A WORK OF LOVE

The day our first project was due in the freshman interior design class in college, I sat next to a thin-framed girl with brown hair, blue eyes coated with long, thick eyelashes, and porcelain skin. Nervously, I lifted my vellum drawings mounted on cardboard onto the top of the drafting desk and surveyed my finished project. We had been working on a small, hand-drawn apartment project, and I thought mine was pretty good...until I saw hers. Who puts details as small as candles in their floor plans? my 19-year-old self thought.

Apparently, Meredith (nicknamed Mere) does. After I got over my jealously of her attention to detail, Mere and I would talk every once in a while during class whenever we would sit next to one another. Unfortunately, we didn't truly get to know one another until our junior year. She is my shopping buddy, art enthusiast, and someone-to-whine to friend, to say the least. At the beginning of this blog, I couldn't help but base a post off of one of our experiences together.

Since college, Mere spent months backpacking in Europe, moved to Florida, found a roommate to share rent with, and then married a photographer named Jeremiah, who also happened to be her roommate's brother. Isn't that so funny how things work out??

Besides her work as an illustrator and artist, Mere was taught the ins and outs photography by Jeremiah, and they are now the husband and wife photography team of Chic Shot Studio in Gainesville, Florida. This duo is good, to say the least. When they sent me the shots of my bridal portraits and our wedding, I couldn't stop staring.

While they were still dating, Mere came up with such a loving gesture for Jeremiah's birthday gift: she would paint a section of the graffiti wall on 34th Street in Gainesville with an image of a little girl named Elba (photographed by Jeremiah while he was traveling in Guatemala), knowing that her artwork would be painted over soon. The story of the lack of water in Guatemala is heartbreaking, but it definitely opens my eyes to how lucky we are to have the things we take for granted, such as clean, running water.

When I went to visit Mere and Jeremiah in Florida, the wall had already been painted over with sorority symbols, but that's the nature of the wall; it's ever-changing. Fortunately, Jeremiah captured the process, so Mere's work of love will always be remembered.

Every time I remember Mere's wall painting, I think of her love, and I can't help but be reminded of how lucky I am to have the small things in life that I often overlook.