long writing, music

I keep discovering albums on my ipod, thanks to friends who give me tons of music that I never get around to. So, I've been listening to Love Below, Outkast, and Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne. Yes, the Stacy's Mom band. The atmosphere of 'sad NY office worker needs a drink but knows it's bad for him' is like a different face of Jonathon Coulton's 'sad office worker is too busy dreaming to have any relationships'. This is also contrasted with the Decemberists's 'Victorian peasant is sad, has a sad life, and drowns after falling in love'. I love this, it feels so unabashedly bias and incorrect.

Today was the DDA meeting for the freshman in my department. We are 2D/3D animation and 'interactive arts', which I don't understand but it sounds really interesting and important. The head of the department gave us an overview of the next 3 years of our lives. I can't wait. It's going to be so much better than this year's mess.

So, that leaves me with the summer. There are so many things I want to do, many things I should do, and so many options. I know, though, that I need to redo my room. It hasn't changed much since the beginning of middle school, and now that I don't live there, it'll mostly be storage for art supplies and a studio. With a bed. And a large desk in the middle of the room, with a great studded-leather chair, a bust of Julius Ceasar that tilts backwards to reveal a secret room behind a bookcase. At the very least, a desk with storage space, and a set of bookshelves in the hallway (to replace the sideways one and clear up my room).

Internal Organization.

I do not consider myself to be internally organized. I organize things around me, hoping for my thinking processes to reflect my environment. I have also not gotten higher than a B on my essays, and I would like that to change, because I feel that I can do better. Essays are directly connected with organized thinking.

     Everything has a pattern, and everything has a shape. A pattern is a repetition of events, a rhythm, a method. A pattern is the way you walk, your schedule, how you tie your shoes. Each person has a different pattern, and in the arts 'being good at something' is often a name for being able to broaden artistic patterns. It is the difference between only being able to do one thing and having a larger artistic vocabulary.
     A shape is a whole, the design and organization of the whole, which includes the patterns used to understand it. A shape is your person, it is made up of the patterns of how you walk, how you speak, how you spend your afternoons. 'Who you are' is different for each person around you, and there ends up being a range of shapes that represent you. And that range of shapes is represented by a larger, generalized shape, enclosing the others.
     Understanding patterns comes from The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. The book is narrated by an autistic man, who concentrates a lot of his time on patterns and understanding the world in terms of pattern. The shape perspective also comes from the screensaver with the shape that twists and turns around the screen. And, it comes from a New York Times article about autistic people understanding numbers with shapes. This is a similar article. I don't see numbers as shapes. But maybe I can understand language better by translating its patterns into something a little more visual, a little more organized. Abstractions and connections. I also made a bead necklace when I was entering Middle School. Different beads served as different markers to chronicle my life up to that point. The idea also comes from work in abstract expressionism: giving emotions shapes.

     I think visually, and my concepts are visual. The ciriculum of a class has a shape: it is based on the amount of time spent in different topics, the amount of detail the topics go into, the amount of the information that is understood and retained. It's not a definite shape, everything is abstract, but there are larger parts and smaller parts.

     If I can understand an essay, I can break it down. I can call a sentence a line. There are different kinds of sentences. A simple sentence has a smaller, simpler shape than a more complex sentence. A short sentence, a short line. A long sentence, a long line.

     But, is grading based on if your essay-shape fits within the parameters of a larger, more general shape? Is grading about how closely your shape is to the shape of the grader? How is that measured?

     As a dancer, is your understanding of the world based in kinestetics? Does the person who understands relationships best see coursework in terms of relationship? Poets? Sculptors? Do other people think about how they think? How other people think? Is it important to understand? I don't think I'm crazy. I just don't know anyone else thinking like this.

things being what they are.

"'Normal' is a dryer setting."
Reading The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon (scifi alias?), which is about an autistic man around 2030, who narrates what he understands, doesn't understand, and if this new 'cure' for his autism works. It's interesting, and the style is extremely simple and straightforward.
     I like things that are what they represent. Like, a Frankenstein teeshirt that is sewn together with scars, or a long speech about making long speeches. The courses of a meal representing how a soup is made. A painting about painting.

