Earliest Memories

I was looking for writing exercises to practice with while I'm between projects (I could do a rewrite of my latest, "Father Fox", but I need to think some more about what I really want the story to be about) and I came across a website called Earliest Memory where people have posted their earliest memory in a couple of sentences. For some reason my breath catches when I read these. They are succinct, raw, and very real. It also takes me back to when I wrote about my earliest memory a couple of years ago:

"A pink room (gray magenta). Panic. My little brother has fallen again. He’s small, small enough so he can’t walk, small enough so that his hair is still wispy golden white. He’s been cut on the head and they need to give him stitches. We were visiting a museum. Or a planetarium. Or an aquarium."

I wrote that slightly over two years ago. I would have been two months into my first year of college. It just shows that even though I didn't really feel it as much then, I knew that I wanted to write and I did it on my own. I tried to get into a creative writing class the next semester, but they filled up too fast. I think it was good that I didn't. There was a gradual build up over the next year and a half of me realizing exactly how much writing meant to me and that I wanted to make it part of my career. This desire is what gave me the confidence to pull through the rough patches of my first semester in narrative writing. I know what I want and I know what I have to do to get there. Constant reading, constant writing, and constant thought.

Now if only I knew exactly what I wanted out of "Father Fox".

Creeper of the Year

Creepers are everywhere, guys. Some are easy to spot: they lack any social niceties whatsoever and so get hitched with the nickname "Creepy Joe" or "Creepy Tom". The worst, however, are the ones who manage to come of as charming to the otherwise unaware. They permeate society and try to make their brand of creepiness acceptable.

And so, I award Joe Francis, the entrepreneur behind the Girls Gone Wild videos who commercials haunt my viewings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report with Creeper of the Year. While I certainly protect his first amendment right to videotape girls with low self-esteem, he is also misogynistic, completely unstable, and most likely a rapist. It also doesn't help that he made a website for himself in order to give himself a new family friendly image. His take on the situation? "It seems that my chief sins have been 1) having way too much fun and 2) having discovered a way to make money doing it." It also features a FAQ section where he is asked questions like, "Would you consider yourself the new Hugh Hefner?"

An extremely interesting and perverse article on the matter here: "Joe Francis: 'Baby, Give Me a Kiss'" by Claire Hoffman of the LA Times.

Coming in a ridiculously close second? A blog post calling itself a parable by the name of "Just Love on Her" and its myriad of comments. *Shudders*

Horizon

They whipped down the I-88 at 80 miles per hour. The sky out the dusty window was a brilliant blue and clouds frothed over the sun down to the horizon.
“God,” Sophie said, “the sky is so beautiful. In flat places like this, the land has its own sparse beauty, but because of its simplicity the sky becomes the interest. In mountainous places the land is the interest.”
“Yeah, I miss it,” Vanessa said.
They listened to a play list Sophie had made for the five-hour journey to see Maddi. They were relaxed because at the moment Wilco was softly playing so they could still talk to each other.
“I’m not worried about being caught speeding,” Sophie said. “Because where do the cops hide? We could see them a million miles away its so flat. They hide in the middle between the two lanes. And sometimes behind bridges but not really because there isn’t often a road bit they can pull off on.”
“I’m not worried about being caught speeding because you’re the one driving,” Vanessa grinned.
Sophie scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue but her eyes never left the road. Vanessa took out her knitting. She only knew how to knit not to purl but she hadn’t dropped a stitch yet. It had taken Sophie an hour to teach her how to knit the night before because her fingers weren’t used to twisting and turning yarn. They had awkwardly stumbled over each pull until the coarse acrylic yarn had formed uneven ugly stitches. Now her movement wasn’t fluid, but it wasn’t confused yanks either.
“I want to make a scarf,” Vanessa said.
“Why? You’ll never use it.”
“I can use it when I visit in during Christmas.”
“True.”
Vanessa had left. Now she inhabited bleak highways littered with cars and outlet stores. In the distance were craggy blue mountains speckled with snow. Their beauty was overwhelmed by the smell of gas, smoke, and rotting lettuce. Sophie never wanted to go back there. There was too much filth. But she remembered one sunset on the Pacific that had looked like Turner painting. The sun had scattered yellow light off the ocean and there had been a hazy purple pier that felt miles away. They had been ankle deep in wet sand and for a moment the only noise was the soft rock of waves and the only smell had been salt. She hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath until a car alarm suddenly screamed in the distance and she had cried out in surprise. They had slumped in the sand to watch the last glow of the sun disappear over the horizon while high-pitched shrieks sounded into the night.

One of my final personal essays for Rhetoric 243. The painting above is one I just did this past summer of the Merritt Prairie for my mother of a picture she took. Putting together the writing portfolio is literally the last thing I have to do . . . at this point I'm more revising enough to get an okay grade. It'll all right if I get a B in that class because I'm pretty sure I have A's in everything else. I got my essay on Faulkner's "Barn Burning", Tin Ore Man (last punny title!) back and I got an A-. Plus the final for that class was ridiculously easy. I just hope I'm not stuck here tomorrow because of this horrid winter storm.

Weird moment last night: Vivian and I were waiting with Christine for her train when Christine called her parents because the train was really delayed. She started speaking to them in Chinese. Then, Vivian's mother called and she started speaking on her phone in Spanish. I suddenly felt extremely white. The only thing I could do if my parents called would be to speak in a British accent and say the words "loo"and "lift". Oh well. At least I know what Marmite is!

Also, I don't really speed, Mom. I swear.

listening to: Feist--1234

Almost Done

This is the holiday card I made for my mother. It was pretty simple, actually. I just traced out a design in pencil (I traced the text from the computer screen) and blocked it out with a watercolor mask (basically a waxy liquid that dries and protects the paper from watercolors when you're doing broad washes or something), did some atmospheric junk in the background, erased the mask, and voila! Simple and pretty enough to print out easily. A good card for people who like the color blue and peace.

