Greetings, Internet! You may have noticed it’s been awhile. I sure have a lot to catch you up to speed on!
My last blog post was right before traveling with a friend to Japan in Jan – Feb 2015. We spent 8 days in Tokyo and 5 in Osaka, with day-trips to Kyoto & Nagoya. I would love to share some photos/art inspired by the trip with you!
I have traveled to 4 other countries outside my home of the US – Canada, UK, Italy & France – all with distinct cultures, but Japan was something more to me. I got the chance to experience a culture that has impacted me artistically from a young age, every bit as much as ‘classical art’ from Europe. Our hosts were wonderful, and we were helped along the way by several people, both Japanese and other foreigners. We went to the base of the Skytree, the world’s second-largest building, got to visit an onsen (public bathhouse) with a local, rode bullet trains, visited several museums and sacred sites…we were even able to meet up with a college classmate of mine who has been living & working in Japan & had the pleasure of spending the day with her showing us around (thanks again, Annastasia!). It was an unforgettable trip that I feel I grew a lot from, and I hope to return one day.
You may remember that I was living in SoCal for a little over 1.5 years. After the trip to Japan, I moved back to Portland, OR where I had first found myself on the west coast, fresh out of college and hungry to tackle the “real world”. I’ve spent the past 2 years since my last update doing just that, with varying levels of struggle and success. There are nights I miss downtown Long Beach, going to art shows, spending slow days next to the ocean, but most of my support network remained north in Oregon, so I returned here to start over again. Much has happened in 2 years, some bad, some good. Someone very close to me passed away, and it took me a long time to start coming to terms with that. But soon I started meeting other creatives in Portland through my eventual-employer, which has been very inspiring. Most creative folks I’ve been in touch with over the past few years have largely migrated to Instagram as a platform to share their art, and that’s what happened to me as well. It has been a goal of mine to post frequent art-related updates via IG and I feel it’s been going really well, slowly building momentum – leading me into my next phase of development, finding a platform to sell original art & prints. But I longed to get back into blogging as well, as a way to get my thoughts and priorities straightened out as I gathered life experience and continue to figure out my path.
If you are a follower of this blog from years past, thank you for coming back to read this post. If you are new to my art and blog – thank you all the same for reading! I look forward to sharing my artistic journey with you.
I’ll be back again really soon, promise! 🙂
– JT
Julia Trimboli 