Inside the Junk Drawer

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Mar
4

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Before Spring Break Rush

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Drawing Structure and Expression II:
Finished my dark-sketch drawing. I’ve also noticed all of my work has similar compositions. I should change this. Our Midterm is on next Wednesday, so on Monday I’ll have to make my drawings presentable (straight borders, cropping, etc). Also found out towards the end of class that I really missed sketching still lives. This is pretty funny considering how much I was sick of them by the end of freshman year.

Advanced Painting:
We looked at our collages last week. Apparently, I have an interest in cave-like spaces, drama, and camouflage. The cave-like space really bugged me. I’m currently focused on creating space and depth. I didn’t want it to be shallow-I want to be able to move around. I didn’t end up using any of Linda’s suggestions and tried to radically change my composition. I kept the same colors, but made the space really vast. It turned into a landscape-I put something like mountains and water in it.
When I stopped, I hated it. I snuck a glance at it on Monday and went from hate to dislike. I always hate my paintings right after I finish them, but by the time next Friday comes around, I find them less horrible. Having said that, I still don’t like my painting. Linda will critique them Friday, so that should help. I also have two other paintings in which to correct my errors. I think that’s why I love painting: if the first painting is crap, simply do another. That’s it. You’re always learning.

Western Art II:
Handed in my Renaissance paper this morning. I only had time to do three drafts. Then, Afshan, our professor, started listing Renaissance principles I hadn’t even thought of. The material isn’t as clear-cut as Western Art I: it’s all bleeding together in my brain. It also doesn’t help that High Renaissance, Mannerism, and Baroque over lap each other. Or that I was reading two chapters ahead in an attempt to get all my work done in time: that can’t have helped either. I really have to make my flash cards and try to get all this information straight in my head.

Literature II:
We had our Midterm on Tuesday. It consisted of three essay questions. The first confused me, but I felt like I knew more about the other two. Too bad the first was more points the others. I also got my Wordsworth paper back and my grade wasn’t what I hoped it to be. This is after he pretty much freaked me out with a long speech about getting work done on time, and blah blah blah on the writing center, and he was disappointed in us. Then he didn’t pass the essays until the end of class, so I had fun trying not to brood on it and pay attention to the rest of the lesson.  I still have another two-page paper and a five-page paper left, so that gives me room to recover. Also, they’re not being composed on poetry, so I think I have a better shot.

He also said my writing was stiff. This makes sense-I felt stiff when I was writing it. I couldn’t get anything to flow right because I really couldn’t figure out what I was saying-or it all sounded wrong. I probably should have done another draft or two, but really didn’t have the time.

Social Ethics:
Our midterm has also been completed for this class (he also let us prepare part three ahead of time, so I got to leave forty minutes early. I just hope it was done correctly. I always doubt myself when teachers say ‘if you think its good enough’. I mean come on.) The homework for this week is related to justice. It also and  seems like he wants us to re-read chapters. Professor Fried already assigned the chapters from politics and gave out the exact same questions, so I’m a bit confused. On the other hand, he also never assigns two book assignments, which he did this week, so I’m not really sure what to think. I read everything, so I guess it will be fine either way. I also have to start my electronic journal to keep my process on my lab experiment. I made some progress today and have to remember to write it down.

Library:
Yesterday, I put away some books and did some shelf reading. Shelf reading is when you make sure all the call numbers are in the correct order, a.k.a all the books are in the right place. I also talked to Ellen about a couple of Stephen King novels. (Dark Tower is still the best).

Front Desk:
I’ve been running around all day. I watched the desk for a while, put up some signs dealing with Spring break hours, wrote two drafts for this, and helped Linda clean up after the Green Design show finished up downstairs. Green Design is a show the Interior Design department runs in the Atrium downstairs once a year. I don’t know that much about it, but we have stuff up on the website if you’re curious. It was a lot of fun getting the moving walls into the elevator (I’m not being sarcastic when I’m writing this: seriously-talking to the people that shared the elevator with me was entertaining.)
Also, I just found out from Josh that I can’t scan any slides tonight because there’s still a class in the conference room. Oh boy…

