut waterfalls.

Our vacation was guided by the waterfalls in the area. Rebecca was too pregnant to do any serious non-day hikes, not to mention our lack of equipment to make an extended stay up on the glaciers. So, instead of hiking the hundreds of miles of trails through the ONP, we made treks to most of the major waterfalls in the area, getting a taste for the rainforest. Murhut is one of our most treasured spots. We had been there two years ago, but never braved going up to the upper waterfalls. Which we did this time. And then promptly dropped our camera case over the edge of the waterfall. I scrambled back down the cliff to catch it before it was swiftly carried down the miles of rocky stream. Thankfully, neither us nor the camera fell as well. But we climbed all over the Murhut falls and even behind the falls. It is a magical place of old growth forest. Although, if I was to advise someone about doing the trip right, I would recommend going to the falls in the morning, not in mid-day. The lighting is better at that time of day.

After Murhut, we began our trek north to find the ONP information center. Along the way, we stopped off at a few other short hike waterfalls. Of special mention is the Rocky Brook waterfalls -- it even has a special pool for swimming, if you can stand the cold.

Eventually we decided to camp at Sol Duc, which wasn't an ideal campground because it was more commercial than the primitive campgrounds we are used to. The ground was covered in gravel and most sites were barely large enough to accommodate the size tent we use. This is because the "campsites" are meant for RV campers to pull their car into the parking spot and only use the picnic table on the ground. But the funniest part about camping at Sol Duc were the crows. At sun up, we had a murder of crows screeching at each other at the top of their lungs right above our heads. That is, by far, the most efficient alarm clock I have ever heard.

Wednesday morning we hiked down to the Sol Duc waterfalls: the wettest, loudest and by far the strongest of the waterfalls in the ONP. Their 20 feet of downpour has etched a straight narrow ravine in the rock which looks artificial. The jet spray got us both fairly wet and we sat at the top of the falls and watched the magnificence of the falls. After visiting a few more waterfalls and driving to the western side (the "official" rainforest side), we camped at a small primitive campsite just outside the Hoh rainforest. The mosquitoes were so bad along the Hoh river, we spent the evening running back and forth from our car to the tent and back again. It was an adventure to stay un-bit [made us giggle anyway :)].

Most of Thursday was spent hiking through the Hoh rainforest. However, what designates the Hoh as a rainforest is no more than a political designation. The rest of the peninsula was just as lush and almost just as wet. Hoh, however, was much more tourist-oriented. It was nice to hike through the moss covered trails and the bearded forests. After a full day of hikes, we began to turn towards home and head south along 101, stopping along the beach and flying our kite for an hour. The winds were up and the sport kite did tricks we've never seen [and we laughed and laughed our heads off! -beck]. I attempted the dangerous "glide through the water" and failed, but at least the kite kept on ticking. 12 miles down from the Quinault Lake, we found our last campground at Graves Creek. This is the other spot we can't recommend enough to people who would like to visit the area. Graves Creek is a great campground and truly isolated from civilization, but has more amenities than Collins did. The campsite host even came over and chopped dry wood for us, gave us some firestarter candles he had made and dumped a bottle of imitation vanilla extract on us to keep the mosquitoes off. The poor old man was bored and wanted to tell us stories about his life so Rebecca patiently listened.

After all these miles of hikes, we woke up sore Friday morning, drove down the upper north shore road, stopped in the middle of nowhere in the forest, and listened to the quiet. We made it to the last few quiet places in the country, a place where the sounds and seismic pollutions of cities hasn't reached. It was magical to say the least.

With the rest of our day, we reflected on what we had seen and calmly drove down 101 through coastal land of Washington and Oregon. A few hours before dinner we realized we could attempt to get to the Whiskey Creek Cafe in Tillamook for the best fish in the area, however, when we got there, the place had been sold to some people who made it into a mediocre Italian restaurant. But after a day of driving, we crashed at Sara and Jarem's house and hopped into the hot tub to get the stink of campfire out of the skin.

