All posts by Kristi

Kristi Beisecker is a graphic designer, photographer, printmaker and alternative scientist whose interested in making images through two contrasting elements. She is also a blogger in lifestyle, travel, wellness and health, art and design, beauty and fashion.

Exploration: Crystal Connection

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NEW PALTZ, NY – This weekend I traveled to New Paltz, NY to visit a few places I had read about recently. One of these places is the Crystal Connection. They had a couple of psychic and intuitive readers who did aura photography. After building my life for the last 3.5 years on it’s cousin (Kirlian Photography), I am very excited to have finally done this. I will do a separate blog post on this based on my experience!

 

Tomorrow, I plan on checking out of the New Paltz Hostel and head to Woodstock. I am also experimenting on how to shoot a travel vlog, so I will be getting some shots.

 

New Paltz was founded in 1678 by French Huguenots settlers, including Louis DuBois, who had taken refuge in Mannheim, Germany, for a brief period of time, being married there in 1655, before emigrating to the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1660 with his family. Mannheim was a major town of the Palatinate (in German, the Pfalz), at the time a center of Protestantism. The settlers lived in Wiltwyck (present day Kingston, NY) and in 1677 purchased a patent for the land surrounding present day New Paltz from a Lenape tribe known as the Esopus.

 

The people of Mannheim use a dialect form of the name Pfalz without the “f”, pronouncing it “Paltz.” Records of the New Paltz Reformed Church, which was formed in 1683, show the name of the settlement was first expressed not in German, nor in English, but in French: Nouveau Palatinat.[citation needed] The community was governed by a kind of corporation called the Duzine, referring to the twelve partners who acquired the royal patent. That form of government continued well past the time of the American Revolution, by special action of the New York State legislature.

 

The 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) or so of the patent, stretching to the Hudson River and augmented soon by the other patents on the south, were eventually divided among those twelve partners, their relatives, and a few friends into large plots – part wilderness and part farm. The farms were grouped principally around the heights west and east of the Wallkill River. The commercial center serving the agricultural base was located on the east shore of the Wallkill River, in the area where the first settlers had built their shelters. The street is now known as Huguenot Street. (wiki)

 

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New Clients: Bowflex Barbie Fitness and Kathmandu Infosys

Happy to welcome Bowflex Barbie and Kathmandu Infosys into my ‘client family’. These past few weeks have been extremely busy with moving among other things. Transitioning from one way of life to another has been quite difficult, more or less than anticipated. It’s weird to think that something you’ve wanted for so long can be a huge adjustment. Anyway, just taking one day at a time, week, month, etc and slowly settling in. 🙂

A new beginning….

My client work has helped with the transition not only with the finances but with focusing, allowing myself to take a break from moving and day-to-day activities to focus on things I simply enjoy doing. My freelance projects have been there when things got scary, OK and now when things are transitioning. I know there will be a time when they won’t be… but for now they are the one thing that can’t be taken away from me…

 

In this day and age of graphic design being a competitive field, gaining clients regardless of the competition, is extremely satisfying, especially going after clients whom you’ve made proposals for or connected through other means and those means ending but still wanting to work with you regardless. Building something up from the ground is not easy, and can be hard to let go.

Loyalty

Client loyalty is also huge, in addition to two new clients, a previous client had come around again after a long hiatus asking if I still want to be on the team. Building business relationships isn’t just about the money, work or what have you but about the relationships and community that come from it. This particular client had been reworking things on their end as well and it would’ve been a shame to just say ‘no’ just because of things falling through. Life happens, and I wish more people would better understand that. To build a independent freelance business, one must focus on client loyalty, do good work and maintain lasting relationships through a collaborative, creative process. Otherwise it may just fail or you’ll be struggling and going from one project to another without much longevity. To sustain any business is to focus on longevity, to take your day-to-day activities and energy and think about what will this do to make my business last?

 

 

Give a shoutout to Bowflex Barbie Fitness —> https://www.facebook.com/bowflexbarbiefitness/

And Kathmandu Infosys —> https://www.facebook.com/kiecpage/

And continue to follow along for updates on these projects and their whereabouts 🙂

 

Also a thank you to Copy Cat Printing for their negotiations in working towards making these projects a success 🙂

 

Exploration: NE Balloon Festival

GOSHEN, CT – I had been meaning to make a post of about this! But not much happened, so I wasn’t sure how to tell the story. July 9th, I traveled to Goshen, CT to meet up with a bunch of GLT sisters/members. GLT is Girls LOVE Travel®, a professional Facebook organization, nearly of 400,000 women who love to travel. They have chapters throughout the world for meet ups and gatherings, and there was a New England chapter. I decided one Sunday to travel an hour and a half to Goshen, CT to meet up with about 6 of us who met up at the festival.

Workshop: PVMA – Microscopy Workshop

LEEDS, MA – Last weekend, I attended the mycological association’s microscopy workshop and learned how to create a slide and use a microscope. This is something I’ve been wanting to get into for awhile now, and now that I have moved and have my own space I can plan/save some money to buy a microscope. I’ve been seeing some of my friends’ microscopy images and I think it might be a cool and interesting project to do microscopic images with my electrography, as they too in some respects are microscopy.

The leader of the association had a home lab setup and microscopes for us to use. I really enjoyed learning in an environment that wasn’t stressful nor as formal as a classroom and aim to find more workshops like this in the valley.