So. I have my one final tomorrow afternoon and then I've got to revise four personal essays before too late on Saturday and then I'm done for another semester. I've still got loads of cleaning to do, but I've been sick with a horrid cold for the past couple of days and since most of my friends are too busy studying for their finals, completing papers, or leaving campus to hang out with me, I've been lolling around in bed reading and watching Miyazaki movies that I've downloaded for free from Veoh. They're all in Japanese (I prefer it to the horrid large names they usually hire to voice the Miyazaki movies in English) so that and lonely bedridden-ness have me muttering to myself in Japanese occasionally. It's a little weird and I'm looking forward to going home on Sunday and the human interaction that will follow.

Memories of the 7th Grade

Oh Robert Jordan. I stopped reading this series in the 8th grade after they made Egwene head Aes Sedai (that was the breaking point--she was severely unqualified), but I do remember the good lunchtime conversations in the 7th grade about it. It was next step up the fantasy maturity ladder after Redwall, after all. It's funny to look back on the days of my youth (youth! I'm 20!) when I read fantasy all the time. I was also really into The Mists of Avalon. I then went through a period where I only read high literature (i.e. Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Woolf, Garcia Marquez) but I have recently been looking back at the genre. I like to think that in every genre, there is some great, some mediocre, and some bad. I do still have roots in Fantasy. I love the work of Miyazaki, I read folk tales and religious mythology, I'm exploring graphic novels, and texts like Le Petit Prince hold a special place in my heart. I (obviously) also love Harry Potter, Narnia, and His Dark Materials. I think that by accepting fantasy again in my life I have matured because I am opening myself to all sorts of literature that I might have turned my nose up at before.

However, I would classify Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time as bad fantasy. It suffers from the same thing that a lot of fantasy books suffer from: lack of creativity, lack of depth, lack of character development, lack of originality. I suppose on some level it works as an escapist text, but I have trouble escaping into such a trite world where I am annoyed with all of the characters. At any rate, Robert Jordan died earlier this year and it looked like his ludicrously long fantasy series would remain unfinished. Hilariously enough, his wife Harriet decided to choose another fantasy author to finish the work in Jordan's stead. Evidently he's got notes and such compiled for what he planned for the remainder of his bloated fiction. Read the ridiculous interview with the luck author here: Memory of Light Interview.

Will I read it? Probably not as mostly all I remember from the series is that they called people "woolheads" as an insult, the main character Rand winds up in a threesome, and there was some female character (Selene? Something to do with the moon, I think) that all my friends who had read more than me convinced me was a man in drag. This totally brings me back to when I was ten and Maddi and I made little felt tunics and clay swords and shields for rodent Beanie Babies and named them after Redwall characters. Good times.

The Golden Compass

So I went to see The Golden Compass tonight. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I thought that it was generally quite well cast, but that when writing the screenplay the screenwriters forgot something fairly important: the book is third person close to Lyra the whole time. The first one, anyway. The second book introduces Will, but we really aren't there yet so never mind. Anyway, the scenes without Lyra, which made the movie third person omniscient, felt awkward to me, espcially seeing as they were made up, not in the book, and therefore assumptions. It also didn't help that characters would say things that sounded very awkward but were said to let the viewer know what was going on. One especially artless piece of dialog required Lyra to cry upon being rescued by the Gyptians: "You're Ma Costa! You're Billy's mum!" as though she was only just meeting the woman when they obviously had known each other for some time. I would have been much easier for her to cry "Ma Costa!" in delight and have someone say something later about her being Billy's mum. At any rate, there were several instances of this that just stuck out horribly.

Another problem I had was the fleeting introduction of characters and their sudden attachment to Lyra, and the almost cartoony vilification of the Magisterium (evidently it is a technical ecclesiastical term in the Roman Catholic Church referring to the teaching authority of the church). I mean, that was certainly there in the books, but not to this point of ludicrousness. It actually all reminded me a lot of Ivan's The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, but to the extreme. The "church people" in the movie were barely under the pretense that they were doing it for the good of humanity. In order to make it more digestible, they changed the feeling of the Magisterium to that of a "big brother" a la Orwell's 1984, or to Stalinist Soviet Union. It felt like a bit of a cop out to me, actually.

Along with this, I won't spoil anything, but they completely cut the last bit of the book out. I suppose they wanted to end on a happy note or something, but without the ending Lord Asriel's character was flat as cardboard. I also think that the ending in the book is a lot more intriguing and would be much more apt to have me come back for more.



Okay, that was the ugly. Now for the good. I thought the girl who played Lyra was pretty much spot on. They have a great, very cool character in Lyra and they didn't let it go to waste. Lyra was well developed, as was Mrs. Coulter and Iorek. Everyone else basically gets their five minutes. Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about the good, so I'll say that Iorek was completely kick ass. He made me want to have an armored bear of my very own. He's voiced by Ian McKellen so I was getting flashes of Gandalf all over the place. There was one bit where Lyra was crossing a skinny ice bridge and he was behind her and I kept expecting him to go "Fly you fool!" Man, that would have been cool. The fight scenes were also really cool and even portions caused Christine to duck behind her coat though there was literally no blood. She's just a pansy. It was oddly beautiful actually, because when the person died, their daemon would vaporize in a puff of glittering gold. Kelly and I both agreed that Lyra had adorable outfits throughout. I coveted a little knitted bonnet hat she wore in Norway, just in a different color.

