second to last, done

It feels good to be done with school. Though this semester went out with a whimper, sweet sweet winter break is here. (That is a giant ball of blue tape; we had to use SO much to keep our presentations up on the walls...)

I wish it would snow...

I would just stare at it in wonder for a few minutes and then...sleep.

lunching at the love cube

I don't know if it was architecture students or art students who assembled this funny little playground/gathering spot of a structure a month or so ago but it has been probably the most successful (and low budget) installation our school has seen. Deemed the 'love cube' - flyers around the building have welcomed people to sit there, make out, eat, talk, play, swing, and be creative - and the students have listened! I made a big point this year to not buy food on campus, but this is the third time all semester I buckled down and got Panda for lunch (guilty pleasure food...) which I gobbled up at the cube, and to work off my food coma I swinged on the swing and enjoyed the sunshine. I feel like I haven't felt the sun for days, which is clearly hyperbole, but it was nice to have half an hour to myself, reflecting on life and the semester.

foggy morning

L.A. fog... I woke up at 6 this morning to get ready for a packed morning. Our final presentations for studio were finally finished printing yesterday (when they would ideally have been completed by Wednesday) and after work last night I made a mad dash to studio to trim my boards & mount them on foam core, then hang them up in the designated space downtown... Took a couple hours with us waiting for another studio mate to finish his stuff, then looking for parking, then carrying 10+ boards up to the 50th floor of the National Bank Tower. Then I went with my sister back home-home where we helped my mom with a ton of art stuff and now I'm trying to get at least half of my portfolio done tonight so I can work and hang out with my boyfriend this weekend. More on my day later, as I try to complete my portfolio in 5 page installments!

excerpt - The Great Gatsby

'I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others - poor young clerks who loitered in front of the windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner - young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.'

The above is an internal passage by Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald writes beautifully, and in my arrogant high school years I often failed to grasp much of the beauty in the words I read in my exasperation at having to overanalyze the literary allusions, metaphors, motifs, foreshadowing, etc. I just wanted to read the book without having to endure, chapter after chapter the brutal butchering and decomposition of the work. As beneficial as it ended up being, the means to getting there was awful. So much bullshit in class about the discussion of illumination in one or two points, dragging on and on and on. I really hated English class as much as it was simultaneously the only subject I excelled in. If only they had let us read through the book once on our own, discuss it in the span of a week and read it again. But even that is a terrible idea. Because it is only now, seven years after I first read and dismissed it, I finally see and appreciate the beauty in this story about childish, self-centered, disillusioned, irresponsible adults in their crazy lives, split dangerously between dream and reality, false hopes and expectations and dismay. I suppose it's a lesson in the perils of the American dream, a warning of the fickleness of human beings, the ever-present discrepancy between what is perceived and what actually is; and then there's a glimmer of hope in it, knowing that the only sane and level-headed person is the one recounting the tale.

I think I'll be re-reading all the books I read in high school now. Time to see them once again in a different light.

Fritz the Cat (1972)

Apologies in advance for the bewbs. Fritz the Cat was Ralph Bakshi's debut film, based on the comic strip Fritz the Cat by R. Crumb. As I'm unfamiliar with the original source material I can't reliably give a comparison or commentary on the content (I do know Crumb hated the film and said Bakshi misinterpreted his characters etc.) so all I can say is that this film offends and amuses on many levels. I think culturally, for its time it was significant because animation was dominated by Disney and geared towards family therefore squeaky clean and innocent, and Fritz the Cat is crude, depraved even, as it focuses on the hedonistic lifestyle of an idealistic 'cool cat' (pun not intended) and the satire of college students/revolutionaries/free thinkers and their views on racism, lifestyles and society. I mildly enjoyed the art - slightly experimental with the traditional animation juxtaposed with more Crumb-style images, and photo overlays and expressive watercolor (?) washes for transitional city scenes. Overall I wasn't crazy about the content of the film, but the message at the end was cool. I'm now just more interested in diving in to Crumb's original story, though I can't say I think I'll be prepared for it.