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Photography: Photo Projects Wrap Up

 

 

New Electrography Images

Sometime back in May after starting my new job, I went to the Vermont Center for Photography to expose a new round of electrographic images. The last time I think I did this was Italy I believe. I can’t believe it really had been two years since I created new images. Time flies when yer hustlin’…

I haven’t decided if any of the above are portfolio worthy. I have many plans to return after my life has settled and regained some stability. A colleague of mine suggested I do some sort of oracle deck regarding plants and flowers and was trying to figure out the best divination method for this. While talking to someone since moving here, I have realized a method to do this functionally however it will require a lot of trial and error. It came about after being inspired by how Italian artists decorate the streets for the Bishop’s arrival on easter and how one of my pieces resembled fish jumping out of the water. This symbology sparked an idea of how I could go about making an oracle deck and going back to ancient times and how psychics and seers would through bones and sticks to tell a fortune. The image would be the fortune and whatever is seen in the image would be what would be predicted. Kind of like a tea leaf reading as well.

I also have begun a traditional photo project that I started in my traditional photo class in college that required spinning objects on a lazy Susan and capturing the light streaks swirling around the object. I have been thinking a lot lately about my mission and how to go about visualizing it. One of the hardest parts about working with art and science is that you have to visualize scientific ideas, and my mission came to me through a psychic experience – while completely understanding that this experience is what I saw and made available to me not necessarily everyone around me is going to see the same, nor saw the same experience. Seeing the world through its’ depths isn’t exactly easy as we’re trained to see what our eyes see.

 

My Sweet Life

This past Sunday I began a project shooting photography with a woman who owns a very small Maple Farm in Worthington, MA. We seem to get along well and started the project off well. I go back again next Sunday to continue this work.

So a lot of project stuff has been going on especially photography related projects. If you follow me on Instagram you might catch a post on some graphic design projects that I’ve been doing at RVC. However, I’ve mostly been keeping graphic design work at RVC and have kept most of my freelance clients at bay… once my life settles down, I really want to start blogging more frequently. So much to explore, and do around here. I have to think about what would make great content. 🙂

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Activities: Mushroom Walk

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Last Sunday, I went on my second mushroom walk. Unfortunately, it was cut short due to unexpected rain. A member of our group did find black American truffles, though. Next walk won’t be until Sunday, July 16th.

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Activities: Mushroom Walk

WEST CHESTERFIELD, MA – Last Sunday I went on my first mushroom walk with the Pioneer Valley Mycological Society! It was great meeting like-minded people and getting to know the area a bit. We went to Chesterfield Gorge in West Chesterfield. It’s about 35 minutes from work. I actually ran into someone from work who went on the walk as well.  Below are the mushroom species that we found during the walk. It was overall pretty uneventful.

Here is the list of the 45 fungi species found on the June 11 PVMA walk at Chesterfield Gorge: GILLED: Agrocybe acericola, Agrocybe praecox, Gymnopilus sapineus, Gymnopus dryophilus, Hebeloma sp., Inocybe sp., Inocybe calamistrata, Laccaria longipes, Mycena sp., Mycena haematopus, Mycens leaiana, Pluteus sp., Pluteus cervinus, Psathyrella sp., Rickenella fibula BOLETE_LIKE: Leccinum scabrum, Suillus granulatus CORALS: Artomyces pyxidatus PUFFBALLS: Lycoperdon perlatum JELLY: Dacrymyces chrysospermus, Horomyces aurantiacus POLYPORES & STEREUMS: Cerioporus varius, Fomes fomentarius, Fomitopsis betulinus, Ganoderma megaloma, Ganoderma tsugae, Hymenochaetopsis olivacea, Irpex lacteus, Neofavolus alveolaris, Pycnoporus cinnabarinus, Stereum complicatum, Stereum ostrea, Trichaptum abietinum, Trichaptum biforme, Tyromyces chioneus, ASCOMYCETES: Annulohypoxylon fragiforme, Chlorociboria aeruginascens, Cudonia circinans, Kretzschmaria deusta, Xylaria hypoxylon, Xylaria polymorpha: SLIME MOLDS: Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa, Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. poroides, Lycagola epidendrum, Stemonitis sp.

Photography: Mushroom 02

Collection: Mushroom Walk, West Chesterfield Gorg, MA
Year: 2017

A series of photographs taken while on a mushroom walk in West Chesterfield.

Mushrooms found during this walk:  Agrocybe acericola, Agrocybe praecox, Gymnopilus sapineus, Gymnopus dryophilus, Hebeloma sp., Inocybe sp., Inocybe calamistrata, Laccaria longipes, Mycena sp., Mycena haematopus, Mycens leaiana, Pluteus sp., Pluteus cervinus, Psathyrella sp., Rickenella fibula BOLETE_LIKE: Leccinum scabrum, Suillus granulatus CORALS: Artomyces pyxidatus PUFFBALLS: Lycoperdon perlatum JELLY: Dacrymyces chrysospermus, Horomyces aurantiacus POLYPORES & STEREUMS: Cerioporus varius, Fomes fomentarius, Fomitopsis betulinus, Ganoderma megaloma, Ganoderma tsugae, Hymenochaetopsis olivacea, Irpex lacteus, Neofavolus alveolaris, Pycnoporus cinnabarinus, Stereum complicatum, Stereum ostrea, Trichaptum abietinum, Trichaptum biforme, Tyromyces chioneus, ASCOMYCETES: Annulohypoxylon fragiforme, Chlorociboria aeruginascens, Cudonia circinans, Kretzschmaria deusta, Xylaria hypoxylon, Xylaria polymorpha: SLIME MOLDS: Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa, Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. poroides, Lycagola epidendrum, Stemonitis sp.