Anyway, it was a bit clunky, but overall fairly entertaining. I'm just really picky and it really just didn't blow me away like I'd hoped (but didn't actually think) that it would. I think I was better able to understand and see depth in things because I'd read the books, too. I think they could have done a less ham fisted and artless exploration of the humanistic ideas that are inherent in the books. It also occurs to me that the people who are so frightened of this movie and the books and who wish to censor it are acting exactly how Pullman accuses the Church of acting in His Dark Materials. Like I've said before, if you can't read Pullman without giving up your faith, then maybe you didn't have any to begin with. It's not about how Christianity is evil. It's about the corruption that is bound to occur when flawed humans are given something as powerful, strange, and beautiful as faith.

Interesting article on it all HERE.

Atonement

I've been trying to get into contemporary fiction lately. After all, if I hope to get published someday then I should know what my peers are doing. I am starting with the much accoladed Ian McEwan and the novel Atonement. I'm only 7 pages in and already:

"She took her daughter into her arms, onto her lap--ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet--and said the play was 'stupendous,' and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight whorl of the girl's ear, that this word could be quoted on the poster which was to be on an easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth" (4).

"The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained" (7).

It's just beautifully written, very true, and I feel so inspired right now. Someday I want to write something that makes people feel these very things. Right now I'll stick with what I'm calling my "Creepy Little Girl" stories. Perhaps someday they will be bound together in a book called, "Creepy Little Girls and the Mothers Who Love Them".

In all seriousness, though, I think I was a bit hard on my story the other day. It felt a bit irredeemable, but I've been looking at the work shop responses and it seems like its completely fixable. I'm just going to take a bit of a rest from it for a few weeks.

Whew!

I was haulin' all over the painting building today! After my final contemp art issues class (no more wiki! No more presentations!) I went on over to take a picture of my painting with a fancy schamcy Canon Eos 5D digital camera (12.8 megapixels!) which, incidently costs 2,100 bucks, when I realized that I didn't have the compact flash card necessary to save the photos onto the camera because my regular old 5 megapixel camera used a memory card instead. They don't lend them out at the Art and Design desk (where I got the camera, btw) because I guess people kept stealing them. It doesn't make much sense though, actually, and is really annoying. I mean, they check stuff out. Just charge the people who stole the compact flash card the amount the card cost on their university account. Now I have to spend twenty bucks to take high quality pictures of my work for the next year and a half. Blug.

Anyway, I used the tripod to get good, non blurry non shiny photos of the final product of Yellow Mountain, Iceland. C'est tout for this semester in my adventures in painting!








Also of note: Justin told me it looked like a "giant, throbbing cock". He also found a vagina in one of my paintings from last year. I'll miss you when you go to that South American country next semester, Justin!

Listening to: Bob Dylan--The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Oh Politics

What is going on??

Too Much Too Much

So I had my final painting crit today as well as my final short story workshop. Gluh. Bad scheduling on my part. It's not so much the work that was involved, it's the amount of effort that goes into hearing people talk about your work. I don't know. I'm glad it's done with.

On a lighter note:


Granted, as of this moment I am not actually in the show. I was having an identity crisis with my painting and hated it so I opted out. However, I now quite like my painting and have emailed Jennifer to see if there is still space. Regardless, several of my friends work is in the show and we're having a big fun reception with food (but no alcohol, sadly) on Thursday. It should be fun, especially seeing as I have a paper due the next day.

Also: I did the cover illustration for my short story today. I didn't' show it to people because they generally seemed to have no idea what was going on, but here it is:


The story still needs a lot of work in order to make it at all discernible to people who aren't me, so this will probably be a later in the semester spring project. I'm pooped.

listening to: the voices in my head discussing whether I'm talented or full of it.

Ice and I

Today my mac's weather widget had a little graphic with little white round balls bouncing off the ground. Hail! Not only hail, though, as I soon discovered. Also ice rain. Basically here's how my walk to the studio went today:

Me: (on the phone with Christine) Hey! Are you going to studio tonight?
Christine: No way. Even though I have a roommate who could easily give me a ride to studio from our apartment, I choose to remain the warm glowing warming glow of my apartment.
Me: (Stepping outside and slipping a little) Aw frack! Ice! My nemesis!
Christine: Blah blah blah plywood.
Me: I swear to God, Christine, I slip and fall every year. This is super dangerous.
Christine: Blah blah blah gesso.
Me: Oh my God! I am seriously going to fall! This is some intense ice! (falls on ass. Ice is cold. Gets up.)*

*Repeat three times.
(Note: Actual conversation may have been slightly different.)

That ice was really dangerous. I pretty much skated the whole way, and talked on the phone at the same time, which was a super good idea for someone as clumsy as me. Anyway, I think I need to get some golf shoes or something. I wouldn't be surprised if I met my end over ice.

On a more creative note, I'm basically just saying screw it and putting my painting up in the crit as is. I'm not really sure what else to do with it and it's a learning process so I don't really see why I should have final final work in the crit anyway. I'm in school, not the real world.



I like it. It, by itself, doesn't fully convey my concept, but I honestly didn't have enough time to fully figure out my concept and do three super layered paintings. I'm not too worried about getting reamed in crit this time, I'm more worried about my grade. I want to boost my GPA so I can get good scholarships for grad school, and I think that because this entire semester I've gone completely outside of my comfort zone and haven't given up, I deserve an A. I mean, if I wanted to stick to doing realistic portraits I would be kicking ass right now. I know I can do that. I want to open up my paintings to new techniques and abstraction so they can become more than just realistic depictions. They can become their own abstract, atmospheric worlds.

I also started a cover illustration for my short story Father Fox. It's a weird story that's about femininity, youth, innocence, and growth. It's getting work shopped on Monday. I hope that this workshop goes as well as the last one. The last one was really helpful and people seemed genuinely interested in my story. I'm going to show them the illustration and see if they think that the story lends itself to being fully illustrated. I plan on making a beautiful book in the end.




