In order to get my art degree, we have to either get an internship or take a travel class. I decided, since I had no idea where to go for an internship around here, to go ahead with the travel class. Luckily, a travel class was offered that only cost $200 to go, so I jumped on it! Turns out, we were going to Salt Lake City, UT. A place I have been to over a million times throughout my 23 years of life. Last week we embarked on our "journey". There were 8 other girls in the class, all art majors of course. We had to meet on campus at 6am to catch our ride Thursday morning (February 11). We all piled in the big red van and headed out around 6:30.
The next 3 to 4 hours were deathly silent. At first I was amazed at how quiet 9 girls could be. It was never like that when I lived with girls as a single student! Then I felt a little sad, since I am a social kind of person, all this quietness was difficult. I made a few jokes and comments hoping to arouse some kind of conversation, but nothing happened. The only conversation in the van was between our teacher, Bro. Griffin, and another teacher Sis. Jimison. I wished I had sat closer to the front so I could be included in some kind of social interaction.
Our first stop was... a rest stop. But no worries, the second stop was better. We had thought about going out to the Golden Spike museum (which is clear out in the middle of nowhere). But no one was interested, so we passed that and continued on towards the outer skirts of... nowhere. Our next stop, which was called The Spiral Jetty, was long, and violently bumpy journey. Yes... violent. It was basically an offroad excursion to get to the Spiral Jetty. The Spiral Jetty is located on the North West edge of the Salt Lake ( I think). There were tons of jagged volcanic rocks, melted snow and slush, and plenty of mud along this road. Luckily, this wild ride started waking these girls up so there was some TALKING finally! We arrived at the Spiral Jetty around 10:30 or 11 am. The Spiral Jetty is an earthwork made up of volcanic rocks that were arranged in a spiral shape by Robert Smithson in 1970. It's a 1500-foot long, 15-foot wide counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake which is only visible when the level of the Great Salt Lake falls below an elevation of 4,197.8 feet. The weather was overcast, but because of the time of the year it was accessable and not underwater. So, I led the group and we hiked down to the Jetty where we followed the rocky path to the end of the spiral. It was pretty cool! It was a little cold out there, but we got a whole bunch of pictures!
This isn't really my pic. I just put it on so you could see it better.
These next ones are mine though...
Below is of course, Bro. Griffin. He's glaring at me... what a character. 
A little something someone left behind for us to find!
After getting our frozen bodies back into the mud caked BYUI van, we blazed the trail back to the highway entrance. A couple hours later we arrived in Salt Lake City. When we got there, we stopped for lunch at some kind of downtown marketplace where we got sandwiches and pasta. The girls were FINALLY warming up to each other and more conversation took place. I was thrilled! After lunch, we walked next door to a pastry shop and each bought a little something. I ended up getting this huge chocolate dipped strawberry! This thing was about the size of my palm! SOOO good! After that, we checked into our hotel. We stayed at a Howard Johnson's hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. We could just see the SLC Temple from our hotel, and we were just down the street from the Gateway Mall. The hotel was a little sketchy, and not the nicest. But I ended up with three other girls in my room who were all amazingly fun! How lucky is that? It was like having roomates again (which I realized I sort of missed since I've gotten married). It was definately nice to have "girl talk" again.
The view from our hotel- I LOVE IT
We checked into the hotel, and then we squished back into our still very muddy van to go to the Church History Museum. I was looking forward to going here since it had been SO long since I've gone. We got a personal tour down to the basement where NO one gets to see. This girl (who actually use to be a BYUI student) gave us a tour of all the paintings they had stored down there. It was neat to see how they've been storing all these paintings and keeping them nice. They also had a few random things stored down there most people don't see. There was a statue of Angel Moroni made in Africa. I guess the people there had seen a Book of Mormon, and someone made a statue of the Angel that is pictured on the front. Cool! After our personal tour, we all had about 45 minutes to look around the museum. I went alone and just looked at all the things there. I wished we had more time because I didn't get to read about all the exhibits like I wanted to. Previous to the trip, we were assigned a topic to write a 2-3 page essay about. I chose to write about Avard Fairbanks, a famous LDS sculptor. Much of his work is found in SLC including temple square, this museum, and many temples and church buildings. While wandering around, I saw one of his sculptures of Brigham Young. Loved it!
Tabernacle!
After touring the museum, we walked through temple square (briefly) and went to the conference center and got a personal tour there. There were many original works done by Arnold Frieberg, who created many of the artworks you see in the BOM. On this same floor were tons of artwork done by many LDS people all over the world. My favorite was a sculpture of the tree of life.
Once we left the conference center, we went back to the hotel, cleaned up a bit, and went to dinner. Sis. Jimison was raving about this restaurant called The Lamb Grill Cafe. They had some interesting dishes of many variety. I struggled to decide what to get since I'm a picky eater anyway! I ended up with a blackened cajun chicken salad. It came with this really gross vinagrette on the side (in which I asked for ranch since that's all I could handle!). Some girls got salmon, pork chops, hot cocoa, and calamari (which was WAY good), and some incredibly dry bread. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this restaurant to anyone else, but it was fun and different! After dinner we had free time. We all split up into groups at the Gateway Mall and did some window shopping. I didn't especially enjoy this as much since I was completely exhausted and poor. That night we girls laughed and talked late into the night... ahhh girl talk.
