good words.

be the post it.

my first project for elements is to "take an object which has specific visual information and through the use of my own imagination change the way it is seen." i chose post-its. practical, yet fun. accepting of my inner note taker and to do list maker. very graphic. and i also have a thing for using everyday office supplies in art. so it works all around.

this is a three week project... starting with 10 pieces, continuing with five more, and ending with a final version. and there are no rules. just play.


and i have been. i bought a huge roll of yellow tracing paper. (could it be the new acetate? so many possibilities.) i covered an entire corner of the dorm from floor to ceiling with post-its. i found a post-it colored dress suit from the thrift store (very out of my element) that i will never wear in public, but was cheap enough (half off labor day sale) to buy just for a post-it photo shoot. and i'm staring right now at a huge white square canvas just begging for a splash of post-it yellow paint...

elements of visual thinking sketchbook

critiques and caves

the past few classes and critiques have been so invigorating. here's what i wrote down on my paper during our critique of the free speech project in electronic media and culture (emac):

"this is what being in an art school is all about. the vehicle of the critique to take discussion anywhere - envoke thoughts that overwhelm and get the wheels in your brain turning. so much more powerful than a lecture hall or disconnected reading assignments. there are so many layers of meaning (what it evokes for the artist and their intentions, what others say about it, and then how it makes you feel) when you see before you say."

ben called me yesterday, for whatever reason. (actually, i think he just wanted to repeat some of the jokes he had heard from krienbring to a fresh audience.) he was half playing madden, half sharing with me his first two days of school. so sweet. he loves kreinbring (no suprise there) & mumbled something about reading about a cave. i freaked out... it's crazy to think that i read plato's "the allegory of the cave" as a sophomore, too. it's one of those good old xeroxed reading packets completely covered in notes that i pull out from time to time, and it always has new meaning. like today in elements of visual thinking. someone brought it up while discussing john berger's "ways of seeing." what a coincidence, kip. i guess the stuff you learn in high school really is important. (but then again, it is plato and not the periodic table.)

roland park

the first community on the cap tour schedule was roland park. in the context of baltimore, it was a surprise. just read their "national register of historic places" sign. i guess in a way it should not surprise me at all. not that different from oakland county. and there wouldn't be an oakland county without a detroit.

roland park was the first planned suburban community in america. crazy. and just the mention of fredrick law olmsted (even if he's jr.) is enough to entitle the community a claim to fame. for all the innovation in site design and planning, roland park was admittedly less than innovative in "social dimensions." which was still obvious more than 100 years after its conception. it's amazing how just a matter of blocks can change everything in baltimore.

as far as i've interpreted it, the concept of our cap "tours" is to find the essence of any given community... using whatever tool we deem necessary: photography, note taking, interviewing, sketching, etc. amid all the researching & learning i did in the community, i learned little things about myself. like... i tend to want to observe from the sidelines. i'm much more comfortable soaking things in as a wall flower. but comfort zones are crap. it took me back to my struggles with debriefing. i need to have a more genuine interest in other people. i need to actually want to talk to them & know their story. that will take time.

i found myself really interested in the schools in the area. mostly private, prestigious, and extremely expensive. but even the roland park public school looked classy. i'm anticipating what i saw today will be night and day compared to the typical baltimore public school that i might run into on other cap tours. i was able to get into two of the "roland park five" (school doesn't start until tomorrow) - gilman school and roland park county school. there was so much there... i still need to process it all. but i'm excited. it will be interesting what, if anything at all, could be pulled from those elite private schools and applied to the floundering baltimore school system. and to see what art can do to benefit a community that already seems to have it all.

labor day weekend snapshots

my first mica t-shirt... so exciting! from "urban plunge," the community service day saturday morning. the shirt made all of the manual labor (removing vines from trees, picking up trash, etc.) worth it. i dragged tara along with me... so we made it fun.


we wanted to pose with a machete, but this little clipper was the best we could do.


after a morning of hard work, we cranked up the jams, got out the cookies, opened the windows, and did what we do best. paint. the homosote board in the living room is now a lovely shade of "jazzy pink." it really changes the whole mood of our little apartment. and now we have a place to hang up our stuff in style. (like our running tally of a kid we like to call "the whistler." if he walks by whistling, that's a tally. bonus points if he whistles whilst on unicycle.)


and... tara finally posed for me in the port-a-potty we walk by on the way to "the hoff" everyday. such a brave soul.

not mentioned above due to lack of photographic documentation: watching "stranger than fiction" (w/ will ferrell) on the commons lawn, utrecht & thrift store shopping, my first "coffee house" (a monthly student showcase @ mica) and being awaken at 2:34 in the morning by a large bearded man tap dancing next door.

you have not lived until you have experienced...

cathy had a problem with me & tara liking kanye west (who doesn't like kanye?) but she just happened to have a copy of r. kelly's "trapped in the closet" in her personal dvd collection. chapters 1-12. so we had to watch it. (& again afterwards, but with commentary.) pure genius. cliff hangers, music you can dance to, complex characters, humor, rhyming, real life scenarios.... it has it all. something you have to see to believe.