life’s not a paragraph

for my design issues and processes class, i have to interview an artist. we have to present what we learned, and then we have to create a piece of artwork inspired by the work of our artist (but it does not necessarily have to be the same medium).

my professor wants us to interview someone local so that we can go to their studios/meet with them personally. we went to plenty of galleries and museums before we had to chose, but i was really indecisive. hahaha i guess i hadn’t found someone that really inspired me. but i finally found one last week at the kayafas gallery in the south end (which was also the last gallery that we went to last week haha). her name is rania matar and she is a photographer. her work is absolutely breathtaking. the images that i saw were of women and children in the middle east, and i am pretty sure they were from her series on the palestinian refugee camps. she is actually lebanese, but she lives in Boston now. she mostly takes pictures of people. she has quite a few series from the middle east, but she also has a few from america including one about soccer moms and another about islam in the united states.

i emailed her the other day and she replied saying that she would be able to speak with me!! i am so excited! i am going to be super nervous when it’s time for me to go meet her, but i know that she is going to be so interesting to talk to!

as a class, we have already prepared some basic questions to ask our artists. but i have already added a whole bunch of more specific ones to ask her! she is very busy next week, so our visit is going to be short. i am going to have to figure out which questions are the most important ones so i a make sure that i have time to ask them!

check out her work here: rania matar photography she’s great!

i have been quite the busy bee lately. i already wrote about my trip to worcester last weekend. the week went by super fast because it was only three days! and now i am going back to boston on the boston express bus because i came home for the night! ah! craziness!

i had to come home last night because i had a doctor’s appointment and a hair appointment this morning. i came home directly after work yesterday afternoon. my mom picked me up and we went in search of prismacolor colored pencils. unfortunately, they were more expensive hear than what i heard they were at utrecht in boston. then my mom and my sister went out to dinner at bertuccis! ugh i love bertuccis! the rolls! the pizza! yummy yummy yummy! haha

i didn’t get to sleep in this morning, but i really needed to go to the eye doctor and get my hair cut. haha and now i am heading back to boston with a new pair of glasses (well not technically, i have to wait for them to send them to me…) and a new hair cut! haha

tomorrow is a homework day. i have to wake up early and head over to the new england school of art and design building to finish my 3D project. and then after that i need to start my essay for spanish. it’s due thursday and i have five pages to write…. at least i have my outline done. tomorrow is going to be work work work!

now i know, it’s only february but it’s gotten a bit warmer out -45 degrees farenheit! (… hey- it’s all relative). and i’m getting a bit of spring fever. i love the spring. the sun, the colors, the smells. ah! i can’t wait! (i can wait for the bugs though :/)

but really, all i want to do is wear some sandals. haha maybe a skirt without leggings and sandals. i’d be so happy!! unfortunately, it’s still going to be awhile until i can, so i am going to have to be happy with the little amount of warmth we have been given right now.

while i wait i am going to reminisce…. it’s been awhile since i have done a blog with photos. and since i’ve been thinking about spring, i’ll add in some images from my (warm) spring break last year. my roommate and i backpacked through southern spain. our first stop was granada (lower right of spain, in between gibraltar and murcia). we took a night bus that left at midnight from madrid and arrived at six am. it was super early so the city was still asleep. although we were exhausted, it was way too early to check into the hostel. instead we found energy in our excitement and explore the city while the sun was rising. the city is beautiful in general. but in the hazy light of the sunrise, it took on a sort of magical quality. it was like we had travelled back in time. needless to say, i took a million pictures! here are some of my favorites:

sunrise in granada

waiting for the city to wake up. plaza de nueva.

one of the great things i love about living in the city is the ability to escape it every once in awhile.

yes, i know. that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but it goes for any place. even if you love where you live, sometimes it’s really nice to just go somewhere else for a few days. my escape this weekend was to worcester. i know quite a few people there. well, four to be exact. but they are all good friends. and the hardest thing is that when i go there, i don’t really have time to visit them all. :/

this weekend it was leidy and val’s turn. i’ve talked about leidy before. we used to go exploring coffee shops on monday afternoons. unfortunately, this little tradition had to end. schedule conflicts. thankfully, we have a class together this semester, but class doesn’t really allow a lot of talking. so we catch up with sleepovers. most of the time she sleeps over here. it makes sense. usually she has to do something here during the day she has no class… perfect excuse for a sleepover fiesta! hahaha

it had been awhile since i had seen her mom and her sister so i decided to make a trip! they’re so great! i always feel like i am a part of the family whenever i am there. after a relatively short 1.5 hour train ride on friday night, i was there! leidy, her sister, and i just hung out at a cafe. her boyfriend and his suite mates met us there. i had only met her boyfriend once so i was really great to really talk to the guy i hear so much about on tuesday and thursday mornings. her mom took us out for brazilian food on saturday afternoon. it was delicious. i just loved it. and we got this great strawberry cake… ahhh i’m getting hungry just thinking about it!

