Emily Vigil
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This is the post where I get to show off my stylish new grocery bags...

6/26/2014

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Grocery shopping this week was a joy.  I felt good about putting away all of my groceries into reusable bags.  This was a great reason to not only shop for food, but to collect art, in the form of delightful reusuable grocery bags by fellow artist, Judi Krew.
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Acme is right on with these reminder signs posted in their parking lots!
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Maybe you are like me, and only sometimes manage to use reusable bags for shopping.

This week, I asked myself: 

What has stopped me from using reusable bags more often?  

  • I commonly forget them in my car. I now plan to store them in the front of my car, next to where I place my purse while driving, instead of out of sight in the back trunk.   
  • Plastic is so integrated into my life that I didn’t even consciously think about the extra bags that I normally use for fruit and vegetables.  My husband is really good about not using the vegetable bags.  I like them, but I could either purchase some open weave sturdy bags or just get used to cleaning out my reusable bags and store the fruit & veggies in there until I get to the checkout.
  • My reusable “grocery” bags get repurposed for storage of other items (like diapers and toys). Any mother will know what I am talking about.  I had so many different kinds it was hard to gather them all together, and for true grocery shop, I need at least 4-7 of them.  Now that I have a beautiful whole set of Judi Krew bags, I can more easily keep them all together.  (Although I’m still going to need to guard them from my 3 year old, who was quite taken with the first “Acme Annie” bag I got and determined it was hers.  

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Now, I can do my shop more often at one of several stores that do not supply bags (then I can recycle cardboard boxes).  But best of all would be to visit the Farmer’s Market more often, because of all the other scrumptious benefits, plus, there I am more aware of the need to bring bags.  

And that’s exactly where I plan to go this weekend. 

  • Do any of you have any tips about how to completely convert to reusable bags?

P.S.  Now I have added Judi Krew’s bags to my selection of prizes for playing and posting to the Touch-Nature Game! 

Come to my reception Friday, June 27th, for the first drawing.  The top winner will get an original Emily Vigil painting. Other prizes include cards, gift certificates to Deli Ohio (where they make delicious food using locally grown ingredients) and Judi Krew “Acme Annie” bags.  Although the painting prize will only be offered once, I will be continuing the other prizes all year long with a drawing each month.  

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Challenge #3 complete!                                                                           Five reasons I'm glad I installed an aerator on my kitchen faucet

6/17/2014

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1.     It was really, really easy!  My husband was in the process of telling me to make sure that I keep the package, because I may want to return it, because he thought it had the wrong type of fitting….  No longer did he start to tell me this, than I’d already had it installed in the sink.

2.     It will help me conserve our family’s water use.  Most models conserve between 30% to 50% of the water at that faucet. 

3.     It allows me to easily toggle between high and low-flow water. In fact, with my sink, I can now use my retractable sprayer for full-pressure water, but just exactly when I need it. Before I installed this gadget, I hated using the sprayer because the regular water had to be fully turned on whenever I wasn’t actively shooting the sprayer (so it would often get wasted).

4.  The aerator designed to swivel around so that now I can easily switch water flow from my washing sink to my rinsing sink.

5.  It was really cheap!  It only set me back about $13 dollars.  The simple models can cost as little as $5.

 P.S.  O.K. So this particular swivel/toggle model isn’t as attractive to look at as some high end sink faucets, however, now I can have total control of my dish washing water use.  What could be more beautiful than that?  


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Reverberations: From my local watershed to Our Blue Planet

6/11/2014

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A few days ago,my two little girls were captivated by an extraordinary man with a gentle demeanor and a twinkle in his eye.  This person was renowned underwater photographer Ernest H. Brooks II.  As the girls and I watched a slideshow of his photographs of seals, kelp forests, and light shining through ocean depths, we listened to him relate the incredible importance of taking care of "Our Blue Planet".  His words and his images put this intense feeling into simple, understandable terms. No wonder the seals are drawn to him. 

This week, I was also moved by conversation with artist Dorothy Kerper Monnelly. She shares her intimate familiarity with the seasons of the salt marsh through her photographs, shot with a large format camera. I purchased her book, For My Daughters, which couples her nature photographs with the poetry of her mother, Dorothy Darling Kerper.  I am looking forward to pondering these  poems and images in the coming weeks.

Both artists' work is presented in the exhibit Fragile Waters, on display in the main gallery at Massillon Museum.  Brooks's and Monnelly's photographs are woven into the flow of the exhibit alongside work by Ansel Adams.  The exhibit is curated by Jeanne Falk Adams and is organized by Photokunst. 

The educational display which complements the main gallery exhibit in Massillon Museum focuses on watersheds. This exhibit was a great source for me to accomplish this week's touch-nature challenge:  "Read about the history of your local watershed".  I learned about how watersheds nest within one another.   I examined the intricate maps of our watershed, prepared for the museum exhibit by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District.  By comparing maps on display, I was able to find exactly where our family lives, where the creek close to our home flows into the Sandy River, and where the water goes from there. 

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Detail of one of the maps in the educational exhibit, created by Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District

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I even got to help Heather Haden, Massillon Museum’s Education Coordinator, initiate the interactive EnviroScape for the first time at the Museum.  Heather creates “rain” with her spray bottle, which in turn mobilizes several types of pollutants (represented by colored liquid) to enter streams and rivers. This interactive model demonstrates how different pollutants enter the water supply.  The EnviroScape is on loan to Massillon Museum from Stark Parks. 
Although as Event Coordinator I don’t generally have the opportunity to contribute to our exhibits, I was fortunate to be invited to write a text panel about the history of the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District. The text panel accompanies historic photographs of dam construction from the 1930s, and it is located in the 2nd floor gallery of the Massillon Museum.

So I guess I’d done my homework for this card before I drew it.  The research for that text panel, along with viewing the lower level education displays have helped me just begin to understand the interactive complexity of how water moves through the land we inhabit. 

I’ll leave you with a detail from a recent painting, a poem, and some sounds I recorded while learning about the watershed around my home.   
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detail, Reverberations, Oil on Canvas, 2014
Next week's challenge: "Install a low flow filter in one faucet in your home."
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    Emily Vigil reflects upon painting, nature, and her young family


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  • Bio
  • Portfolio
    • Current Artwork
    • Little Art Gallery Show
    • Cultivating Place
    • Lost Landscapes
    • Archive >
      • Facing Nature, Facing Paint
      • Contained
      • Third Home
      • Windows are Passageways
      • Ambiente
      • Momentary Haven
    • Community-based Projects