Saturday was a nice lazy day spent with Sara and Jarem. There is a wonderful breakfast/lunch diner in McMinnville, not to mention the Brigittine Monastery where we picked up some truffles (how they support themselves) and chatted with one of the monks outside the cloister. We spent the afternoon looking at fun booths at the Portland Saturday Market with Rebecca's old roommate Amy. Then we saw Ratatouille in the evening with Jon and Faith and drove home in the hot sun all day Sunday. A 9 1/2 hour drive turned to a 12 1/2 hour nightmare in the sun. But it was a good way to remind ourselves of the wonderful trip which just ended.

We're back! Most of you might not have known we were gone, but after a good week's worth of camping in the Olympic National Forest and Park, we came home and now it is time to get back to normal life. This was our first week long camping trip and we tried to hit every waterfall in the Olympic Peninsula. We've wanted to visit more since we lived in Seattle and here are the pictures of our adventures.

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"Meet me in St. Louis."

We met the rest of my family in St. Louis for a family un-reunion. The weekend was filled with playing in the swimming pool, running around after kids, museums, zoos, and laughing.

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It is finally summer time and what that means here is time to destroy paintings. We have a second bedroom full of works of art that will either go one of two places: to your house or to the fire. Literally.

So, I have compiled a gallery online of all the works of art on death row along with their sizes and materials. Please take this opportunity to look through and claim anything you want. We can talk about exchanging/pricing details once I hear from you about which ones you want.

Obviously this is a limited time thing. Please contact me at wayne(at)waynemadsen.com. Thanks.

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We drove down to Oceano Dunes for spring break this year and rode some ATVs across the massive dunes. We went camping, we enjoyed the out of doors and almost made it to LA. But once we got to the materialism of Santa Barbara, I thought I was going to be sick and we turned back before it was too late. Just Kidding.

Because we were off-roading, we couldn't take our camera (we actually lost the water bottle we did take pretty early in the day) so our pictures of that part of our adventure were taken with our camera phone. Sorry for the low quality.

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Well, we finally made it down to the Monterey Aquarium. Our friends, the Rocks, got us some cheap(er) tickets and we went down this Saturday to see all the nice fish. The aquarium wasn't as large as I had expected it to be (with all the hype surrounding this being one of the nation's premiere aquariums), but what it might have lacked in expected size, it more than compensated with a large number of fish.
This aquarium was amazing and the exhibits were well designed. Especially amazing were the jellyfish exhibits and the tuna exhibits. When you're staring a massive tuna down the face, it really is quite a stunning experience.
We had a great time and we officially recommend people who appreciate the beauty of the ocean to go check it out.

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We invited the Rock's over for a tasty cook-off. They made duck, we made some sort of pork and gouda cheese open-faced sandwich. The food was delicious and the next time we will try to get more people to show up. The most excellent cook-offs always involve many chefs competing for the best items on the menu.

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When Jon and Faith visited this weekend, we had nothing planned. But we decided Saturday morning to go spend some time at the ocean, so we packed up the car and took a swift drive to Half Moon Bay. Although it is one of the prettiest beaches in the area, it pales in comparison to Oregon beaches. But that's only because I like how Oregon beaches are set up. Half Moon Bay, as you can see in the pictures, is an amazingly beautiful beach. It's hard not to take a good picture there.

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When we got the piano, I decided I wanted to refinish it. After we got back from Michigan, I took two weeks to sand, stain and varnish the piano. I hope it looks better than it used to. We used a little lighter color, but since the piano used to have different parts stained different colors, the uniform stain was an improvement. Here are some before and after pictures.

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We went to Michigan this year for the holidays and had lots of fun. Besides having a wonderful Christmas day, we also visited Frankenmuth and got into some mischief the rest of the week with fancy meals and playing games. It wasn't as cold as we feared and we had a very brown Christmas this year - not a spot of snow all week long. But who needs snow to celebrate the magic of Christmas?
We wanted to be the first in the family to post pictures of Christmas, but then we forgot our USB cable at home. And then when we got home, the website wasn't allowing us to post pictures until now. But now you can see our pictures!

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These are images from a show in the White Gallery. I worked with six other artists in collecting all the receipts from every transaction we made. This show was an analysis of that experiment and the resulting data.

