Dead Legs Layer El Numero Dos

We're getting there. Probably 1-2 more layers . . . and may I just say how much I love galkyd, but just wish it would dry a bit slower? Parts of it were already drying up as i went into the legs! It was freaky!

First Essay of the Semester . . . Finished!

For awhile I was scared. I mean, no more 200 level classes for me. It's 300 and up from here on out. I was really terrifically frightened of the papers I would get because I previously would generally write one paper a semester before because I was taking mostly studios. And sometimes those papers would be being graded by people who had English as a second or even third language *coughasianmythologycough* so they would end up being much too generous to a paper that was written in an hour the night before at midnight.

So anyway, I was a bit nervous about my first paper this semester. But guess what? I finished it today in only two hours, much of which was spent twiddling my thumbs. Do you know why? Because I've read The Brothers Karamazov twice already and the topic ("Ivan Karamazov is split between two contradictory ideas. Explain what the contradiction is, using at least two passages from the novel to support your ideas.") is so kickass because I actually spent a good deal of time thinking about ol' Vanka K. after I first read the book and really knew the answer to the question the moment I read it. I also already had all the great quotations I would need underlined so they were easy peasy to find. And this was how my essay, "Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: A Tortured Soul Who Is Wracked With Some Sort of Negative Emotion ", was born in a mere two hours.

And this is why from here on out I am going to email my professors over breaks, find out what all the reading for the class will, and read it before I go back to school. It makes life so much less stressful.

Listening to: Simon & Garfunkel--Cecelia

The Venerable Bede

"'Such,' he said, 'O King, seems to me the present life of men on earth, in comparison with that time which to us is uncertain, as if when on a winter's night you sit feasting with your earldormen and brumali --- and a simple sparrow should fly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter; but yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter going into winter again, it is lost to our eyes. Somewhat like this appears the life of man --- but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant.'"

--The Venerable Bede
Ecclesiastical History, Book II

Maddi showed me this quotation about a year ago and I looked it up again today while trying to find quotations to put within the three books of my graphic novel. There's something about it that just floors me. Maybe life just feels so fleeting right now because I'm already three years into college and it feels as though I just started yesterday, but magically know the bus routes well. This, along with this Virginia Woolf quotation from To the Lighthouse (stunning book, by the way) will be the quotations that go behind the title pages for part II and part III. For part I I used a classic from Flannery O'Connor:
"She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
--A Good Man is Hard to Find

Someday I hope to write a stunning quotation that just completely alters the way someone thinks about things.

Studio!

Well here is my very own studio. It's like a cubicle, only super messy and full of art supplies. I'm pretty psyched about the fact that I have it because as a junior in studio, I have 24 hour key card access to the painting building and I no longer have to clean up all my shit so the next class won't get pissed at me. This means that my studio will probably pretty much always be this messy. I'm okay with that.

In other news: I got some watercolors yesterday (Dick Blick does the fastest shipping! I ordered on the 11th and it got here the 13th!) and I've been playing around with them. It's time to move on with my graphic novel, and so I've done a "Part II" page. On the other side will be a Virginia Woolf quotation about the passage of time.


And then, of course, I've got an oil painting started. I started this blog to chronicle artistic process, but I kind of suck at life and kept forgetting to take pictures. Not this time! This time you all get to see my oil paintings straight from the ugly beginning! This painting is only a third of the piece which is a choose-your-own-ending painting. Basically there is going to be Agnes hanging from something in the biggest painting (5'x3') and then two other paintings, one which is will be the legs just hanging so she's dead and the other where she's got her legs up on a little chair so she's not dead. I'm going to make little doors for them and have the numbers "1" and "2" on the doors. Anyway, I'm excited and here are the dead legs in their first layer.


I told you it's not pretty! Oh well. I'll do another layer on them tonight. They should look like a great pair of gams by the end, though.

Also: mad props to Paul, who gave me Adobe Creative Suite CS3 for free. It runs like a dream in comparison to CS2 on my macbook pro.

What I'm going to do after college

So I'm a junior, now, right? I've got two more years left in the weird world that is the American academic system (and by weird I mean that I never see children or old people) and then I'm out in the harsh, cold reality of the real world. As an artist/writer. A lot of people would say that I'm pretty much screwed, but I disagree. I have a plan.