A big project, and an idea.

     I've never really wanted to work with sculpture. Clay, playdoh, plaster, it just never appealed to me. But two years ago, STACart did the year-long Frank Lloyd Wright project that turned people off from foamcore. Instead of using foamcore for one side of my house, I twisted brass wires (bassoon reed material) into spirals and embedded coins in the net. With one set of pilers.
     To understand drawing (the illusion of three dimensions), I should make something that is truely in three dimentions. I want to make something real without a pencil, for once.
     So, this can change, but I would like:
          Wire
          Lightbulb (that lights)
          A 1'x1'x1' box
In other words, a glorified lamp. I would love the charge from a battery to be conducted throughout the whole cube, so that when the switch it turned, you wouldn't want to touch it. I like the idea of having a piece that creates its own light. And wires are like string.

Step 1. Research.

a calm off period.

I have 15 minutes left of an off period, and I'm realizing that the blog is falling into ruin. I've been extremely busy, and I've been waiting to hear from colleges. Especially CalArts. Things are coming to an end, and I'm moving on, but I want to keep going with this blog. A1-bqx. The name of a box from UPS.

I've been working on a sea monster painting. It's totally expressionist, except for the color choices (which are decently straightforward, when compared with pointillism's contrasting colors and detail). The peace is simple: a great sea-dragon, towering over a small steamship. The lighting isn't 100%, but I liked painting. I'll bring in a camera one day.

So far, the accepted portfolios for CalArts look really similar. A little pastel for color, exaggirated proportions, months or years of experience drawing from a model. I need to go back to the figure drawing classes. I miss drawing life. I don't want to draw sea monsters or sunsets or paint years of wear on a stage-bench.

I also don't want to lose myself in the realm of abstract expressionism. I'll go crazy. Yesterday, we did the charcoal abstract expressionist exercise in STAC, and it makes too much sense to me. You cannot turn words around the same idea, to see it in a different light. I can't, I don't know how other people think around issues or problems. It's much easier (and scarier) to turn a picture upside down, and look at things in a different perspective.

I hope I'm going to California next year. I know what I want to do, I know where I want to do it, but the latter decision is not totally made by me.


Totally. In total. Awesome. Full of awe. Terrible. Terrifying. Why aren't these words used correctly anymore?


Off to class.

Geometric Drawing Abstractions

New year resolution. Read more. Make my own education, because god knows I don't learn enough in school.

Today, I started drawing a design for Carousel's title (drawing #1). The 'O' has a light, which represents Billy and Louise and everyone alone, and then the letters sort of fan out. Like blocks, instead of being in a line for the camera, they arrangement of letters in the three-dimensional space is curved. From the normal front-on view, the middle block-letters are closer to you than the end letters. In a view from above, the letters are almost in a semi-circle (second drawing).

     Because of the block letters (drawings 3, 4), I started drawing a lot of cubes. Then I started geometrically labeling them, then I turned a cube 15 degrees clockwise and counterclockwise about the axis that exists from the 'top' to the 'bottom' (drawing 5).
     I know there's some fancy terms for this way of thinking, but abstractions are better practice. It's hard to think of a drawing as a three dimensional figure with its own space, because it's just a set of marks. I don't know which is the 'right' way of thinking, because drawings are only illusions, and I don't want to believe myself into thinking they're real. 


Ceramics, on the other hand, is a whole nother beast.

I have a cookie gun and extreme worry.

My brothers got a drum set for Christmas. It's set up in the living room. I'm blasting Maximum the Hormone two floors away and I can still hear it.

My art is very safe, in the back room of Ganes's room in school. I need to get it and put it in a portfolio and send it to CalArts. We get back on Jan. 4. It needs to be in California by Jan. 5. I've been very good with not freaking out.

     I was on the way to craft stores when I drew this self-portrait. In the mirror of the passenger seat, with a ratty pencil and notebook. I need a self-portrait for at least one portfolio, so I've been practicing. I wanna do one like Juliana's. And the face-shape bothers me. And the top lip shape. And the lack of help-lines. And what about making everything into shapes with Kandinsky-epic coloring? Like a child's block, but not exactly cubist.

thief and the cobbler.