Artist Statement:
The process of a transaction, in America, usually involves the transfer of currency for goods or services. These transactions are then logged in small pieces of paper called receipts. Most receipts come with specific data printed on them, commonly including the value of the goods transferred and the time and location where these goods exchanged hands. More often than not, a receipt will include sensitive data of the two parties involved.

The process of collecting receipts results in a system of data which can be mined for information about the transactions taking place. Often economic analysts will collect immeasurable amounts of data from a producer to evaluate the demographics of spending within a company. Although most people no longer collect receipts in an age of digital monetary transactions, for every physical transfer of goods or services for money, a receipt is still provided as proof of that transaction. It is this proof which I have collected during the past three months from six consenting artists.

This installation space is documentation of the artwork of collecting receipts and mining the data from these receipts in order to show the spending trends of the six artists involved. Through this collection, I am showing a system of data and order made from six separate expenditures. Systems are created from labels and the organization of data. As an archivist, I searched through the data and have investigated our spending habits through an analysis of this benign object, the receipt.

These receipts mark our experience within a currency economy. As artist we have spent the past several months collecting the receipts in this room.

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I had a show in Gallery III on campus during the Thanksgiving week. This displays the painting work I did this semester, along with some previous stuff I didn't include in my graduate application portfolio. This was supposed to be a "get to know professors and expose my work to professors."

Artist Statement:

Jacques Derrida writes that a culture’s philosophy can be rooted in the linguistic structure of that culture. I started these works as a study on language and the deconstructionist approach to understanding literary theory.

As I have learned more about art history, I developed a distaste for the separation between public understanding of art and art practice/theory. By my view, the specialization of art theory has distanced the public from understanding art, very similar to other disciplines which have their internal set of symbols, communication and iconography. Many of the symbols in this body of work are taken from various disciplines, which have meaning within those disciplines.

I then began to appropriate the “cute” imagery which my generation grew up with representing our philosophical basis. These images bother me. I feel like these cuddly and cutesy characters are polluting our visual experience and I am terrified by it. I view these pieces as an addition to the kitsch dialogue in fine art.

My compositions are intuitively created from images which either reflect or were appropriated from the lexicon of digital “street culture.” I am not trying to be a part of that culture, but be aware of how this culture affects us.

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Well, since we moved into our new apartment here in sunny CA, Star has had several new experiences. For one, she had never seen a squirrel before in her life and she really enjoyed that sight. We often have squirrels jump past our windows and Star goes nuts over them. She also was very hesitant about our new piano. At first, she ran and hid every time Rebecca played it, but after some coaxing with treats, she'll play us a tune and when we play, she likes to lay on top of the piano.

We also recently aquired a stereo replacement so we can use our speakers. The first time we watched a movie, she batted at the tweeters because she thought they were making funny noises.

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So, we took our annual trip to Florence, Oregon this past weekend. Here are some of our pictures from the trip. It was great to see Brynna after her mission and spend some time with Jon and Faith. Yay for fun trips.

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So, I haven't posted any work lately on the blog, because most of my work in the past 8 months haven't been "image" or "object" based work. But since I was admitted to the 2D graduate program, I've been trying to be good and paint some "objects."

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Since we've moved to California, we've been kept busy unpacking, going to school, going to work and just being busy. This is a random collection of pictures from the past month of our lives. Some are from Kate and Robi's wedding this past weekend, some are just showing our new apartment, some are pictures of us playing on the beach.

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Despite the rush in moving this coming week, we spent last week with our friends in Oregon. Of course, we went to the beach and tried to fly kites. For the most part, the wind was too strong for kites, but we had a wonderful time with Jon and Faith and wished we lived closer to them.

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Rebecca and I flew out to California for some job interviews. While we were there, we visited with some friends and of course Karl and Angela. We drove out to Santa Cruz despite the horrible traffic. Because it was in the 100 degrees this weekend, everyone wanted to get out to the beach. We went in the evening and most people had already left this little hidden beach. So we played.

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This piece I started a couple days ago, and since the progression of a work still fascinates me much more than the final piece, I will continue to take pictures of this work in progress.

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While living in Seattle, I did a large amount of these figurative ink paintings. To capture the vibrant quality of life and metabolism, the restructuring of life, I painted with natural elements, using twigs, leaves and stones for brushes.

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