Other Note:
Now I’m waking up before my alarm is going off. Like an hour before. No idea why. Might be anxiety related-I hate being late-but it could also be because my roommate and I were close to having a disagreement about my coffee pot. My brain is the per-verbal junk drawer, so all this stuff gets mixed together-who knows.
My hunter socks are also falling apart. I’ve lost three now. I keep ripping through the heel. I’m wondering if it’s because they’re old or because of my black shoes (they only have given out while I was wearing those). The Plan right now is to go get some at the Army Barrack-like place (I think its called something else-like Army Store-my memory is crap) and pick up some more. There’s also a Borders there, so I want to check if they have books 4, 5, and 6 of a series I’m reading. I went through six hundred pages in two days and have been trying to make the third book last the rest of the week. So far, I’ve pretty much succeeded.

Nov
6

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[Insert Epic Title Here]

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       On Wednesday, I pretty much ruined my structural drawing. Gabe says it’s going to be okay, but I don’t really believe her right now. I’m extremely frustrated and panicky when I think about it. I took out three pastel books from the library and did a small self portrait to try and boost my confidence level. I just felt incredibly lost with the colors and type of mark making…part of me wishes she’d write all the colors down instead of just showing us for a couple of minutes. The self portrait needs a bit of work (my clothing seems to be floating), but I think I can fix it. The next one I’ll do on larger paper.

        I’d have probably gone to the model session we’re having on Saturday, but my sister ‘wanted to get away from Western Mass’. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but part of me thinks it’s to make me feel better. It hasn’t been a good week at all and I guess she can tell. She also keeps referring to herself in the singular, so I think she’s leaving her boyfriend at home. This, in itself is bizarre; the two of them are normally joined at the hip.

Randal wanted to test how neat we could be, so he gave us specific requirements for printing our etchings. One had to be printed in just black ink and the other had to be altered on specific sized paper and borders. I used my oil pencils my second print. Since the prints due at the end of class on Monday, I think I’m going to print a third in either different ink or bring in my water colors. Though, a lot of people are using watercolors. I’ll try to think of something else.

            Yesterday, I got my Western Art 1 test back. I did pretty well so there was no reason to worry. Afsan did say she was pretty lenient on us though, so next time I have to make sure to memorize centuries. Our second trip to the Museum of Fine Arts is scheduled on the same day I have to register of spring and summer classes (they assign the day and time you register for classes). During trip days you don’t have to come to class at 8:30 in the morning, but meet at the museum at 1. I thought that was great because my registration time is at 8am, which is when I would normally leave for my morning class to get there on time.

         I thought everything would be fine.

        However, on this trip we were supposed to look at Islamic art. Considering that’s a section ahead of where we are, I have a feeling we’re going to reschedule and I’ll be in trouble again. It’s not a big deal, but I’ve been going through so many ill-timed events lately that I’m sick of it. Still, worse comes to worse, I’ll just tell her I’ll be a couple minutes late.

       We passed in our texture projects in last night and had a crit. Matt decided we needed to be very critical with each other on our work, so not a lot of praise went around. All of us have revisions to do. I was last again, so I got to be the guinea pig for rapid fire criticism. There was a similar experiment done in Bebe’s class last year, so I went with the usual response: all grins and invitations for people to do their worst. In crits, you generally learn how to defend your work; in this you couldn’t. It forces the subject to listen to what their peers are saying: sometimes their completely right despite how much you want to argue.

          Anyway, the negative feedback is only going to help me in the end. Going in, I knew there was something wrong with each one but didn’t know what. Now I do. Most of them were quick fixes, which was better than the three extra hours I spent trying to figure out what. Brutal honesty has its place.

As for the roommate situation, the girl from Paris signed a two month loan with somebody else. I’m toying with the idea of trying to rent the room to an international student that’s also interested, but I don’t know if I want to go through the trouble anymore.