The girl (Luce, the protagonist) is modeled off of Degas' "Little Dancer Age 14".


It's odd. It's a pretty creepy statue, mostly because of the skin tone and the use of textiles, but I still really respond to the aesthetic. I think it's beautiful.

Also, I am really looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass in two weeks! Of course, it came with the controversy I expected it to. Here is an article from a Christian media magazine listing the reasons that The Golden Compass and Philip Pullman are the devil incarnate. What I love about this article is that it is essentially trying to warn unwary Christians of the evil hidden behind the well crafted fantasy story. To this I honestly say that if Philip Pullman causes you to lose faith then maybe you weren't terribly faithful in the first place. The point of religion is not to follow blindly. If you are truly faithful then Pullman will simply perhaps cause you to consider what it is that you believe and deepen your faith through thought. Yes, Pullman is kind of an ass. Yes, he says some nasty things about C.S. Lewis and Narnia. But seriously you need to both chill out. They're both great, imaginative stories that I treasured in my childhood. It is indeed nice to live in a world where I can love both Narnia and His Dark Materials as well as Harry Potter.

Holiday movie list thus far: Sweeney Todd, The Golden Compass, and Juno (Oh Michael Cera, you're my favorite!!).

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens--The Avalanche

Back in the Swing of Things

Holy crap kids, I just had the hardest time getting back into it after this amazing break. A helluva lot happened. First I went to visit Maddi, met her roomates who were so much fun that we all went to bar on a Monday night, watched the amazingness that was the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I mostly only watch old movies to laugh at them), came back to DeKalb, ate mashed potatoes in a house full of cats, watched The Last Emperor (which we did not realize was 3 hours long!) with the rents, and went to see Maddi's dad in his glorious role as early '80's Chicago punker at the screening of the documentary "You Weren't There: Chicago Punk 1977-1984". Enjoy assailment of ears here:



It was both awkward and amazing.

Anyway, I came back Sunday and was all "Oh hell yeah, I'm going to work my ass off and get all this shit done!" Then I went to my studio. I looked at my painting. I looked at it and I loathed
it. I wanted to trash it. I wanted to never look at it again and start fresh and hope for the best with that. So I didn't work on it. It hung over my desk in my studio as a very literal symbol of how much I sucked. Then I had to write a rough draft for my rhet class for Monday and my second short story for narrative writing for Wednesday, so I did nothing with it. I kept putting it off and off and off until today, when I realized that if I didn't do anything soon that I was going to have to present it at crit like that. That left me cold but it got my ass in line. I went in today and mixed colors and suddenly, after 20 minutes of work, I didn't hate it anymore! See kids, I should have trusted myself more. The studio class has made me lose so much confidence in my painting ability that I forgot that I do, in fact, know how to paint. I've been doing it for years. Just not specifically in this way. Anyway, here's what it looks like now that I've integrated that giant white spot in:



Sorry it's so blurry. Here's a detail where you can actually see what the damn thing looks like:


I think it breaks it up beautifully. There's still work to be done, obviously. The bottom needs some work. But I can see the end in sight, and it put me in the best mood I've been in since Maddi, her roommates, and I all broke into a Spice Girls song on the way back to their dorm at three in the morning last week. I was seriously giddy. Ask Kelly and Christine.

I also worked on Galapagos Islands, and I think that it's coming along as well, but there is no way that it's going to be done when I put it up at crit. The Iceland painting is layer on layer on layer and thats why it's rich. Galapagos is like, three layers and layers require time to dry. It'll be on layer four or five by crit time. Oh well, I don't even care. I just care that I broke the fracking Berlin wall with my Iceland painting. Anyway, here it is as is:



Detail:



I'm going for "Sky of death assails the light of the growing earth". They're volcanoes. I'm rethinking the idea of the volcano as growth and fertility of the earth rather than as a destructive force, I suppose. I don't really know whats going on with the China painting. I just never got it started and now it's a stretcher with a layer of gesso. If I start start it and put it up at crit it's just going to look like ass. Of course, the level of finish could work for the concept rather than against it. Or I might just do something crazy that my mother would hate to the China painting I already have started. I dunno. We'll see.

Gluh. Crit at 8 tomorrow. They are getting some serious comments about crit time on the ICES form. Three out of fifteen weeks of class for crit? A little ridic.

listening to: Arcade Fire--Neon Bible

While Maddi is tutoring . . .

Okay, so I did something drastic to my painting, just like I said I would. I think also that I had kind of a break through. Not a huge one, but enough of one that I don't feel like puking anymore. Here are some pictures and details.



See the huge ass white spot? That's new. It's going to dry while I'm gorging on mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, and then I am going to make it a lot less white.




Yeah. We'll see. My mom liked it, but she pretty much likes everything I do, which is nice, but not terribly helpful. *sigh*

listening to: Maddi helping some freshman with a paper on Dharma.
Reading: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Thanksgiving Break AT LAST

Port 2 Port Press has put out their beautiful 2008 hand cranked calander which I will not be investing in because of England trip and saving up for a car.


This is, however, what I aspire to. I'm going to put out my holiday cards after this week (a bit later than should happen, I suppose, but still before December) and see how those sell. If all goes well, then this spring I will start work on a 2009 calander to be ready for next November.

Thank goodness class is off for a week. I desperately need it, not just because I love to sleep in, but also to revise my essays, start another two essays, and finish my next short story. I'm going to get as much writing done as I possibly can because when I get back, it's all studio all the time until my final crit on December 3. I'm going to do something fairly insane to my painting before I leave just to get it out of its slump . . . I'm at the point where I really feel like I don't know how to paint anymore. This is good because it means I'm challenging myself, but it's also super frustrating. I just hope that I get a breakthrough with it and that I'll love it in the end. Right now I just don't love it. I know I love a painting I do when I just can't stop looking at it and it makes me feel really proud and happy. I am not anywhere close to that feeling.

