ICEHOTEL,Sweden2006-07.Photo Big Ben Productions.

Imagine a river in Sweden that freezes every year and is excavated in ice to be carved, engineered, sculpted and constructed into a temporal ICE HOTEL. Now imagine that you get to go to said hotel during the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. Now realize you are in a one of kind structure that when Spring arrives will melt back down to water. This is my Bucket List entry number one. The last flight leaves this Saturday and sadly this year I will not be on it, but one year I will.

The dropping of the temperature to several degrees below zero in Jukkasjärvi marks the start of an ephemeral art endeavour.

Using only frozen water form the Torne River, artists from all over the world gather in this small Swedish village, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, to create an exclusive art exhibition: ICEHOTEL.

The art is created with imagination and hard work, only to melt away under the unforgiving rays of the sun come springtime. All that remains are our impressions, our memories - and photographs. - ICE HOTEL SITE

I realize that I currently sleep with an electric blanket (one of 4), a sweatshirt and an electric heater by my side (I am a Puerto Rican living in the Northeast after all) but for this experience I would certainly sacrifice. When you plan a trip to visit and stay in the Ice Hotel you can choose between how many nights you would like a 'COLD' accommodation or a warm one. It seems the popular thing to do is one night cold and the others warm. The cold rooms range in style and type, from more grandiose Art/Deluxe Suites to simpler snow rooms.

To sleep in a room made of ice and snow is a surreal experience and a memory for life. You sleep in thermal sleeping bags on a special bed built of snow and ice, on reindeer skins. You are awakened in the morning with a cup of hot lingonberry juice at your bedside. Breakfast buffet, winter overall, boots, mittens, morning sauna and towels included.

Photo by Neringafoto of Ice hotel. Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. Artist/s: AnnaSofia Mååg Suite: Rest in the Nest

Ok so TELL me please ONE mega WISH-List from your BUCket list!! Share I want to know!!

-Ciao Amarettogirl

Unearthed envelope of drawings by Gregg Emerydetail of stack of illos by GE

So while my hub (fellow artist and teacher Gregg Emery) and I have been on Spring Break he unearthed a couple of things from the deepest bowels of the garage (imagine a garage that two artist employ). He had been stretching some new canvases when he stumbled across a large brown envelope that housed a project he did back when he was in the 9th grade.

Mind you we currently teach high-school and we have just assigned a sixty-second digi artistic-animation project to our advanced portfolio development class made up of 10, 11 and 12th graders.

details of 24 yr. old Animation by Gregg Emery

In the past I have made some short test runs of my own animations inspired by artist William Kentridge, who primarily illustrates a single drawing that he animates by erasing and redrawing on the same page. You can see samples of his work on Youtube because much of how Kentridge's work is displayed, is in moving projection form. However, even with our love of Kentridge and my work on animation I had never known that in my husband's past lurked this behemoth of an animation memory.

Today, using programs like IMovie on the Mac or MovieMaker on a PC (and countless other free movie programs) it has become very simple to drop hundreds of photos into a track and speed them up. Now, things like transitions and animated titles often come in prepackaged cookie-cutter forms.

Yet back in the North Country 24 yrs. ago there were no digital cameras, no accessible movie making programs and definitely no prepackaged ways of making animated titles.

hand drawn animated title by Gregg Emery

So here lies my husbands ninth grade self-assigned animation project in which he hand illustrated every single sec of movement and photographed each new page. His art teacher at the time assisted with driving the roll of painstakingly shot 8mm film to get developed. Needless to say the film never returned developed.

There had been something mysteriously wrong with either the development or the film itself.

Can you imagine the heartbreak that caused a young man who had put in that many hours of self-assigned work?? In the end this entire project never saw the light of day. It was designated into an envelope that was to be moved around and spontaneously unearthed 24 yrs. later.

opening scenes by Gregg Emery

So for my last days of Spring Break, my project is to do some artistic CPR and resurrect this amazing piece of art work from the land of the forgotten.

my sequencing notes

We have already reordered all the sequencing. Since it is so old, it was often difficult for my husband to remember what many of his intentions in specific areas were.

I have also written out his overall story arc vision and we discussed where I might breathe some 'Marisol' life into aspects of the story to boost his overall narrative.

Thankfully, my husband loved all my proposed additions (not changes) and I'm starting today!