People like art. Not a lot of contemporary art thanks to assholes like Damien Hirst, but I think my art is generally much more accessible because I like to make it beautiful as well as thought provoking. At least, that's my goal. Anyway, many people who like art but can't actually do it themselves and who have disposable income like to give money toward art. These come to artists in many forms, but the one I'm looking at is fellowships. This means an organization would give me say, $25,000 to do my artwork for a year. It's basically what Virginia Woolf was going on about in A Room of One's Own. Instead of having to balance two minimum wage jobs just to pay rent and finance my oil paint addiction, I'll have a little bank account full of money just for me! I found a very exciting prospect at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and I'm sure that there are loads more.

Just amazing. Can you imagine it? My only job would be to create my artwork, and it would be whatever artwork I wanted, not commissions. I'm actually getting excited rather than terrified about graduating.

Granted, I have to get the fellowships first.

Reread A Wrinkle in Time today

Madeleine L'Engle died Friday. It's time to crack open that much loved childhood book again. Thank you, Ms. L'Engle. I must have read that book fifteen times at least.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear!

Oh what a conundrum! I've just discovered that my intermediate studio class suddenly has another section open with seats left! featuring the AWESOME Laurie Hogin! But Ros KNOWS that I've signed up for her section of studio, so to leave it now would be insulting, right? I don't know. She might not even remember that I signed up for it with her and I might be making a massive deal over nothing. Why did I have to tell Ros that I signed up with her? Oh yeah, because I was sucking up because I wanted a freaking A. Sophie you ninny!

Crap. I really want to take studio with Laurie. She's the coolest thing ever and she loves me. Ros only kind of likes me. I'm pretty much guaranteed an A if I go with Laurie.

Blah!

How to avoid the stigma of the "crazy artist"

So I've been watching this art history series on PBS (first made, of course, by BBC) called Simon Schama's Power of Art. It's on eight artists (Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko) and basically they all suffered a good deal in their lives because of their very intense personalities. Though wholly over dramatic, dark, and unapologetically pretentious, it was a very interesting series. I found some of the artists to be complete assholes (see, Caravaggio, Bernini) some to be mostly assholes with some redeeming qualities (see, David, Picasso) and the rest to just be quite extreme. I think that the one on Van Gogh was the most painful to watch because really, the man was a ruddy genius and yet he was . . . crazy. It was quite sad because he generally seemed to be a good person, if just a little self absorbed. I have been in quite a "Van Gogh" mood this summer. It's funny because I didn't really used to like him, and there are some that I don't prefer as much but now I look at his paintings and drawings and they just floor me.



My drawings need to be polished and refined for hours, even days. My paintings take weeks, even months. Van Gogh plugged out a painting a day! The thing is, I can produce things that look how I want them to look, it just takes a good deal more time. I also think that I need to experiment more with thicker paint because I do everything in thin layers. This works well, but I think that my work could become more visually powerful if I learned how to use thicker paint and where to use it.

At any rate, the whole while I was watching this series, I was thinking, do I have to go through this to be a great artist? Does a great artist have to be so emotionally intense? Because really, I don't want to be. I feel like it's really hard to live like that and that is why all those artists died young. Then I decided that there were loads of artists who were perfectly normal (as normal as an artist can be expected to be) and that ol' Simon Schama decided to focus on these melodramatic blow hards because he enjoyed the drama. Because really, I am very passionate about art. It is the center of my spiritual core, it is my God. I'm just a bit more in touch with my surroundings than these fellows. I hope.

Oh, and also? I learned something which is probably old news to most people: Dali was a fascist. I suppose he had a 50/50 chance, being Spanish and all, but evidently he was a total Franco supporter, even after the horror of Guernica. He even congratulated Franco "at clearing Spain of destructive forces". The painting below (Soft Construction With Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War) has always been unsettling to me for fairly obvious reasons, but now, knowing that Dali was advocating the the rights of a brutal fascist usurper, I can't help but be completely disgusted by it. It is true that I am past my requisite teenage artist phase of loving Dali (his aesthetic isn't really in tune with mine any more) so I don't feel too horrid, but it pains me to say that there was a time when I loved his work and thought that he was really cool. They say that the way an artist behaves shouldn't really affect how you think of his work, but I don't think that that is true. A painting, drawing, or whatever is a reflection of the thoughts and beliefs of the artist. Now really Dali's vivid blue skies and orange desert scenes only depress me. I want something fresher, something which feels less dark. Funny how an artist who came an entire art movement before Dali does seem fresher and more contemporary. I am talking about Van Gogh, by the way.