Thing today that did make me happy, though it was a bit premature? Altgeld Hall playing Christmas carols after my last class as I was walking to the financial aid building. I was also kicking around crinkly fall leaves at the time, so it was little weird.

Thing that made me upset: the knowledge that tv, my precious tv will not be showing anything new for awhile. I will sorely miss new episodes of The Office (Jim and Pam were going to have dinner at Jan and Michaels!), 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and House. Seriously, just give the writers what they want. How are they even arguing? It's ridiculously obvious that the writers should get paid.

To tide us over:



listening to: Sufjan Stevens--Songs for Christmas (Yes, I know it's too soon. GD Altgeld Hall . . .)

Layer Five

Of note today: Apparently our (UIUC) football team beat Ohio State, which is apparently a big deal. Or something. This was evident as I walked to the painting studio and saw three wailing police cars rush past, one ambulance, and hordes of shrieking drunk people conglomerating outside of frats. As much as I love Friday Night Lights (mmmm, Tim Riggans . . .) I always get annoyed every loud Saturday. I think I will move to Urbana next year where I will happily remain unaware of whether our football team is winning or losing.

listening to: Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins--Rabbit Fur Coat

Working Working Working

Okay, so here is a not so horrid but still not terribly good picture of layer 4 of Yellow Mountain, Iceland. When I finish it I'll definitely borrow a tripod from upstairs Art & Design and get some good lighting going on. Anyway, I'm just going to keep building up until I feel like it's done. Also here is the first layer of Yellow Mountain, Galapagos Islands.


Still a looong way to go. I built the stretcher for the new Yellow Mountain, China, today and will probably stretch tomorrow. Good times.

I also realized that I don't have a job right now, and that its really cramping my style of occasionally spending money and saving up for something good. Last time I spent a chunk of money I'd saved up was on my macbook pro. So I've decided to make some holiday cards on the letterpress here at school and sell them in my shop, which right now only has paintings in it that I've kind of overpriced because I don't really want to let go of them. I think over winter break I'll get my craft on and make some bags and cut some linoleum for more cards on the letterpress. We'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work out, I'll get a real job.

I took one of those color quizzes. This actually sums me up pretty well, I think.

you are violet #EE82EE

Your dominant hues are red and blue. You're confident and like showing people new ideas. You play well with others and can be very influential if you want to be. Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

It's very true that I work on projects like that. I keep telling my mom that it's going to work out in the end, and she never believes me but 98% of the time it does.

listening to: Cat Power--The Covers Record

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

Spooky, scary . . . boys becoming men, men becoming wolves.

Iceland! Oh Iceland! (Theme Song of Iceland)

So this is exciting: I basically know what I'm doing now. It, sadly, includes abandoning the China painting I've been working on up to now. But like I said previously, it's not a total loss as I do think I learned a lot about the way I need to paint for these projects in particular for that. I'm going to build the new stretcher for that (I really just couldn't stand to just gesso over all that work . . . I still think something can be done with it) fairly soon. I've already got all the wood cut, it just comes down to builiding and stretching and gessoing another stretcher. It's funny because when I first started to do it, building my own stretchers from scratch on my own felt really good. It felt independent and like I was capable of making a lot of my own stuff. But now it's just a drag, mostly because this is the fifth one I've got to do this semester. I know I can do it, and that's enough for me now. I can't wait until I can afford to pay for someone to do it for me.

So anyway, I suppose I should actually write down what my idea is and what I've been thinking about a lot in terms of contemporary landscape. China is old--3.2 billion years?--as old as the earth. However, as far as civilization is concerned, China is a huge mesh of old and new. While there are still huge areas of farm land littered with illiterate peasants, there are also huge polluted metropolises which seem to be China, and the worlds wave of the future. Soon (very soon, particularity when you consider time the way that I am in the age of land masses) vast fields, forests, and open areas in general will be a thing of the past.

Iceland, on the other hand, is newer. It rose up from the ocean floor because of its volcanic activity. It was created from fire but is named for ice. It is still growing as from time to time a volcano will erupt, continuing the cycle. I find the idea of this continuation of life in the midst of human struggle fascinating. We haven't even been around for an ounce as long as the earth, Iceland, or even the last place I am going to portray, the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos Islands are also volcanic, and they are where Darwin developed his theory of evolution because of the way that all the species evolved internally because they were isolated form the rest of the world. I think that this is what is interesting about them and what makes them the last piece in my series. Before human interaction, how much longer would they have gone on being isolated? How much longer would there have been a place that certain species inhabited that no other place ever would have seen? I think I will shroud this painting in a cloak of cloudy glazes, only to have growth (the volcanic activity) poke through and glow as brightly as a coin in the sun. Iceland, too, will be shrouded, but its life will be a funnel of smoke filtering into the sky. China will be flat and eroded, dark and glowing at the horizon. Glowing over the edge of earth.

So here are the first three layers of Yellow Mountain, Iceland.

One

Two

Three

Blug. I need to invest in a tripod or stop sucking at taking photos so much. Part of the problem is that they're shiny because they're oil paintings so I can't take pictures with the flash on, and for some reason without the flash my camera takes only blurry photos.

Outside of art news: Today my American Lit prof made a noise that sounded like "OooooOOoo" (think a weirder Twilight Zone noise) after saying something particularly convoluted. Upon receiving odd looks, he explained that "Sometimes I say something so pretentious that I just have to make that noise after." It made my life. He is such a weirdo that he makes me feel normal.