          And Friday morning (or afternoon now, I was typing this earlier :P), here I am. I talked to Tim and he made sure to stop by the window to do a force smile by pushing the corners of his lips up. That got me to laugh. Just when I think nobody can surprise me anymore, I get one of those moments. I have to clean up my room and have some kind of event planned before my sister arrives tomorrow morning (actually, it would be cool to go out shopping or go out to dinner I also need to work on the structure of my process folio. The idea is for it to be a box with a lot of different compartments for journals, schedules, finished works, etc. I need to start to assemble it before the end of term-see if there are any major problems. Talking to Riana has also lifted my spirits somewhat. I’ll try to stay hopeful.

Oct
30

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This is Not a Title Because I Can’t Think of One

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It’s the day before Halloween. Candy and cupcakes are sitting on the front desk for the students and faculty that pass by like clock work. Molly and Holly are awesome like that. I was surprised when I found out I like lemon frosting. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing tomorrow. I know my sister and her boyfriend are going to a party out in Northern Mass. I don’t want to travel out of the city because I have an eight hour shift on Sunday.

Work wise, its the usual hustle and bustle, until I offered to put up fliers for our New York trip. We’re a bit short on people. We were short on people last year too. I don’t know why. I went and it was really interesting, so I might go again if everything works out. I’m going to put fliers up on the main campus. It will be good to get some new faces in, I think.

For Printmaking, I’ve altered a floral design I made during the summer. My sister’s roommate wanted a design for a cabinet she wanted to make and tried to commission me to do it. I already knew walking into it that I wasn’t going to be able to make anything she wanted. I’m not a Graphic Design major; that’s not my thing. I made three different versions and none of them were good enough, so I considered them failures. Then Perla saw them on Wednesday when I was trying to pick a drawing for an etching and said they were good.  I didn’t believe her until Randal concurred. It’s a linear design, but didn’t have a lot of contrast, so I added a scribble effect in the background. I have to scan it again and take a second look at it to make sure all the lines are dark enough.

We finished the portrait drawing in Gabe’s class. Everybody was late because the trains were running slow and it was raining out; not a good way to start the day. Or you’d think that. Our models were missing for about twenty minutes, so Gabe had us model of each other. I like drawing my classmates. We did that in Drawing II in Neils Burger’s class last year and I found that to be a lot of fun. So, I modeled. It’s a bit difficult, staring at the same thing and trying to be perfectly still. It sounds easy just saying it, but seriously, try doing that for fifteen minutes and see. When I was done, Gabe said I had an interesting face and suggested I could model for portraits. Funny thing is I’m really starting to consider it.

We still haven’t gotten our grades back in Western Art 1. I still don’t feel good about it. I feel like if I think I did well, I’m going to jinx myself. There’s also a Sociology exam on Thursday that I have to start looking over my notes for. The last test we took, he said some of us did okay, so I got really nervous. My test was fine when he handed it back. Tests just make me really anxious…

In Imaging were dealing with texture. This is actually pretty funny because my Merging project had a lot to do with texture, so its a little weird doing the same kind of concept twice. I decided to show Slimy by taking a human brain and combining it with leeches, slugs, and worms. I got the effect I was looking for; Matt made this really disgusted face when he saw it. At first, I thought the idea might be too repulsive, but it was too good to pass up. I’ve never done anything like it before, so I figure why not? Not everything is nice and wonderful all the time; why should art be? I’m also going to do a few more: I’ve got another idea for describing sharp.

I had my advising meeting yesterday. I told Audrey I was thinking about minoring in creative writing. However, when we looked at the Fiction Workshops, we found there were a lot of prerequisites, so I’d have to take summer classes. I’m not sure I can. It’s pretty expensive, more than what my mom said we could handle financially. So, I might be here for an extra year. I’m going to sign up for Chemistry in the summer when I register for my Spring classes. Worse comes to worse, I’ll just have to drop it.

Last thing: this whole roommate situation is still pretty awful. My landlord said to call the realty company he usually uses for paperwork. I’ve tried calling them several times over the last couple of weeks, but I never get a response. I’m hoping they’ll reply to the email I sent last night, but part of me thinks I’m physically going to have to walk down there and figure out what the heck is going on. Also, my old landlord hasn’t called me back about the key deposit he owes me from last year, so I have to call him again. He’s the type of person that takes over a month to fix a broken dishwasher, even if you call him repetitively. Wish me luck on that.

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