drawing final

if me and closure got along, this critique would have done it.

fabienne talked about just how much i have grown this past year, in drawing and in general. and not growth in a cliched sense of the term. but real, nitty gritty growth you can feel. and i think that is what college is all about. it's overwhelming. even my hair and my clothes have changed, she says. i visibly more comfortable with where i am at.

we talked about my work and social justice. and she brought up kate. it's crazy to think that it was a whole school year ago that i got here, and brought all of that history with me. and no one knew. the first full day of drawing, fabienne had everyone share a piece they had done that represented them, and a piece by an artist that they liked. the piece i shared of my own was advokate. i still can't believe i actually shared it. it was me at my most vulnerable. but i knew i had to put it out there in the atmosphere. i needed to. but in the same breath i shared calliebotte's "rainy day, paris street" as my favorite piece. fabienne challenged me right off the bat. how could those two possibly relate? how could i find pleasure in a painting that simply hung on a wall when all the art that i did was about actually getting things done? i froze. i remember answering by saying that i didn't exactly know, but it was something i hoped to figure out this year. and i think i have gotten closer to a resolution.

fabienne told me she gets so excited when she finds a student who pushes that envelope. and we both agreed with how lucky i am to have found a place where that dialogue exists. when she went to school, that wasn't heard of. and especially in grad school, she just felt frustrated. there was no room in the technical and conceptual rigor of art school for art that screamed social justice. and coming from canada to the us, she realized the urgency of such art. here, she said, those issues surround you even more intensely. it's almost impossible to separate your art from these things, but at the same time, it's that much harder to find harmony between the two.

she said the challenge for me will be to keep challenging myself for the next three years. to not let mica get too easy. to study abroad. and i think next year will be drastically different. actually taking graphic design classes will be totally different for me. and i am so glad that i have had the foundation of classes like drawing, because i know that my idea of design does not have to be limited by a computer.

my final was a project i never would have done first semester. first semester was about assignments. and feeling things out. and making typical art. i finished in december and realized that i was playing it way too safe. so i came back in january and sought to not only blur the lines between classes, but to blur the lines between my life and my art. if i felt something, thought something, i wanted my art to be a direct composite of those things. this final built off of a very open ended assignment about presences and context. it was due the day i got back from states. so i had this elaborate plan to take advantage of all of the time in transit and draw in the airport. i wanted to pick text as my presence (or more fundamentally, just a letter itself) pull it out of context, and abstract everything around it. i got one done on the way to traverse city. and i started to realize it was a bad idea. i was letting art interefere with my ability to experience something huge. why would i worry about an assignment when my life right now was about spending a weekend in emmanuel's presence? coming from the airport after picking up emmanuel, we drove by these park benches and picnic tables all leaning up against each other. the ice had just thawed on the lake behind them. and these arrangements spotted the side of the road for at least a quarter of a mile. it was the most beautiful thing. simple compositions. it was like my drawing project just got handed to me. which does not happen often, so i took advantage of it. so my final became about that instance of finding the art in the everyday. and actually installing it in a corner of my drawing room - coming in the night before and responding to the space and getting it done. i love making art that way.

one down, four to go.

drawing crit

our final project for drawing was a narrative, using figure drawings from in class as a prompt, & working big (5 ft x 5 ft.) i got a studio for this one, hoping that it would give me a chance to separate drawing from the rest of the assignments i was working on in my room... and to truly focus and spread out. that was a good idea.

i decided the only way i could dive into the term narrative was to pick a song as a basis. i listened to it over and over again. i tried to find marks that would mimic the music. i thought about distance. and solitude. this was a spilling out for me of so many comments/critiques/thoughts: using layering, but having each layer be distinctly different. not worrying so much about starting light... skipping the vine and going straight to compressed charcoal. being decisive with marks. experimenting with acrylic (and realizing it doesn't work so well with charcoal.) my inspiration was an exercise we did in class. our model would pose and we would draw for 30 seconds, and then each rotate to the easel next to us and continue the drawing for that person. by the time 10 people had added to it, things started getting messy. you would look at the drawing and think that there was nothing that could possibly fix it. but then someone would add something, just one mark to make a difference, and it would completely bring the piece back to life. that kind of surrender of control, so not me, was exactly what i needed to embrace when drawing.

it was so cool to pull everything from the semester together and curate it. it doesn't seem like much when you're wrapped up in it all, but when you look back at everything you realize how much you really did. drawing was definitely a class that i struggled with first semester. not so much that it was hard, but that i knew i was lacking passion for it. it seemed like just a requirement that i had to get through to get to the good stuff. but when i see how much i have grown in just a semester, i am so glad that i'll have drawing two next semester. it's shaking things up for me, which is always a good thing. i'm constantly questioning my definition of drawing, and beginning to realize that i don't have to keep it separate from the rest of how i create.

if i were a font, what font would i be?

my metaphorical self-portrait from drawing today.

if i were a font, i would have to go with a bold all caps helvetica, a little bit of adobe garamond, with some signature up in there.

i love it here

i feel like such a dork to keep saying how much i love mica. if ben ever reads this he'll make fun of me. but i really do love it here. the love is currently gushing... but ask me again a few weeks/projects/crits later and the love could be considerably less. (and in such an instance i have my keri smith artist's survival kit on standby. http://www.kerismith.com/ask.html.)

so far i've had two classes- drawing I & the cap elective. yesterday was odd... before the class my mom said that the class wouldn't take the whole time, that the professor would probably just go over a syllabus and basic introductions. i laughed at such a high school expectation and figured that i would be doing some crazy hard still life right off the bat. but, momsie was right. the class didn't even make it to the dinner break. but i love the teacher, fabienne. she's super cute, originally from montreal (right up my ally), and new to mica. i'm kinda glad she's new to the class too... and i liked everything she had to say about class expectations. my first homework assignment is to bring in images of pieces by 2+ artists i like, bring in something i've done (not necessarily an art project, could be an essay, etc.), & write a short paragraph on what drawing is to me. i was excited about the assignment. but then i started wondering if i should be upset that it's not harder. (on top of that, i won't have the class again for two weeks because of labor day.) i guess part of me is still scared to formally get started, especially with something like drawing. i didn't really "draw" at all this summer. i really just need to jump in.



today's class was finding baltimore, part of the community arts partnership program. and i am so glad i chose to take that class. it is exactly what i had hoped it would be. this class actually took every minute (& then some) that was given to us. and i got an email last night telling me that the class moved from the fox building to brown center. so our class room was a super cool , all glass (there actually was a bullet hole in the glass- but that just lent itself to a discussion on the baltimore community), corner room on the third floor overlooking campus. and to get to it i got to walk by the graphic design bulletin boards and see some work. it was seeing that sort of stuff at the open house that inspired me so much. i can't wait until that building and the graphic design department becomes my home. sorry, off on a tangent... we got started right away, creating a self map. i still want to work on mine more (i have some ideas i want to experiment with.) the concept of self mapping is intimidating but really intriguing. sometimes you forget how intricate you are... until someone asks you to put it all down on a sheet of paper.



after class i went on a wild goose chase from building to building, office to office, trying to fill out forms for my work study (which i should have done the first day i was here, and somehow missed taking care of. wonder what else i had on my mind...) i found out that i'm going to be working with student activities. so perfect! and the girl i have as a contact is the one who basically planned orientation, so i've at least seen her around. i also got my first mica sketchbook at the school store. this one is just for cap, so i'm planning on deconstructing the cover & putting some of the many baltimore maps i have to use.

right now: i'm hungry. so i'm going to meyerhoff to eat before it closes...