Also I finished a paper in two hours, and I feel pretty confident about it. It is titled "Oh No She Di-hin't!: Female Relationships in Nella Larsen's Passing". I have to admit, one thing (the only thing?) that I will miss about writing academic papers after I finish with them this semester is coming up with ridiculous titles for them.

listening to: Ella Fitzgerald--Blues in the Night

Today's Painting Philosophy: Simplicity is your Friend

"Norham Castle, Sunrise"
JMW Turner

Learning

Layer 5? 6? I forget. It feels like layer 1 million. And I'm not even a little close to where I want to be with it. I think I applied too much paint in some places, and now it's lost the glow it had. Not entirely, but enough for me to be frustrated by it. But before I do something rash like gesso over it, I'm going to put it aside and work on the Yellow Mountain, Iceland painting. I think that though this first Yellow Mountain, China painting may be a bust, I learned a lot from it. If I do gesso over it, I have a lot clearer of an idea of what I want to do as opposed to just randomly painting. And isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing in college? Learning? So I'm not too bent out of shape about it. After all, my first oil painting was total crap but the next one turned out really well. I just needed to get a handle on the materials, and in this case, the landscape in my mind, which I want to glow but be in a dark, ominous atmosphere because of the rapidly changing landscape of China. I imagine myself floating miles above this brown and green landscape. Little puffs of black smoke hover above clumped areas of architecture. Then, a breath of wind and they scatter and darken my view. All I see is soot.

I chose China for a reason. It's old and steeped in tradition but the past sixty years have been wrapped in change. The past ten have been like a giant leap into industrialization and now they seem to be grasping the future with a vice-like grip. The question is whether or not it is a good future with breathable air. Another question is whether I can convey all these ideas in one painting.

I've been looking at Turner because he's one of the first artists you turn to (ha!) when you're thinking romantic landscapes. Him and Frederic Edwin Church, at any rate. I really just can't get enough of Turner in particular, though. His landscape are rough and soft, and they really glow. I've been looking at these and thinking simplicity:






In other news, I made some bread! It takes awhile, but if you're sitting around your apartment writing say, a paper for five hours, then you have plenty of time to start bread, realize that you've run out of flour halfway through, make the 10 minute journey to Walgreens, and come back and finish. I'm pleased with it, though it did kind of fall apart the minute I tried to cut it, which was weird because it sounded hollow when I knocked on the bottom like my Mom said it should. What did I do wrong, Mom? Oh well, it still tasted damn good. Jam and cream cheese on fresh baked bread with tea is one of the greatest pleasures in life.


Listening to: Regina Spektor--Soviet Kitsch

"Besides having sex with men, The Finer Things Club is the gayest thing about me."

Oh The Office. You never cease to please.

It's that time again

But first, a ridiculously blurry image of my painting! This, my friends, is why I quit photography. I suck an every frame was blurry. Anyway, I thought two more layers but its just not done yet. I guess I'll just keep working it until I feel that it's done. I'm starting two more paintings (Yellow Mountain, Iceland and Yellow Mountain, ?) so I'll be able to step back from it a bit as well.

So it's time to sign up for classes again. I got an email asking me if I was going to graduate this spring because evidently I have enough credits to (even though I've got a bit more to do for my major) so that was kind of cool because I know I'm getting close. Seriously, 3 more semesters?? People keep asking me what I'm going to do when I graduate, too. That happened a lot less last year. I figure I'll take a year off and work or travel or something, and then maybe apply to the MFA creative writing program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Thank God MFA programs are only two years. That means I can get an MFA in writing and studio no problem. Plus Vancouver looks like a really cool city, and my parents may or may not have moved to Oregon by then.

These are my classes for next semester:

Creative Writing 106--Intro to Poetry
Art Studio 499--Advanced Painting
Art Studio 351--Intermediate Studio II
Art Studio 210--Ceramic Sculpture I
Art History 360--Women and the Visual Arts

I'm going to have 3 studios all in a row on Monday and Wednesday. It's going to be kind of intense, but hopefully none of them will schedule critique on the same day. I would die.

Listening to: Johnny Cash--American IV--The Man Comes Around

To The Old Country!

Guess what? I'm going to England this summer! My brother is getting a multi continent flight which allows him to go to North America (DeKalb, obviously), South America (Peru) and Europe (England and Spain). I'll be joining him and his girlfriend, Laura, in England where I hope to see my grandparents, my uncle and aunt, and a plethora of sheep. Right now I've only got like, $300.00 to my name, but I've got commissions coming so I should have at least 15 hundred dollars by summer. I was saving up for a car, but who needs a car when you can go to England with your brother who you haven't seen for a year and a half?

Listening to: The Decemberists--Picaresque

Getting There

Layer 5. I predict two more layers. The highlights on the clouds are too white right now, I have to add some subdued yellow brown purple? in there. The mountains just need a bit more specificity in them, but not too much or they'll lose their beauty. Anyway, it's fast and its fun. Would be believe I started this less than a week ago last Monday?

In other news, my material itch is dying to be scratched by this FAWESOME bike designed by Jorg & Olif. Sadly, I really have no need whatsoever for a new bike because I just got one a bit over a year ago. I suppose it's also worth noting that this bike costs about $600.00 not including shipping and handling. But look how pretty! And it comes in red! Oh well. I'm sure the company will still be there in a few years when I'll need a new bike and if I got this one now, it'd just get stolen or ruined anyway because drunk college students are morons. Trust me, it's homecoming weekend and I'm at a big 10 school. Speaking of which, I've been thinking about living in Urbana next year rather than Champaign. I like how close my apartment is to the painting studio, but really most places in Urbana would only be a 10 minute bike ride away. I also went out to visit Christine who lives in Urbana and its so pretty where she is. There are brick sidewalks and vibrant orange leaves all over and a pretty little church. It felt like a whole different place. There was a place rented by the same leasing group I'm using right across the street from her, actually. And it's so ruddy loud out here, even during the week. I guess we'll see. I need to check out the places first.