The next morning we grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and once again jumped into the van, this time it was clean since Bro. Griffin took it in to get cleaned the night before. We drove down to Provo where we went to the Springville Art Museum and BYU Art Museum. I absolutely LOVED the Springville museum. The museum was exhibiting the John H. Schaeffer Collection of Victorian and European Art. I took some pictures of the ones I enjoyed the most. I apologize if there is any nudity, but look at it in an artistic way! There are two sculptures I found by Avard Fairbanks, so I just HAD to take a picture! There was also work done by his father, brother, and son at this exhibit. It means so much more when you know something about the artist!
The statues are by Avard Fairbanks 1972
The one above is done by Avard Fairbank's Father!
This next painting is called "A French Peasant" by Jane Freeman in 1942. I liked it because when you look at it from far away you don't notice all the colors that are integrated into the picture. Up close there are very intense reds, blues, and yellows.
This Victorian painting is called : Till Death Do Us Part. It's by Edmond Blair Leighton. I liked it because of the perfectness, the strong tension in the picture, and the details. It pictures a young submissive woman who was just married to an older man. On the left is the woman's lover. Back in the time many people married for social favor and convenience. This picture almost looks like a funeral. You can't see it from the picture, but when you look up close at her dress, it looks like it's really made of silk. It's amazing! 
This next one is a painting of Eve- I didn't catch who it was by or when. But I thought it was an interesting idea of portraying her in this way. 
Another Avard FAIRBANKS statue above
This last statue is of Avard Fairbanks and it was done by his son, Justin.
BYU museum had four different exhibits: The First 100 Years: Collecting Art at BYU, Mirror, Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self, Types and Shadows: Intimations of Divinity, and American Dreams. I didn't see as many enjoyable artworks as I did at the Springville. But there were a couple in the First 100 years and American Dreams that I did enjoy. Pictures weren't allowed, so I didn't get to take any pics. While we were in Provo, we stopped at an antique store.... I don't know why. But there were alot of random things there, including this authentic mummified head!
After we finished up in Provo, we went to the home of a friend of Sis. Jimison and Bro. Griffin. She use to be a Ricks college student and is now an accomplished artist. We were able to visit her home and see what a "real" art studio looked like. She was a really nice lady. I believe her name was Cassandra Barney. Her and her husband are both artists. Their work spaces were separate and for good reason! They were completely different in organization. Cass's artwork is unique. In fact she was in the process of finishing up a painting when we had gotten there, so it was cool to see some process. One thing I enjoyed about Cass is that she included her entire family into her work. She'd let her kids come in and work on their own art projects. It's neat to see a mom still being a mom and working and including her kids in what she does. She's so funny, talented, energetic, stylish, and fun! She's quite the people person for an artist. 
Here's her website: http://cassandrabarney.com/
I also included a couple youtube videos of her. She told us that she started getting sick recently, and her doctor told her she was developing a reaction to the liquin for her paintings (liquin thins out oil paint and makes it dry faster!) Now she has to use something else... poor girl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7_7_MI2nAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTM33ZbWf84
After that, we went back to the hotel, and had dinner. After dinner, about 5 or 6 of us went and saw AVATAR in 3D! Unfortunately the seats were assigned, so we weren't able to sit next to each other during the movie. That was lame. BUT the movie was awesome!! I really enjoyed it. Malone was jealous he wasn't there to watch it too.
Saturday morning we got up early and went to the Joseph Smith building where we watched the Joseph Smith movie! We thoroughly enjoyed that. Afterwards we walked back to the van, unfortunately it was POURING rain outside, and the van was parked like 4 blocks away. So about halfway we found shelter in this really cool Catholic Cathedral built in 1909. It's the only U.S. cathedral built under patronage of Mary Magdalene. I've never been in a cathedral before! It was beautiful. I didn't take pics of that either... so here is a pic I found online and the website. On the website you can get a 360 degree view of the inside of the building.
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https://saltlakecathedral.org/panorama/Madeleine_swf.html
After we piled back into the van, we went to the University of Utah's art museum. They had alot of historical and foreign objects, art, and sculptures. I didn't enjoy this museum at all actually. It may have been because I was completely exhausted by this point. Here were a couple highlights.
We left the university around 1pm. We then stopped for lunch and headed home! We arrived home at about 5pm. It was a good trip! It took a couple days to recover from lack of sleep. I haven't stayed up that late talking in a REALLY long time!
Later after I got home, Malone and I enjoyed spending time together for Valentines Day. We did some shopping, grabbed some pizzas and watched Indiana Jones all night on our air mattress we set up in the living room. It was so nice to not worry about homework for a few days and finally spend time with Malone Saturday and all day Sunday. Love him! I gave him a card that looked like it was created by a 5 year old that says, You give me goosebumps when your hug touches me!" lol. I thought it was cute. Happy Valentines day!