The Shadow, the Pusher from Kontroll, is the negative thing inside people that make them jump. It's also the train that kills you. No one sees it, it's always moving, it's always there. I truly believe this is what the Shadow is. I believe in Bulscu!

Rilke said that you cannot blame the world around you. Blame yourself. For YOU are not artist enough to see its beauty. So that's what I have to do. Be fearless. Be comfortable with being alone. Thanks, spiritual guide.

I've been working on a still-life containing a woman's torso, a dog skull, a nose, and a wooden toy train. I had had the idea to add clouds in the background. a few days ago I decided that while some of the clouds are clouds, another may have a wooden texture. Another may be rock. It made perfect sense. I was thinking about this before, and I was wondering what it means to consider that many options, options people would label folly.

Story, the Risk game.

listening to 72 degrees and sunny, WALL-E soundtrack.

This week has been crazy. There have been so many ups and downs.

I don't know which one goes first, because it will affect the context of the next point.

I loved filming today. I like not being in the picture, I like making connections and working through mistakes and adding little quirks to things. Not having a script was hard to deal with, but the sequential filming made more sense in my mind. Filming in order also helped us make sure the story worked, and that we didn't forget anything.

My dog is dying. He's old and he has cancer and it hurts him to move. It's an anxiety that I try not to think about. We've had him for at least a decade, and he's been sick for a few months, so it's not sudden. But the waiting is so hard.

The house will be empty.

I can't say it's not fair, because this is what happens. I can't say I didn't have time to say goodbye.

But my world is gonna be a little off for a while.

Last summer I made a map of The Moud, which is a continent I made up as I went along. It came out really nice, so I'm making another one, but smaller. Then, I'm gonna make a Risk board, but with Grimm fairytale landmarks, 200 years after the stories. The kingdom set up by Rapunzel will still bear her name, and there will be a desert nearby, with the tower marked off.

I need 40 countries. The goal is to make a usable playing board. It would be the finale of my fairytale pieces. I also need to make cards for them.

I got to see my grandparents today. They're in their 80s, and my grandma is forgetful. It's not Alzheimer's, but it's still kinda sad. It's almost like being in the twilight zone. She'll repeat parts of conversation over and over. We still answer, for politeness, but it's still sad.

There was a character in my brother's show, "Street Scene", who I really like. He was a taxi driver, and a bully, but he also wanted what he couldn't have. And he knew why: because he was a taxi driver and a bully, and that's all he knows to be.

I like that 'knowing you can't have it because you know you're a bad person' idea for a character. Very Beauty and the Beast.

sonic adventure 2 battle music.

I read an article over the summer about this dance troup, and I think it's amazing. There are so many ideas that can happen when you take shadow puppets to the extreme.

RED and VEST and a human St. George.

Listening to Peter Paul and Mary. Mary Travers died from Leukemia on Sept. 16th. I've been to their concerts every year, and in New York all the kids would bring her sunflowers before Puff the Magic Dragon. After a whole day of repeated music, I feel like crying and joining an anti-war march at the same time.

Tomorrow I'm going into the city to join an open-studio figure drawing session. I'm a little scared. I've gone to the city alone, and I've done figure drawing before, but some of these people will have had 20+ years of experience more than me.

I am not a poet. I think I've had to read too many bad poems in grade school. It's not something I read normally, and not something I particularly care to work on. Nothing against poets. It's just not for me.

This is based on the poem "Little Tear-Vase".

I've started reading a color-theory book that's above my head. I was trying to take notes with watercolor, but things didn't work out. I started doing more Klee-impersonations. Red and Vest ('Blue' was not an option. What if we were taught that this color was called Vest?). They are full 11 x 8in usually.

I also had the feeling of a painting. a Drawing. Art that you need to look at but cannot because of an emotion that is private. I started writing out my limitations, which make ideas flow better: Big Emotion, Colors, The whole thing should be made of simple shapes, simple colors.

I wanted this to be a knight. Knights kill dragons (St. George), and I thought about it, and what happens if there's a baby dragon? He'd really feel like crap. And the little dragon won't really know what's going on and start following him around. I'm trying to use color and simple shapes here. Tried spacial awareness. It's mostly about the feeling from the colors.

too much time to think

Today a man being interviewed about Hard Day's Night said that surrealism is the point when two realities touch. It makes total sense.

Update 1. Children'sShowSet.

Shadow puppets. There will be a great white bedsheet, with a cardboard-cutout of a city skyline behind the sheet, and a light behind that for a shadow. Then for a different scene, we could exchange the skyline cutout for another cutout. It's fairly simple, easy to figure out, painfully cheap. And I feel like shadow puppets, basically, are a kid-thing that kids can relate to. We could even have a pots and pans percussion parade.

I would love to have a model ready for Yuvgenia, because I await and dread the critique. And I want to show what I learned last year. I'm about a month ahead of myself, but that's okay.

Update 2. ShirtIdea.

Once upon a time I got a book about Heraldry. At jousting matches, the coat of arms would be annouced by a small, loud man (the Herald), using all these fancy old-French terms. At the back of the book is a stencil mat with some of the different animals and patterns you could use.

So I put together parts from the eagle, lion, bear, horse, and dragon. And I added horns for the antelope. Gemsbok. Oryx. It's just the same thing. I added color. Now I would need to redesign it to look less like a kid's stencil. And it should be longer. And it should have some sense of balance.

Oryx horns, eagle beak, lion's mane, bear claws, horse end, dragon tail.

listening to music for the feeling of it.

I take sociology, psychology, and economics. my other classes are ART. A lot of times, the academics blend together. I think I understand sociology more than psychology. I can trust the predictability of a large group of people, not a single person.

Back in middle school I think I went through a phase that would have been emo if I'd come out of the introspective bubble. I was just lost in the sea of Middle School politics and didn't have the skills to understand people. On some level, I could say to myself "Isn't it great that I'm unique?". On another level, not being part of your own society felt unnatural.

In high school, I started drawing a lot. People. People are so interesting. I found a great book on basic nonverbal cues. I got better at drawing and seeing and recognizing cues. I'm still working on it. Try understanding the intricacies of conversation: how to start and end, how to break away, how to subtly hint at things. There are so many social things I still have to learn.

As an artist, this is my Golden rule.

NEVER PUT DOWN YOUR OWN WORK.

How many people break that rule? Too many.

Hear all the bombs fade away.

Started collecting colored card-board: empty cereal boxes and candy boxes and pie crust box and pasta box. I want to do something sorta like pointalism with them, but I still don't know. Eventually, they will be cut up and used in an AP project. Perhaps riding hood and the wolf. Or Rapunzel's tower, overlooking a beautiful sunset. The blue of the pasta box and Crispix will sillouette the tower. The peanut m&m box making up her hair and the sun. Red from the piecrust box, orange from the gingersnap box. Mounted on foamcore painted black.

shaun of the dead, i am legend. zombies that eat people freak me out.

i don't think i'll read war of the worlds tonight.

on a lighter note, i finally have a very nice Swiss army knife. I fully intend to use all 10 parts, even though my favorite (besides the main blade) is the toothpick. i don't know when i'll be able to use the bottle-opener.

I've started my summer reading (Water for Elephants) and I need to come up with a ball-point pen project.

I'll try to think about that princess who kills princes again, but with a different lens: after reading M*, I want to try to make a story with simpler characters and more complex character interactions. it's not gonna be interesting, but it's looking at what happens to them rather than defining 'them'.

*A graphic novel version of Fritz Lang's M (1931). Fritz Lang is very important. He made Metropolis.

happy tomorrow.

as soon as i find a how-to website i've used before- i forgot the name- i'll write up a tuturial using the pics.

the process:

1. balloon and tape skeleton.

2. the newspaper and plaster (flour and water is very sticky)

3. half complete

4. mostly complete

his name is Roberto.

monster.

back at PAL camp, the craft lady made a pinata with balloons. I was maybe 9 or 10, but i remember the newspaper strips, plaster/glue,

then after you plaster everything cept for the candy hole, and it dries, you poke pins through the newspaper and the

balloons are gone. now there's room for candy. i dont have plaster, so im gonna use flour and water and some glue. i hope that works.

RAWR

the basic plan:

i didn't want to make a cloud, which is easy to make with balloons. a monster! green monster!

arms are cardboard or thin balloons, feet are cardboard. black, red, white-yellow, and green paint.

its gonna be about 3 feet x 2.5 feet. i think. whatever happen, happens.

im almost down with full metal alchemist. only 20 eps left. why didnt i watch this before.

flick

listening to: Close to You, from MirrorMask.

watched: A Bug's Life (geeked out at the overall 'ideas win over blind obedience' theme), some anti-communist Pop-eye.

i dont know if it was really anticommunist, but there was something about popeye singing baseball songs and pounding a giant Bluto in a Red spacesuit that just shouted 'lets beat those commies'.

i found a vhs in my basement that i really liked as a kid- Thumbelina. http://www.enokifilmsusa.com/library/thumbelina.htm. its really just an anime version, but its nice and im looking for it online. only the sound works on the tape.

i feel like i need another big art project. i dunno what i'd do, but i want it to be big and showy. i want people to see it, and i want their reactions, anonymously. i dont even know what form of art to do. some limitations, and then an idea.

i have ideas. its just hard to figure out which media form they work best in.

time, batman, shakespeare, Klee squares

it is 1:42AM at the current moment, the night of may 1st. technically, it is may 2nd, but that's by regimental time and not by biological time.

there was this god-awful batman tv show on today, and its plot was the same as an episode of magic school bus: person is ill, shrink to microscopic level to kill microorganisms. but this time, aquaman (a gung-ho mascot of the sea) and the atom (physicist doctor who likes plans) had to team up together and all that yada. at one point, aquaman calls a white blood cell for a steed to get through the capillaries, and names him 'platelet'. Atom says, 'that's fine, but it's a lymphocyte.' and i realized how much biology i know and what of it Ill be able to use after the AP exam.

yesterday i saw Toy Story, and realized just how amazing certain parts were. the little green men culture with the Claw, Mrs. Nesbit. Treasure Planet was also on today, and it may be one of the greatest versions of that story ive seen/read. The Great Illustrated version is good, and the Muppet version is... the Muppet version, but i mean treasure planet! dayamn that has nice characters.

reading a Midsummer Night's Dream in english. shakespeare makes so much more sense. there is enough information to get the point and story across, but there is also so much that is left to the imagination to fulfill. i, personally, think of Oberon and Titania as a cross between lord of the rings elves, troll dolls, and ancient pharohs.

i came back from seeing Wolverine. I read in the times that it was a bunch of action sequences with minimal story, but i got to check a few things off my list. 'Goddess' was checked off, 'Rejection of the Call', 'Belly of the Beast', 

i got pretty worked up today about not knowing what was happening with the squares of the mural. 'blending colors' can mean so many different things, and overactive imaginations don't exactly narrow down the meaning. i'm glad that i got to get my group to the color-blending point, as in we each had paint and tiles and assigned colors for each side. i wasnt really steady with people going 'what do we do now?' to me, as if i speak a magical language of art. i didnt like my tile. red and green clash too much, and it didn't feel right.

i would have preferred each person has a tile, with Klee-squares of their own color, and some connecting shapes/pattern into the next tile.

i like the tile projects a lot, though.

i'm really trying hard not to 'read people' from their artwork in regular art class. i'm pretty sure one girl at my table thinks people are all the same inside, and another girl sees people as steadiness in a changing (colorful) world. its so interesting.

i may be rejected from taking AP Psych next year due to not-A history grades. i don't understand what psychology, as a course, has to do with history. i understand why i needed to get a B or more in regents bio and chem to get into AP bio, but AP Psych is a whole nother sport. plus i intend to take the course to learn, not so that i can put it on a resume.