Drawing Project

This is for yet another "About the Body" assignment. I changed my idea very last-minute, though I think I'm happy with how it turned out. I've never made anything "funny" before, at least not here.Cannibalism is hilarious, right? It's sharpie on Maidstone. I made him as piggy and de-individualized as I could- short, stubby legs, plump midriff, delicious arms, beady pig-eyes. Those cuts are mostly taken from Pork butchery charts, so as far as I know they may very well be accurate. Except for man-hocks, I pulled that one out of thin air (my ass, actually).

Body Project Update (plus some hot inter-blog action)

I can't believe I actually am involved in two blogs. While I don't consider this a "blog" so much as a place on the web where I log things... I've already lost myself. Anyways, I promised all kinds of sweet action in this entry, so here goes:

Spray foaming before:

After:

They look so tasty, I think

Just like custard spilling out of my head (puke)


And the semi-finished product

It's not exactly what I envisioned, I think if the squares were cut again into four pieces (which was how I originally measured) it would have been more visually successful, but I also know the plaster would have just shredded, and it would have taken way longer, and like 70 pieces of dowel more. Maybe in a different medium.

I also promised to cross-post from my other blog, which feels so wrong, I'll have you know.

Trains

I was watching a movie the other night (Garden State), and feeling particularly sensitive to the universe and the floating whims of emotion. Drifting out of the near-infinite possible options came a little twinge of homesickness. I watched this movie fairly often in high school, particularly when I was feeling philosophical, sentimental, or just plain depressed. It always provided just the right not-quite pick me up, and allowed me to get on with my life feeling good about not feeling good, and that night it really set my heart back in those quiet nights in my parent’s basement.

I would say, at least among the people that I know, that I am far from the only person who feels this way about Garden State. I’m not quite sure I would call it my generation’s “coming of age” story, but I might. Our generation’s emotional equalizer, and unifier, for the sake of this post. I picked up on something that I had never consciously heard in the movie before, a really strange thing to have taken for granted, and an even more improbable emotional trigger: the sound of trains.

It sent me down this really interesting train (I apologize for that one) of thought. I’m sure I’m not the only person here from a smaller city (Regina), and if the trains are the same in New Jersey as they are in Regina, then it stands to reason that they are the same in probably every town with rails nearby in North America. It’s the one thing that we all have in common. The one soothing, and occasionally frustrating, sound on an otherwise ordinary night. The one you heard (hypothetically):
-When you went for a walk in the park with your first girl/boyfriend
-At your little league baseball/teeball/softball games
-Raking leaves, then jumping in the aftermath
-Trick-or-treating
-At picnics
-Sitting on the roof watching the sunset
-Golfing with your dad (even if you hated it, I know you did it)
-Sitting around a campfire with your friends
-Staying up late painting in your garage

It’s the one sound that stuck with us for our entire lives. I don’t mean to sound sycophantic, but before you come here, remember to take in everything you possibly can. These visceral, permanent memories are the most important ones to have with you, because it’s not the most obvious emotion that makes the best statement- it’s the most meaningful, nuanced, and unattainable, and the memories of these unattainables, that are such powerful universal triggers. And you should find as many of them in your home as you can, before you move on to the next experience, and the next set of unattainables.

Reading Week

In this, my inaugural blog, I thought a lot about what I would have liked to know this time last year, when I was in the process of applying for ACAD, then not sleeping or eating until the morning I got my acceptance letter. What would have re-assured me, or answered all those burning questions that were slowly, but quite assuredly, killing me?

Would I have wanted to know about the classes? Sure. I would have asked my future-self “am I good enough?”, to which I would scoff, smile, and say “I don’t know, and that’s not really important. You have to let go of the idea that there is a good enough if you ever want to please yourself (because, at the end of the day, you’re the only person that it really matters to).” My past self would have hated that answer, it would feed his self-indulgent ennui, and because I know myself fairly well, my past self would have posed a question that I couldn’t turn around on him. “What’s the workload like?”, I might ask. The answer would be “Staggering, at times, but never unenjoyable. Even on the latest night, doing the most frustrating assignment, you’re still making art, which is so much more than can be said for any other grueling experience you’ve ever endured”. I might not have liked that answer either, but it would have planted a seed that would grow slowly, and sprout exactly yesterday with the realization that the only way I am ever going to finish all the work I have to do is if I stay up late every night this next week…. wait, it’s Reading Week! Upon this revelation, I sat down, cracked a carton of chocolate milk and toasted the wisdom of college and university administrators nationwide.

Reading Week is a curious complication in the semester. It doesn’t have an equivalent in the first semester; you don’t have to go to school for an entire week, and yet most of us are going to choose to actually read something over the course of that one week. Past self would complain, say “I’d rather go snowboarding; besides, I can get it all done later”. The truly wonderful thing about reading week is that past self is right. You could do nothing and be alright. But you have the luxury of choosing to do what you want, be it something or nothing, at a crucial point in the semester.

So, to whoever chooses to read this, I will see you after Reading Week, and I really hope you choose to do whatever you want to, because you’ve earned it.

Being Sick

“School” is such a blanket concept. We all have our own signifieds that come to mind when we think of the word, but I would be willing to bet that our personal definitions aren’t that far off from the next person’s, namely in that by the time you’ve been doing it for thirteen years, it suddenly becomes less important. You take it for granted. Something happens when you graduate from high school, though. You go from a place of generalized learning, where nothing you did was probably that hard, and you were doing so much of it, what difference would it make if you missed just one class? To a place of so-called higher learning, which really means specialized learning. Individual classes become more important. Not only is it infinitely more difficult to get caught up on the three hour Art History lecture than it might have been even with your hardest class in high school (Calculus, probably), but you’re also paying the school roughly 7 dollars an hour to be there. Skipping hurts, bad. That’s why you don’t do it. But even the most studious student will have a day where they simply can’t get out of bed. This has been me for the last two weeks now- definitely not studious, but braindead, barely capable of recalling previously remembered information, but utterly incapable of any creative synthesis. This is a problem at art school.

Thankfully, the faculty is incredibly understanding (and probably more than a little bit afraid of my slobbering, foot-dragging, snot-infested, virulent, contagious biome), but taking a financial hit, on top of a dignity-bruiser? All of that can turn you into a shadow of your former self. A shadow smelling of vicks vapor rub and orange juice, huddled in the darkest corner of the quietest place you can find, under eight blankets, or possibly in a bathtub. I guess the moral of this post is this: Don’t skip school! But more importantly, you must never get sick.

That's all.

Sculpture Project: About the Body

I've decided it's about time I picked things up around here, and gave a real effort on one of these. So here goes. This is my current sculpture project, all interesting wip's I think.

This all began with these two, which have been here before:

After they finished scaring the shit out of me, and I finished wearing them to amuse myself and scare the shit out of other people, they became this:

This was the worst puzzle ever, by the way.

And this:

Now, less terrifying, you say? Consider that I now effectively have this guy sitting on my desk:

Except that's my face in there.

Anyways, I thenproceeded to
paint them.
The idea is that the little squares of Tom get attached to the Hellraiser spikes, then when you look at the whole thing through a pinhole, it all gets blurred together to form a cohesive-ish face. It's about big ideas coming together, I guess. If I had to say something about it, that's what I'd say.

That guy's barely in the movie anyways, right? ...right?

Commemorating:

My first risky move. That's what.

Drawing Class

I feel this speaks for itself.

Face casting

My doppelgangers. They are so weird, something about looking at oneself without a mirror is extremely unsettling. Looking at two of oneself is even scarier.