today i rubbed shoulders with the irish ambassador to the united states and met a roisin (“ray-SHEEN”) fitzpatrick.

there’s a tech group in dc called hacDC; you can pay something like $50 a month to be a member and get access to their workspace whenever you wish, or if you’re a non-member you can show up whenever the workspace is free. i haven’t been there, but it’s something i want to check out one of these days.

anyway, i lurk on one or two of their email lists, and today i found out that one of the members lives in germany now, but he said how an art exhibit of his was going to be on display at this gallery show in rockville. i didn’t think much about it until he mentioned how usually at art gallery show openings there’s free snacks, and i’m all about free snacks. so, i checked it out online and decided to go. why not? it was free, supposed to be snacks and wine, and it could be neat and i didn’t have any other plans.

the show was about the effects of light as art. there were 3 main exhibits: the guy from hacDC had a blue laser reflected through mirrors that caused it to create patterns on the wall. i’m not sure if the wall was painted with a kind of glow-in-the-dark paint or if it was just eye-trickery, but when they turned down the lights in the room you could see a green afterimage of the patterns remain on the wall for a split-second. another exhibit was photos of refracted light spectrums, and the primary exhibit was artwork by roisin fitzpatrick where she had hand-sewn these jewel-type objects to canvas in different patterns. not my specific cup of tea, but still pretty neat to look at. there was one piece called “meteor” that she had that i really liked, though, except it was something like $5000 to purchase. 😛

the show wasn’t going to start until 7 and i had arrived around 5:30, so i walked around for a bit and grabbed dinner at a noodles & company around the corner and waited. just before 7 i went up to the show – there was a band there setting up and a few people milling about, so i checked out the artwork and wandered around. there was also an art studio space across the hall that was also having some sort of open-house with wine and cheese and other finger-foods, and different little shops open and selling different crafts. i ended up having some wine and snacks and i also found a christmas present for my grandparents there, and now i’m almost all done with my christmas shopping. the show description also said how there’d be a “friendly robot” greeting people – turned out it was a hacked roomba, but it wasn’t so friendly as apparently they were having trouble getting it going and i guess they gave up on it.

the band eventually started playing, and they were (mostly) good. two girls, one guy. they pretty much played “gypsy jazz” type music with one girl on the guitar (good), the guy beatboxing and playing the spoons (very good), and one girl doing backing vocals (good)… and also playing a moog synthesizer (WTF). honestly, i say that they were “(mostly) good” because if they just got rid of the moog synthesizer it would have been excellent, but it REALLY did not fit in. the guy was very talented and would also play the guitar and accompany himself by beatboxing, and gave a beatbox demonstration where he beatboxed funk, jazz, go-go, and bossa nova music, and did his own song and story about growing up and learning how to beatbox and how his mom introduced him to the music of doug e fresh.

when i introduced myself to roisin to ask her a few questions about her artwork she said “nice surname!”, haha. didn’t get a chance to meet the ambassador, though. oh well. when i googled her when i got home i found another roisin fitzpatrick who is pretty damn cute. wonder if she’s still interning in dc? 😛 speaking of cute girls, there were a few there (says glenn the art critic).

anyway, that’s one country i really need to visit. festive asked me recently if i could travel anywhere, where would i want to go, and i said how i’ve pretty much been everywhere i really wanted to go. but, duh, silly me to forget about ireland what with me being irish and all. 😛