Two weeks ago, Sherif and I entered some of our photography at the 4th Annual Engineering and Science Art Fair in Northwestern University. We entered three closeup flower pictures and a photo of organic salad ingredients that Sherif actually guest posted about on this blog in The Zesty Trio post. One of the categories at the art fair was called “Food for Thought.” The art piece that won was ours – the one of the salad! Sherif appropriately gave it the title “Organic.” The photo was a collaborative effort indeed – I styled the vegetables, and Sherif took the shot!

We were both excited that we won in this category – it’s encouraging and we can’t wait to enter in many art fairs in the future, God willing!

The day of the art fair was a gorgeous day – 72 degrees with a light breeze and abundant sunshine! Here are some photos we took at the event:

There were some really impressive monochromatic drawings there – this one of Jennifer Aniston was one of my favorites:

This oil painting, titled “Blue”, won first place in the 2-D category! It looked to me like an abstract three tone impression of earth and sky. Sherif’s shirt matched it well (but he’s actually holding on to it because the wind was about to knock over the easel!)

Although the weather was great, the little bit of wind kept knocking over some of the easels… and was making my hair fly in various directions: hence, the constant hand-to-the-hair move to smooth it back, haha:

Here’s Sherif standing between three of our four submissions – two tulips to the right and the salad to the left:

Since the art fair was hosted by the engineering department, there was a separate category for “scientific/research art,” such as the collage of 4×6 prints below, which had enlarged pictures of various microscopic things…

Attendees of the fair were given a few slips of paper and had the chance to vote for their favorite piece within each category. Their votes were then tallied and that’s how the winners were determined. The picture below is of Nada, a sweet young lady (an NU MFA graduate student) we met at the fair. She heard us speaking Arabic and came up to us asking if we were Egyptian – what are the chances!?

This piece below was one of my favorites in the 3-D category. The hand-painted flower petals are actually made out of coffee filters! (And the clay pot was handmade as well.) Amazing!

Sunny day = smiling husband.

Here are all our photography submissions (except the one on the left, which is a monochromatic charcoal piece that won second place in the 2-D category):

And finally, here’s a picture of me posing next to our winning salad print!

Here are the winning pieces in all the different categories. Some of them are really impressive. It was such a great experience!