things that kept me going

This past week was rough; even with an average of 3 hours of sleep a night I managed to keep a level head but then everything seemed to go crazy at the 11th hour. It's over now, so forget about it, but I'm regretting not putting a little more effort into parts of my presentation. Again it's over, I really hate that lingering feeling of 'If only I'd done a little more, if only I hadn't taken that hour long nap.' It's too bad that my perfectionist tendencies are as fickle as the weather in southern California. (it's raining heavily at this moment, after a nice clear day). Anyway, the things that helped med out the most this week was my big old army coat, a hand-me-over beanie from my sister and burt's bees (which met its doom this morning). The second to last charrette of my undergraduate academic life, feels good to be done.

progress!

Hi. I just got really excited about reading up on/teaching myself how to make things glow in Photoshop. This newfound piece of knowledge will probably make my project 100x better. That is all. Plus, it is fun. Too excited to worry about getting sleep now!

tired...

This is exactly how I feel right now. Well to put it more accurately, how I felt when suddenly it was 3:00 AM after what felt like ten minutes after 2:00 AM. Time flies when there's not enough of it. Why am I up at this moment, you ask? I'm waiting for an email attachment to finish loading before I send it off. Actually I will be like the Westie in this picture probably 24 or 48 hours from now... if I'm feeling tired right now I haven't felt quite enough of it yet. Ugh, I'm hungry now, too.

source.

making progress...

Today was a good day so far. I discussed my final project with my instructor today and my goal is to finish designing it tonight (which probably means I'll be done with it midday tomorrow, but hopefully sooner). I have a list of items to produce for friday (everything's due at 6 pm then!) so a lot depends on tonight to make sure I get shit done. Leaving my chilly apartment to work at a friend's place where we will guzzle tea and scrounge up midnight snacks when we start slowing down. Tonight I'll need an extra pair of socks, or maybe my slippers wherever they are, my glasses, and I wish I still had a pair of fingerless gloves. My fingers get SO COLD when working away at a computer for 8+ hours at night, UGH. I wore a beanie today to ward off the cold wind that FREEZES my ears while biking home and my friend declared me 'hobo-chic.' Well now I am just complaining about the weather - Southern California is freezing over! Time to get work done now.

I want to snooze.

My sister caught me and BB snoozing after the first round of cooking on Thanksgiving!

Day 1 of final charrette and I'm already tired?! Working on my final design and I can't say I'm completely satisfied, but I'll have to give it more substance through the renderings and diagrams. AAAHH. Vibration collection, undulating lines and planes and mesh and flickering opacity all sounds cool but am I making it WORK? Drinking two huge mugs of vanilla and cinnamon black tea from Trader Joe's keeps me up with a subtle hint of nervous energy, but with the mess of rain yesterday and gusty winds today I want nothing more than to curl up in my now-warm bed (brought back a big thick blanket from home!) and sleep for a few hours to stave off the chill that sets in my bones from hours of working. I'm giving myself til 3 to finish this design, that's not much time!

bronze casting, part 7

All done! My finished dog BB in all her bronze glory. I need to photograph her on a black background to make the details really pop and I'll do that at the end of this week, when hell comes to its slow-burning end. (Stressed much?) All the little posts that extended from her ears and the gate on her back were sawed off with a chop saw (scary!) and then I buffed, grinded, scrubbed and broke off any extra metal I didn't want, using the bench grinder, angle grinder and a dremel. 3 hours flew by so quickly - I loved getting absorbed into the craft and I can see myself doing this all the time... I'm so glad I took this class this semester. Favorite and most fulfilling, hands down.

bronze casting, part 6

I have a few minutes to kill before I head off to work; I was so preoccupied with working on school projects last night that I didn't think to post this yesterday. The first photo my instructor took of me because he noticed I'd been documenting the entire project and said here I'll take some of you, and this is one of the clearer/less sillier ones. Breaking the forms that we had cast with bronze the previous week to reveal the piece inside! I took photos of my peers cleaning up their pieces but didn't do any other process shots after that. 3 hours of intense cleaning and my hands were too messy and I was too into it to stop and take pictures.