on saturday night i headed over to my friend val’s house. she goes to the worcester polytechnic institute. a few of my other friends from high school were coming down from their respective schools in vermont and maine to visit and celebrate our single-ness together! hahaha actually, we really just used it as an excuse to make the trip and visit. it had been awhile since i had seen them all and i was so glad that we got to hang out. i realized just how much i missed them and how bad i have been at keeping in contact with them. my communication bad habits definitely need to change!!

overall it was a super great weekend. i came back to boston a bit refreshed and ready to take on city life once more…. although i might start making more trips out to worcester. for some reason, i really like it there. haha

on monday, my friend leidy and i went to the annual middle eastern music festival at the berklee performance center. i love middle eastern music! and thankfully so does leidy! haha my mom sent me an email a few months ago about some of the shows coming to berklee. they have a few shows a week actually. most of them are only $10 (some of the more popular artists are more).

the middle eastern music festival was incredible. half of the show was the middle eastern fusion group from berklee. they were really talented (but i mean what else would you expect from berklee?). it was really interesting because when you looked at the program almost all of the students were foreign. out of the fifteen or twenty kids in the group, five of them were from america! ahaha most of them were from turkey which makes sense, but then there were some from italy and japan too. the professor who ran it was actually from lebanon.

in the second half, a really famous clarinetist from turkey played, along with a band from new york called the new york gypsy all stars. i guess this clarinestist has basically started his own style of clarinet music and has a worldwide following. now i don’t know a lot about music. i played the flute in middle school and for a year in high school. so i know a bit, but it’s been awhile since i’ve played. but i could still tell that this man had incredible talent. some of the notes he played were just so clear and crisp, they gave me goosebumps.

the new york gypsy allstars were really great too. i am probably going to buy their cd when it comes out. they were also very international. two americans. a macedonian. and a greek. i think that’s why they had such a great rhythm. they all bring something different to the band. the concert was about two and a half hours, but i really wish it lasted longer. i am definitely going to start going to more concerts at berklee!

i know that i haven’t talked about it much recently in this blog, but i have been missing spain like crazy. i miss the lifestyle, the warmer weather, the 24/7 spanish, and most of all, i miss all the people that i was with there. thankfully i am not the only one. while having lunch with my friends alyson and kelly (who i hadn’t seen in forever), they told me how a bunch of people were going over to our mutual friend janet’s house to have a little tapas night. i almost jumped up and down with joy!

it was absolutely wonderful. we had queso manchego (a type of cheese), tortilla de patatas (spanish omelette), and aceitunas (olives). even janet’s apartment was set up similar to her one in spain. i almost believed that i was back in madrid. and i got to catch up with a lot of people that i haven’t seen in a while. our friend greg went to visit madrid over winter break so i got to here all about his time there. it was exactly what i needed. we are going to have to do it more often.

alright… so i am a bit behind on my posts. but i am going to start from the stuff that occurred at the beginning of the weekend and work my way towards today. let’s begin with friday.

so it is the beginning of another month and that means gallery openings. i don’t know how long you have been reading this but i’ll remind you that the first friday of every month is when the new shows/installations open in the south end. i went for the first time in december. so this time around i knew the drill and i lead a bunch of my neophyte friends to the cluster of galleries on and around thayer st. last time, i went a little late. but my design issues and processes professor informed the class that the gallery times were from around five-seven p.m. give or take a hour.

we ended up going around six because some of us had to work and we arrived smack dab in the middle of the excitement. we went to la galería cubana (a cuban gallery with only cuban artwork) because i am currently reading cuban literature (check out edmundo desnoes or reinaldo arenas if your interested) in my spanish class, so even though i had been to the gallery before, i now have a bit of a different perspective and a bit more insight into cuban culture. the paintings and photographs are beautiful and i definitely felt like i had a better ability to analyze the pieces with my new knowledge. i’ve found that it always helps to know some history when looking at any art work whether it’s a painting or a piece of literature; it creates just one more layer of understanding since you’re able to relate some of the events/images to the creator’s life events.