Listening to: Jon Brion--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Soundtrack

Foreign Landscape

Layer 4. Also, I finally have the paper with my idea and internet in the same room, so here it is:

1) Romanticization of a place I have never been based on the name and my own perceptions of the country it is located in. For example, Yellow Mountain, Spain would be different from Yellow Mountain, China.

2) I am physically removed from China. I am orally removed from Yellow Mountain because Yellow Mountain is the English name. Even if I go there, I am removed from the landscape and population due to my extremely different way of life. To say you understand a culture is an attempt to control the culture.

3) How does Yellow Mountain differ from the Rocky Mountain peaks or other mountains I have physically experienced?

4) In my mind, Yellow Mountain is beautiful. Yet when I consider China, I think of huge polluted cities where the locals spit all over the streets. I wonder if China's newfound industrialization will, like a tumor, swallow the beauty of Yellow Mountain. Also I think of damn commies.

So yeah, I guess I'm thinking about a lot of stuff. I just need to really convey it on the canvas because you can think till the cows come home and if the work doesn't back it up then the work falls flat. I'm thinking of doing the White Cliffs of Dover next, which I think will be a big contrast because I've actually been to England. I haven't seen the White cliffs, but still I'm a LOT more in contact with that culture than Chinese culture. Hell, I'm drinking tea imported from England right now.




I'm getting there with the tea cozy. I think I'll start decreasing in a few more rows, which means getting the double pointed needles out which is the grossest, but at least it means I'm almost finished.

Wood shopping with Kelly and Christine tomorrow! I'm going to make like, five stretchers!!

listening to: The Cardigans--Life

Layer Layer Layer

Okay, so this is actually layer # 3. I forgot to take a picture of layer # 2 until layer #3 was almost done. I actually really enjoy working like this, though, because the paint is so thinned down that it dries quick and I can work two layers in on the same day. Sometimes I do get a bit distracted if other people are in the studio though . . . last night turned into a trip to Steak & Shake and Walmart at 1 am with Kelly and Hector instead of a really productive working time. Oh well. At least it was fun!

Anyway, once again I can't write down my complete ideas associated with this project because I forgot my whole notebook in the studio when we were leaving last night! If only we had wireless in the studio. I am irritated that it is taking them so ruddy long to do it. What do they think we do? Internet would be most beneficial to a studio artist because we could use it for research or looking up images and the like, things I often really want to do while I'm in the studio but can't. I guess its just one of the downsides of going to a huge university whose bureaucracy often doesn't understand art students specific needs. This would never be a problem at an art school, but then I couldn't take creative writing classes at an art school so its a switch off.

Oh, and ridiculous story: Yesterday morning I was going to fill up my water bottle and go to the bathroom in the basement of the painting building but the girls bathroom (which only has one stall, btw) was being cleaned by the janitor so I decided to use the boys room because there are like, 6 guys in the painting program and its usually empty. Also, I've never really thought boys and girls sharing bathrooms with stalls is a big deal. Also, the guys bathroom has THREE stalls + two urinals. I mean, come on! Anyway, I go in and I'm about to shut a stall door when I realize that Frank, the guy who is like, fifty in charge of the woodshop and is really nice, was at a urinal.
"Aren't you in the wrong bathroom?" he said.
"I'm so sorry! The girls bathroom is being cleaned!"
I just about died! Oh, and in case anyone was wondering *coughHectorcough* he was not still using the urinal while he was talking to me. Anyway, he left and I went to the bathroom and came out and was filling up my water bottle at the drinking fountain when he walked by me and said, "They just had to be cleaning the girls bathroom at the wrong time."
"Yeah."
And that was that. It was so awkward. If it was any of the guys from my class I wouldn't have cared, but I just guess it was cause he was older or he was Frank or something. Seriously though, what kind of girls bathroom only has one stall??

listening to: Iron & Wine--The Shepard's Dog

The Calm after Midterms

The first layer of my newest project, Yellow Mountain, China. Its 5' x 2'. I painted the background butter yellow with a mixture of gesso and ink and then, in a technique that my lovely studio mate Christine invented, thinned some oil paint down with turpentine until it had the consistency of milk and squirted it on the canvas on the floor with a turkey baster. I then blotted it with some brown paper, waited for it to be almost dry, and turned it on the side so parts of it dripped down a nd created highlights. I won't be working this way the whole time, just initially to get my shapes. Its a piece about my perceptions of China, a piece about romanticization through distance, a piece about stereotypes and my inability to truly understand the culture of a foreign place. Hell, I barely understand American culture sometimes. Anyway, I have this whole thing I wrote about my idea that goes pretty in depth, but I left it at the studio so I'll do that with the next layer post.

I had my conference on my short story (My God) today. The good news is that my prof thinks I've got a really good start and that my use of language is really working. I just need to make things clear about the character and such that weren't before, which I can do through more interaction with her parents and school mates. I'm actually really excited about this story. It's definitely the best thing I've ever written. My prof is really helpful and understanding, too. The class got off to a shaky start, but I'm really enjoying it now. We watched a movie based on a short story the other day--Away From Her which is based on The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. It was really amazing. It was about this couple dealing with the woman's Alzheimer's and how they ended up putting her in a home and she all but forgot her husband and fell in love with another resident. It was so unsentimental and cutting but beautiful at the same time. I highly recommend it and the short story.

I've started on a tea cozy because it's getting ruddy cold now and I want tea every minute of every day. I'm knitting it like a hat only I've added an extra 24 stitches so it'll fit a bit better around the pot.


Listening to: Band of Horses--Everything All the Time

Good News!