bronze casting, part 5

The night of the bronze pour took place from 7 that evening to 4 the next morning! Most of the time was spent heating the bronze in the foundry - I took that time to work on my thesis paper rather than hang around in the art studios with the rest of my sculpture class. The pour itself was amazing! I felt like I was casting the One Ring, no big deal. So awesome. I just want to cast bronze sculptures all the time now - every part of the process is just so enjoyable. Hard work, but so fulfilling.

happy thanksgiving

I'm still recovering from food coma I think. Is there such thing as a tryptophan-induced headache? Turkey hangover? I'm probably just massively dehydrated. This was the first year we did turkey! My sister was in charge of the bird and she did an amazing job. I headed the veggies and we had stuffed mushrooms, green beans with garlic & pine nuts, mashed potatoes, bacon brussels sprouts, a parsnip/rutabaga/turnip roast, and sweet potato fries! The last image is of a plate my mom packed for one of her workaholic friends to take over to her after dinner, which I thought was such a thoughtful gesture. It makes me happy to know that I have an amazing support group of friends and family and for some reason this year I got really mushy about it. And even when things get tense and stressful it is so necessary to take a deep breath, take a step back and re-evaluate the situation; and unless you're in with a bunch of really horrible or manipulative people, usually the one who is being overly critical or overbearing is doing so out of utmost concern and love for you.

I was going to do some work tonight, and shouldn't really take a day off but it's Thanksgiving... which this year I find I appreciate more than Christmas because it's simpler! But I still love Christmas. Anyway, instead of Black Friday madness I'm going to work a few hours at TJs in the morning and then come home and hopefully get done what I need to before the real weekend. I hope everyone is stuffed and happy and content today.

bronze casting, part 4

We lined up all our forms, made copious amounts of the gypsum/grog/walnut shell/etc. mixture and poured them into the forms. After they had set for about an hour, we loaded them in the kiln to be fired. Firing has a dual purpose - stabilizing the mold and melting out the wax!

fall berries

So tired, but uploading pictures from the weekend while blow-drying my hair (lest I wake up chilly from damp locks) prompted me to comment on how swiftly fall arrived this past week. Rain over the weekend and temperature highs in the 60s! Cold for Southern California and almost unbearable for me. I found moth holes in two of my favorite woolen clothing items, which makes me kick myself for not having protected those pieces better, so this calls for a winter project or two once school lets out for the semester. Speaking of school, I just got back from an intense session of work with two of my best friends in my year. I think I finally have a strategy and form figured out for my final project, and now I just have to DO it. I am a day behind in my personal schedule so no matter what I'll have to bring it back up to speed today.

bronze casting, part 3

Time for the face coat! The face coat is a mix of gypsum, ground walnut shell, grog, and another powder which I do not remember at the moment. Stir it all up so the ingredients are evenly distributed and then add to a some water in a cup. The fineness of the powders makes for a nice smooth paste which lets all the details get captured and reduces the formation of air bubbles for when the rest of the plaster gets poured into the mold (which is pictured above, made with chicken wire and two layers of tar paper). More on the mold-pouring next time!

re-focus

This is a crystal pendant that my sister wrapped and gave to me for my birthday this year. I wear it on the days I am feeling particularly troubled/turbulent, hoping that the 'healing properties' of the crystal might help me stay focused or clear-headed, or whatever they say crystals do. It doesn't work nearly as well as actually spending time with my sister though. Tonight she and I were supposed to get dinner at Chipotle, but she got full on sandwiches so since she had saved some for me, I went over to her place and ate them as we talked. I don't know what it was, but today I felt much more connected to her than I have felt in a while, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief, as drifting away from her is a terrible, emptying feeling. And with plans to do sisterly/fun/mischievous things this winter I am feeling so much more motivated once again to finish this semester strong. After my gigantic paper I fell into a two-day slump of wanting-to-do-nothing, but I need to clamber out of that lest I screw myself over for good. With my boyfriend coming to visit this weekend I have even more reason to work my butt off for the rest of the week. But alas, I need to get going to bed now, so I can get to work at 4 in the morning.