A week and five days until school starts up again. I'm fairly excited to get started on projects and to move into my apartment. I'm ready.

And now for something entirely political . . .

So I'm feeling kind of politically outraged due to the fact that I've just seen Sicko, that new Michael Moore documentary. Now, it should be noted that I am not the biggest Michael Moore fan and I view his films with some skepticism due to the fact that I know he tends to show what he wants to show and such and sometimes shows things through rosy colored glass. This was apparent in this movie when he got a bit off track talking about socialism in France, but generally the movie had a really very important message: why the FUCK do we have such a horrid health care system?

There were some just tragic stories. Mind you, these were stories about people who had health insurance, but just got screwed over by their companies. People who were denied care because the insurance companies, already bursting with prophets, didn't want to shell out the $500,000 for the bone marrow transplant that could have saved the cancer patient's life or who wouldn't let a mother get care for her child at the hospital closest to her because they wanted her to get care at their specific hospital. The worst and most embarrassing was the way hospitals just dropped people who couldn't pay for their care on the side of the road even if they had broken bones or were completely disoriented. It's just awful and completely goes against the supposed philosophy of our country. When you deny care for someone, when something can be done to save someones life and you refuse to do it, isn't it murder? How do the heads of the insurance company, the heads of our government who get the checks from the insurance companies and the drug companies, sleep at night? I simply don't understand. And really, we're a joke. In the documentary he went to all these other countries where they do have universal health care to speak with them about it and they were just incredulous about the way our system is run. They all laughed when he talked about paying for health care, and every doctor he talked to said they were glad to be a part of a system which allowed them to help and treat without question rather than one that would make them kick people out if their insurance was denied.

And it is embarrassing. We are a country that has so much, and yet we cannot seem to come up with a system that allows everyone a fair chance. There is so much wrong with both education and health care, two things that should be the most important of everything. What kind of country are we if our people don't have their health or their education? This really shouldn't even been a bipartisan issue. It isn't in other countries. It's just so frustrating, especially seeing as the current administration simply doesn't care what anyone thinks and is offended whenever someone suggests that they not rule with unchecked power. It's insulting and I just hope that next election we can make a change and that the next administration manages to make some really positive decisions that don't involve wire tapping and war and money in their pocket. I'm not sure who I really support yet, but definitely not any of the republicans who are all obsessed with terrorism and gay marriage.

Anyway, I guess ultimately on the plus side I've got that British citizenship so I can always go anywhere in the European Union if America starts being too lame.

listening to: Flight of the Conchords--The Humans are Dead

Oh Shit!

I know a lot of people are in a state of existential trauma at the moment. Harry Potter is over! Whatever will you have to look forward to next? What is the next story that will grip you and hold your mind hostage for hours after you have finished it?

Well, the answer is obvious! A couple of years ago, R. Kelly released 12 mind boggling amazing chapters of the epic hip-hopera (like an opera, but for Hip-Hop, obviously) Trapped in the Closet, which began, shockingly enough, with him trapped in a closet where he hides from the husband of a woman he's just slept with. Of course, the tomfoolery doesn't stop there! A twisting plot unravels involving a myriad of unfaithful couples, a gay priest (!), a magical man who is so tough he can bandage his own bullet wounds no problem and who says "bafroom" instead of "bathroom", a plethora of guns wielded by people who really should never even have control of a sharp stick, a phone which should have been put on vibrate, a woman named Bridget and her loving midget.
R. Kelly's masterful storytelling is chock full of mystery, intrigue, and most of all, cliff hangers!

Many have been waiting months and months to find out what would happen after the 12th chapter, and now we have only to wait for a couple more weeks. I found this article at The A.V. Club and apparently there are 10 more chapters coming out August 21st! I must say, this is most exciting news! I don't know about you, but I'm going to be standing in line with the rest of the Closetites, waiting excitedly for the midnight hour on August 20th. I still have to decide which one to dress up as, but so far the only white person is Bridget, so maybe that would be my best bet. Also I have a killer fake sounding southern accent.

Note: I recommend everyone get the DVD, which features a very indepth commentary by R. Kelly. It really shed a whole new light on the film. Also, he's in an leather arm chair smoking a cigar the whole time. Also he says cliff hanger a lot and most of the time he's wrong.

Oh R. Kelly. I really truly believe that you really truly believe that you are a genius.

listening to: Spoon--GaGaGaGaGa