then we went to a few other galleries i had never been before. we saw this great jewelry artist named melissa finelli. her stuff was so interesting and unique while being completely practical (for the most part). then we headed over to the “artist dorms” as i like to call them. haha basically the building seems to be a renovated warehouse filled with artist studios. on first fridays, most of the artists open their doors and welcome people in with some cheese and crackers or little candies. if you have the money, you can buy pieces. i just like to go, look around, and talk to a few of the artists. i spoke to this one woman who called herself a color realist. most of the paintings she had on display were of beautiful country sides viewed through a series of glasses (wine glasses, short liquor glasses, etc). they were beautiful and bright. i was really intrigued by the idea of these glasses and i asked her why she decided to feature glass as her main subject matter. she replied that one day she was in tuscany and just happened to look through her wine glass at the villa she was at and she fell in love the way the images reflected in the glass. i really love being able to ask the artist about their work. if she hadn’t been there i would’ve never known the reason for the glasses!

so art school isn’t all fun and games. creating art is challenging. a challenge is good. it makes you think, makes you push yourself past your limits. but sometimes a challenge can turn into complete frustration. this weekend, my 3D class is making me very frustrated. our assignment this weekend is to create three 3D geometric shapes out of bristol board (which is kind of like oaktag). i was going to try to avoid making a plain, unoriginal geometric shape. spice it up a bit. except geometry is much easier in theory.

i spent about an hour and a half thursday night trying to make this rectangular, pyramidal type shape i sketched in class. lots of measurements, cuts, and wrong angles later, i had two failed attempts at making this shape. so i gave up and moved on to the next one.

i don’t like to give up, but i just felt like this was slightly out of my reach. without direction or the help of a geometry wiz, i don’t think i can figure out how to make this shape. or at least, i don’t have the time to sit down and figure it out. unfortunately, i am going to have to leave this shape in my sketch book, and maybe with a bit more experience in geometric shape making, i can make it later. :/

i realized a few days ago how much i really love to draw. well, obviously i kind of have to like drawing as an art major. but now that the drawing class has moved on to value and pastels, i realized i forgot how much i love to draw. for the first few classes we only used gray charcoals, but i am really excited to use color! monday we started using some color. my professor set up a composition of half black and white, half color objects. so i guess you could say she is easing us into color. haha

i didn’t have a chance to finish it class, so i finished this afternoon. i am actually really pleased with it. the color pops so much against the other gray objects. we are going to do a full color composition tomorrow. i have some experience with color pastels. i used them a lot during my high school drawing courses, but i think it’s good that my professor is making us go step by step because, although sometimes i get a bit impatient, it’s helping me review the process and re-evaluate the way i use pastels. it’s going to help me learn new ways to use the medium and develop new techniques. maybe i’ll modify my style in the process. it’s interesting to walk around the room at the end of a class and see the way everyone else draws. everyone’s style is so distinct. some people cross-hatch, others scribble. personally, i smudge. haha it’s going to be really cool to see how everyone else’s style develops too.

happy february! the first month of the new year is over. strange, right?

even thought this weekend was freezing, i still managed to have some fun. i don’t know if i mentioned this before, but i love food. i don’t love food in the way that i stuff food in my mouth all the time; i mean, i love food in the sense that i like the preparation, the process, the presentation, and the meal itself. and this weekend was all about the food.

some of my friends came over on thursday for pizza and brownies. all of us had never really hung out outside of classes, but we had so much fun. new friends are always great. saturday afternoon my friend alexsa had a potluck at her apartment. i made moudjendra, a middle eastern lentils and rice dish, which is delicious, especially for us vegetarians. 🙂 she and marielle made grilled cheese and pasta, evan made stuffing, and tim and chris brought dessert. it was absolutely wonderful. i was so full. hahaha and then to top the weekend off, a bunch of us went to the south street diner for brunch. it’s been around since 1947, so it’s a pretty authentic diner. although it was a bit pricey for breakfast food, it was really good. and i guess it’s open 24 hrs. a day which is perfect for those late night binges. but the places is pretty small, so i have a feeling that at one a.m. on a saturday night, it can get pretty crowded.

overall, it was a great weekend filled with good food and great friends. this weekend there are the gallery openings and hopefully my friend chelsea is coming down from maine to visit! it looks like it’s going be another great one! but now i just have to get through the week… haha