So it appears that Stephen Colbert is running for president. He appeared first on The Daily Show to announce his intention to announce, and then later announced on his own show.





Since I'm not really attached to any of the candidates at the moment and Mr. Stephen Colbert is one of my favorite people, I would have to say he defiantly has my vote.

Hmm. A New Direction?

Okay. So crit didn't exactly go as I'd hoped or planned. I was told some (very little) helpful things and then a lot of things that made no sense. One guy complained that my narrative was hard to follow even though the first bit (the bit I expected him to follow; the 2nd bit is hardly a narrative yet) is simply exposition and fairly clear. He mixed up which character had the baby (if it was the main character, Waverly, or her mother) even though I clearly wrote that it was the mother who had the baby. It was overall just really frustrating because we only had 15 minutes and the graphic novel, even at only 16 pages so far, is a fairly complex thing to look at. And then there was the complaint the style was very different than the normal graphic novel, which I had actually thought was one of its strengths. Not everyone agreed on this, but ultimately because of the way the crit happened I felt a bit like I was being attacked and that nothing I had done was working or was right and that it never would be right because I'm just not capable. It's a horrible horrible feeling to have, especially after you've worked so hard on something. I think there were some legitimate comments but we didn't even end up getting into the content of the work and it was just overwhelming. So what did I learn? Not to put a graphic novel in a crit. It's too complicated. I think I need to step back, start a whole new project, and not even ink another page until I have the storyboard for the whole thing drawn out. Right now I just kind of feel like crap.

Anyway, I have another project in the works. I'm going to start a more abstract painting series where I take this technique that Christine invented where you thin down the paint and and just plop it onto the canvas in drops and then do all these layers . . . anyway, when I start I'll upload photos of the process because its a bit hard to explain to non oil painters. The process creates these odd landscapes and my idea was to take a place I've never seen like Yellow Mountain in China (my brother was just there) and paint an abstract landscape based on what I think it looks like because of the name. So no one send me pictures of Yellow Mountain!! I'm doing this because it will be more relaxing and fun and it will allow me to explore and it's really what I need right now after this morning.

I have to be at class by 8:00 am on Friday. We've had to be in an hour early for a 9-11:40 am class all week. I hate crit week.

I'm Over It. And Also? Three More Pages!!

Who is that whiny bitch from before? I'm so over it. What was I going to do with another art degree, anyway? You don't need a degree to write a novel, just skill and creativity. Now I won't have to write a bunch of academic essays for all the extra english classes I was going to have to take.

In other news, more pages. I'm getting faster, I think. 15 down, only like, 90 more or so to g o. Anyway, here is 13. Mother is buying a dress.


Aww. Look at the baby. I think the snot bubble will become a running gag.

Annnnnd *drumroll* . . . my first word bubbles! I debated for a really long time how to do these, and I ended up deciding that they should be done by hand and written by hand. I think it was a really good choice. Doing it on the computer would have looked to perfect and out of place.

I should have another page done by Wednesday because thats when I have midterm critique. In the meantime, enjoy Mother's cleavage.

*Sigh*

Well, I guess I'm not going to get a double degree after all. I talked to an advisor and he said that only my UIUC gpa has to be 3.25, not my UIUC gpa + my Kish gpa. So instead of getting a 3.30 by the end of this semester like I thought I would, I would have a 3.00 or something because I got a stupid D in physics and a C in another class and stuff. In order to have a double degree you have to have been in the other college (my case, Liberal Arts & Sciences) for at least two semesters and you've got have a 3.25 in order to apply at all. I could get a 3.25 by the time I graduated, but by then it would be too late. He said he would make sure that I could take the classes and stuff, it's just really disappointing because I've worked so hard and I took three classes this summer to make sure that I could get a double degree and still get out in four years. I mean, I guess this takes a lot of pressure off, but . . . yeah, it just sucks.

I guess I'll just take the writing classes and try to improve myself and focus on my artwork.

Fuuuuuuuck (A Rant)

Okay, so yes, I can still graduate in 2009 with a double major of Painting and Creative Writing. It is technically possible. However, I'm not so sure it's going to be fun anymore. In order to graduate I need to take at least 16 hours each semester for my remaining three semesters. However, having three hour long studio classes twice a week can really muck things up. I have to take 13 (I have no idea why it's not 12) more hours of outside studio (i.e. not required for my painting degree). When you take a studio, it has to be a studio you like or else you're not going to want to do the huge amount of outside work required and you're not going to get a good grade. As someone who wants to leave college with at least a 3.5 (grad school ain't cheap) this is hard because the one studio I really wanted to take--Book Arts 1&2--is taught by a professor who is not only leaving after next semester, but isn't even teaching book arts next semester. I've tried for 2 1/2 years to get into that stupid class but it was always filled up by I was able to add classes. So that leaves sculpture (sculpture 1 is about making shit with cardboard. I don't want to make shit with cardboard), photography (no way), ceramics (yes, but it's way off campus so it has to wait until i get a car), and printmaking (already did, last semester).

Anyway, the reason I'm bitching and moaning is that there is a painting techniques class next semester taught by Ros that I would like to take. Problem? Both M/W/F Intermediate Studio (always 9-11:40) and that class (M/W 1-3:40) intercept with the three possible sections of my Intermediate Narrative Writing class, which I need to take in order to take Advanced Narrative Writing, and finally Creative Writing Tutorial. Also? I need to take english classes as well as art history but the english classes I want to take all intercept with the art history I want to take. It's so frustrating because bio majors would never have this problem because there's like 20 sections of every class they take. I just don't know what to do. Am I really going to have to take classes with subjects I'm not really interested in just because the others are at a bad time? I've paid my dues! I don't want to do that anymore!

It's still early. It's still possible they'll add more sections. They better.

listening to: Rilo Kiley--Under the Blacklight