Sophie Loubere: Frack you, UIUC

Alison Shaw

Blerg. What a gross day. So they posted course schedules for next semester and it turns out that the studio class I really wanted to take are scheduled at totally impossible times. For example, Ninth Letter, the class that is all about the literary arts magazine here where the students basically illustrate a story or essay and which sounds so up my alley is from 9-11:40 Monday/Wednesday. Guess what else is at that time? My mandatory and one section only studio class. So I emailed the teacher in charge all "Wtf??" and she was all, "we didn't mean to exclude studio majors, it was just the best time to meet with the creative writing people". So basically I cannot take the class. At all. Which sucks. A lot. Because there is no book arts any more because Bea is leaving and the University couldn't give a crap about it so they're not hiring anyone new in that field. Printmaking is barely available, and not available at all next semester. They're just totally getting rid of any technical/crafts classes that don't have anything to do with design. This really pisses me off because I'm honestly pretty bored by conceptual art and like more tactile art than graphics classes. So I was really annoyed for a while that I was going to have to just take random studio classes that would have nothing to do with what I'm planning to do in the future because the University is going in a different direction from me when I realized that I need to do more. So I checked out RISD's site to see what they offered aside from just a studio art major because I'm sick of listening to blowhards say blowhard-y things during crits and I found out that they don't offer a master's degree in illustration, but they do offer a bachelor's degree in illustration. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to get a second degree in illustration at RISD. They have so many amazing classes like, Watercolor: Intro to Medium, Printmaking Techniques for Illustrators, The Magic of Books, Picture and Word, Master Painting Techniques, and The Collaged Image. Basically it looks fawesome. I talked to my mom and she said a lot of my stuff should transfer (hopefully) so I could get to the good stuff right away and it would only take 2-3 years. Then I could start a career as an illustrator and work my way up until I'm writing and illustrating my own books and novels. I mos def want to get into kid's books, too. I've been looking up loads of children's illustrators and the poor kids are getting crap these days. I mean, seriously, what the frack is junk like this:

Just cause they're a kid doesn't mean they wanna look at cartoony crap. There's so much gross cgi stuff and junk that anyone cranks out. I want to bring real beauty and depth and humor (sometimes, not in my current project) back to illustrated books. Those are the books I still love to this day. I've decided I don't want to be a gallery artist. That seems dull to me. All the making paintings about the same thing over and over is just blah.

Speaking of paintings, I have a new favorite artist. His name is Odd Nerdrum and he is a weirdo that I would never want to meet but LORD can he paint. I found this GIANT book with like, a bagillion of his paintings + details called Themes at the library and I've been scouring it, often with other painting people, ever since. I think the other day Jordan and Paul and I look at it for like, an hour. It's that cool.

Some of his work: