What have I been up to

I didn't do a lot of art over the summer.
I did a lot of talking to people, and I started making sure that my body was okay from the sorry state I was in during the school year.

I started a job as a Tour Guide on my campus, which was wonderful and fun and nervewracking and awesome.
I got to be a homework mentor for my school's precollege program, which means helping and hanging out with 15-17-year-old comic book geeks. That worked out pretty nicely.
And lastly, in the week before school I was part of Orientation again.
And I started feeling like.... maybe I'm just not that good at doing art. I mean. I'm okay.
And classes started and now I feel like.... this is what I'm doing and I can do this forever.

I cooked. I prepared food and ate healthy and started doing beginner work-outs and walking miles. I feel great.

So as a last note on the summer, I got much better at talking to people, I gained a little more independence, I dyed my hair bright pink. I came into school knowing a lot of people and mentally prepared for the year.

I'll add drawings when I can scan them.

end of 2011

at an uneven number. I've left the 'party' and my cat is in my lap. But there are some things that should happen in 2012, especially before summer.

I should start a series. Comic, blog, tumblr, whatever, I should serialize something. College cooking, perhaps. Political cartoons. Anything.

I should be able to drive on highways.

That is all. I'll say that it's an okay 2012 attempt.

Orientation Staff, Mingleling, and How I've Improved

The last two weeks have been move-in, preparation for Orientation Week, and the week itself. All of which have left me tired and worn out, to be rejuvenated during the hurricane this weekend. Hurricane Irene.

Over the last week, I was in social skills bootcamp. We practiced answering questions correctly, respectfully, and positively (freshmen have questions). I learned a ton of getting-to-know-you games, name games, and ice-breakers.

I got a lot of practice. When my schedule actually tells me to Mingle with the freshmen, I took initiative and joined conversations, added myself to groups, and tried to talk to new people.

I came to Pratt terrified of this getting to know you bullshit. And now it's just something that clicks me into a mode of "I want to get to know you" rather than "what are you thinking about me? Is it bad?" I think, at this point, I assume that people will either like me and talk to me, or stay clear of me.

I don't want to say 'it was an experience like STAC', because it wasn't- I had less than a week to get to know everybody and lose my shyness, then a week to work as the team we became, and now it's all over until I seen familiar faces next year.

After the whole experience- this is the college life I didn't have last year. I can keep my door open and people will say hi, I can get to know people. Through O-STAFF I met a lot of heads of clubs/associations, the top people of Student Involvement, and may have even found a small job for the year.

So if you can join any kind of student leadership group, go for it.

#400

This is post 400, at the beginning of the 2011 summer.
There are a few things I wanted to do.
I want to finish a few videogames.
Finish reading the Earthsea books, and some of the other books on my shelf. They are technically young adult fantasy.
I've started taking apart my desk, so I should continue that.

I've had 4 cups of tea today. two with morning one with lunch one after dinner and they were all caffeinated so. Maybe I'm addicted to caffeine? Maybe I'll just finish Advanced Wars.

bring in the new year with Fleet Foxes

Somehow managed a nice, round number for 2010 posts, but it's not anything like 2009 posts. This marks almost the third year of this blog.


2010.
What happened last year:
I got into Pratt, New Paltz, and Purchase, waitlisted to CalArts, decided on Pratt, graduated Herricks High School.
I started college and did well in my first semester.
I started playing Maplestory.
I love my overgrown puppy.
Movies.
I started listening to more alternative and indie music.
I also noticed that I've said a lot of things like, "I want to ____," and I never get around to them. I shouldn't say, "I want to do all the things I want to do", because that's like running around in a circle to try to make a tornado. So maybe I should just do things, rather than spending too long trying to think about priorities of things and orders of things.


Start of another year.

What a life I lead in the summer, What a life I lead in the spring,
What a life I lead in the winded breeze, What a life I lead in the spring.
What a life I lead when the sun breaks free as a giant torn from the clouds,
What a life indeed when that ancient seed is a berry watered and plowed.


What a life, What a life, What a life, What a life.


What a life I lead in the summer, What a life I lead in the spring,
What a life I lead in the winded breeze, What a life I lead in the spring.

It's my first anniversary ever! <3 Zach.

(this was done while trying to pay attention to a drawing lecture)

Design

Redesigned this blog. It's still yellow.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Large-scale drawing at the Met museum for the first time, and it's totally different than a little sketchbook or moleskin. At 18 x 24, with a few pencils and a kneaded eraser, so many people stood over my shoulder and just watched as I drew. The first sculpture drawing took an hour. The second, 45 minutes; the third, half an hour. But even with all the strange people, there were a few that stood out:


The Do you mind if I take a few pictures?-Lady. She took pictures of me drawing from every angle. I don't know why. I feel like it could have been a Met-based photo project, or she was just a student, or a journalist. I didn't mind much. Actually, I was a little flattered.


Middle Aged White Tourist, Female. This type looked over my shoulder, smiled at me a little when I turned around, and maybe asked a question or so.


There was a guard who came over to me in the morning, when no one was really around, and asked me, "How long did it take to master the technique?" It caught me so off guard that all I could say was, "This is just my drawing" or some equal phrase.


Small children. Older children. They are patient and they watch with wonder and they don't ask questions. I don't mind children watching my drawing. I do mind the parents who say, while I'm in earshot, "Oh see that- she's drawing".


And, finally, the two types of people who were in the way:
The ones who actually stood in the way, who I didn't really mind that much.
And the ones who realized as they walked in front of me that they would obstruct me and quickly hurried away with a short, 'sorry'.

This is about the end of stac.

It took me a while to finally be able to make a statement. Here it is.

I came into stac not knowing myself, and I'm leaving stac understanding more about who I am, where I am, where I want to be. These were the most important parts of my time in stac, but not all of them are stac-related, but a lot are. Kevin did a figure drawing workshop with us. He specifically told me I should do more figure drawing. I was a lead in "You Can't Take It with You". I drew myself. First my face, and I realized that I realized how much I hated when people degraded their art. Then my body, and I let my hair down for the first time in about three years, and become more comfortable with a more realistic body image. I made a mural, mostly by myself, and it was finished on time. I learned textural painting from Cathryn. I learned painting and drawing techniques in my first art class with Ganes. I started this blog. I went into the city by myself every morning for two weeks to take classes in figure drawing, then drew zoo animals in the afternoon. I got obsessed with CalArts. I fell in love with a 6'3" heavy metal muppet I went into the city to take figure drawing on Spring Street, in a quiet basement with creepy old men. It was weird to draw with crayons, because it was not 'professional', but I still like that quiet basement. We did Enneagrams twice, and currently I'm a 1, the perfectionist. I did a lot of work on Carousel. I did not make it into CalArts. I finished the AP art course. It was good that I had to finish pieces, but bad that I didn't have a lot of room to experiment. I got into Pratt Institute, for a BFA in Film (Animation Concentration), with a hefty scholarship. I'm still not sure why I got a scholarship, and I would like to know if it was my blog or my art or my writing or something else. After not being comfortable with my college choice, I visited Pratt, and took a tour. On the wall of an animation workspace, there was a line from a CalArts student film, and I knew that everything was connected. I'm still a bit scared about college. I got a facebook, to stay in contact with high school, but from a distance. I haven't cried about the end of stac since, well, the end of stac. I don't know if that's healthy or not, but I'm still letting go. This is who i am, or who i have become, or a mixture. It's the parts of me I love and the parts I don't like. Now i have to figure out how i fit in the world with this, how i need to change or how i resist changing.      I think that's what college will be like for me. I think it will be hard at first, because i won't know what to do or how to work, where things are, or who to ask for help. But once I make these issues be helpful to me, then, I think, I'll be better off.

Artist Statement, v. 2.0

I don't know if this works as an artist statement or not. It looks a bit too long for me.

Artist Statement

Core Values

Art and Science

Movement, Change and Sameness

Comfort

Issues

Definition through Opposition

Opposites

Simplicity
Order

Communication

Something relating to children, childhood

I draw because it is the language I know best. That is, I feel I have more of a vocabulary with artwork, and my writing, speech, music-making, and nonverbal communications are secondary to seeing. As I learn techniques for drawing, how to see shape, form, and color, my vocabulary grows and I have more 'words' with which to express myself.

I like trying to convey a sense of movement in my artwork. I like to use repetition of shape or line quality to add a sense of stability, but movement, to my pieces. And, everything is moving all the time all around me. When there is repetition, there is the movement between the repeated parts of the piece. There is also stagnation, from the sameness of the repeated parts. I like exploring this duality in artwork.

I prefer using children's supplies for fine artwork. I've used crayons and markers for artwork that is usually made from charcoal, pastels, or oil paints (materials usually reserved for the refined, mature artist). Earlier this year I finished a pointillist piece with crayons, and I used Magic Markers for figure drawing. This comes from my love for simplicity and comfort, which manifests itself, especially, when I am faced with complex or uncomfortable situations in my artwork.

In the future, I want to work in different periods of art, like Modernism and Impressionism, to find out where I am. I also want to experiment with some three dimensional figures, like plaster models. I feel like that will help me understand space better in my two dimensional work.

Broken Bride, Part IV, over and over again.

Drawings from stac, college holes and pitfalls, space metaphors, psychology, and the importance of hard-learned confidence.


First, the drawings. I used a pen and oil pastels to cartoon Juliana, Nikki, and Ashley. Not flattering, but I like the colors. I'm not developing that to answer why I like the colors. And each one has a longer-than-normal nose.

College results: Yes from Pratt, No from CalArts. I think I'm going to Pratt. I don't like not making decisions, and I don't like chance and 'leaving things to god' and uncertainty. But there is certainty, now, isn't there?
     How can you be sad when you shot your rocket to Pluto and hit Ceres? You're still got past Mars, and a hell of a distance away from Earth. That's a great accomplishment.
     Mere Exposure Effect: the more you see and think about something, the more you warm up to it. I don't want to have to warm up to it. I'm not used to... I don't know... I'm not sure... I'm not comfortable... I just want to...
     And thus, I catch myself in a pitfall. You hope for 150%, get 110%, but in reality, on Earth, there isn't anything better than 100%, and it's an achievement just to get to that.


In the end, I've seriously developed as an artist in the last year. I've gone to figure drawing classes, I've gotten more comfortable with being by myself in the city, I have no problem keeping a sketchbook.


So I guess I'm sort of back where I started. First long-term goal was STAC. That took a few years. Next, CalArts. That was a year, at least. I think I'll apply as graduate student later in life. So, here comes a time when I need to figure things out.


Back to the beginning.


A1-bqx is a blog established in the middle of my junior year of high school, back in February of 2009. Since then, it has been through makeovers and fast times and slow times. But I'll keep it going.

It's a christmas Miracle.

Prayers get answered and I'm heading over to the school tomorrow morning to get my stuff.
Thank you Mr. Ganes.

good tea, but i'll still have lipton in the morning

I'm getting a dog tomorrow!! His name is George, and he's a newfoundland, and he's not totally trained but that's okay and I can't wait. The house has been empty for too long.
edit: sometime next weekend. he still needs his vaccines and we need to get the right food and bowls.


In the last two days I have been to two very different teashops. This is the article, super-brief and without my notes, and I hope to touch on the same points for each place.
1. Tea and Sympathy, a very British tea shop with some very good food, and seats about 24. British high-brow teas, really too expensive for me. Real food, a real restaurant, just very small. I don't know where they cook it all. There are closets bigger than the kitchen. Don't miss its candy shop next door. Good for a small number of your closest and dearest, and be ready to pay city prices for real food, like pheasant and shepard's pie. If you can afford it, go right ahead. I'm just cheap. Mostly an older crowd.
4.50 for 3 cups in your own teacup, saucer, and small pot. Around the block from three train lines, in the West Village on Greenwich ave.


2. Witches Brew, the eternal living room of comfort. Even the ceilings are fabric. Tea and coffee, but I don't think it had meal-type food. After-meal desserts. It's about the tea, though. That was good, I'll be back for more tea and pie. Self-made menus are really not easy to read, but they look cool. Seasonal decor, soft lighting, soft everything. Normally for a younger crowd, but not for little kids.
2.75 for a small pot with your own tea, loose-leaf, about 2 or 3 small cups. West Hempstead. Not cheap, but it's a fair price for food that wasn't made in a microwave and some comfortable couch-space.
    and from a few weeks ago:


3. MoJoe's Cafe, eclectic new york cafe right by Mineola train station, used to fast-pace. Looseleaf teas in hand-wrapped bags. Not just cupcakes, the cafe also has a full grill. The best thing, though, has to be the decor. It's an eclectic combinations of every decade since the 50s, including an original Donkey Kong arcade game. The first game Mario was in. Ever. And I don't think I mentioned the hand-drawn signs for everything. Has people from everywhere, especially with the train station and Winthrop hospital across the street. Don't get stuck on line when the shift ends at 4.
1.50 for a small cup of tea. Cheap in comparison, but it doesn't come with a pot, teacup, and saucer.

doing things too seriously is fun. like if you order ice cream really really serious, things just get silly.

Overly dramatic Lord of the Rings music. Check.

Open luggage. Check.

Pretending packing is a life-and-death senario in Middle Earth. Priceless.

tea

Before I left Art League (friday was the last day), I asked Ganes if I should do anything for AP next year. He sorta stared at me (I had done a lot of art already). He said that maybe I should do research on my concentration: Fairytales.

For 'Fairytales', I'm using less literary figures (Tom Sawyer, the Mad Hatter) and more for the cultural story collections and children's rhymes. Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, other rhymes (Jack and the Candlestick, Little Boy Blue). I still need to research where these all came from. I should look up Aesop, too, but there aren't many well-known fables (cept the tortoise and the hare).

Don't read Water for Elephants. I don't know why school wants me to read about animal cruelty, spousal abuse, a failing sex life, and more animal cruelty. But I do know that no book we've read in school contains anything about sex being a positive, natural thing. We've learned about incest and rape and pedophilia, but no book has sex in a positive sense.

The problem with this is that the world normally doesnt run on incest and rape and pedophilia. They shouldn't be teaching us that.

I got a lot of tea yesterday, from my aunt and from etsy.

the sky is falling the sky is falling.

There's been so much thunder and lightning this summer over on the east coast. It comes in from the Great Lakes and picks up wind from the Appalachians and the heat causes lightning which causes thunder. I can't see thunder. I don't see where it's coming from, there's only a bright flash and a boom, like the sky is on fire. Maybe scarier than earthquakes, but I've never experienced one.

Julie&Julia was nice. I sorta wish I had some great time-consuming ambition that challenges my being. I guess I do.

as a note, I have been offered a date to next year's prom. unless some strange changes occur, I may well go to prom with my less-than-straight friend. I don't know if that last resort is a step up from my brother. I have other things to worry about.

Buying a bookshelf from a phone number in the paper. a 3-shelver for $25 is pretty good, but I still have to see it. It will hold some of my fiction collection.

Once upon a time there was a silly little girl in a plaid dress looking for any old silly little boy. A silly little boy came along and they became friends until he wanted to find a silly little girl in a striped dress. But of course, the silly little girl in the striped dress is already holding hands with a silly little boy of her own. So the silly little girl in plaid says to herself, plaid is only made of stripes, and I am just as fine as that silly little girl in stripes. No one is holding my hand. And no one is holding the hand of the silly little boy. Why should we not hold hands, for a little while?

Of course, social predicaments are more complex than that.

Some outstanding individualities:

I want a dog named Igo just so that I go "Aren't you a good Igo!" and "Where's my Igo run off to."

I've started a copy I found of The Sword in the Stone, which is about Arthur's childhood. Subways have a knack of getting people with short attention spans to read difficult books.

Agreed with a Mac person today that Macs and PCs have their good uses (Artsy stuff and Corporate stuff, respectively), but one cannot totally trump the other. Pats all around.

SPORE:

I can feel my AP Biology going down the drain. I really really want to be the friendliest carnivore out there.

My planets and their species are named after colors. I'm working on the species Lemongrass on the planet YellowTape. my brother has his nasty scorpion-thing on the planet RedLeather. The fluffy herbavore is on BlueSoap, and the omnivore (Carrot) is on OrangeSweater.

Walking into spiderwebs

i have passed a gauntlet. I have gone into Manhattan, alone, and come out intact.

FITorientation: Dear Loving Parents, We'll take good care of your children in this terrible city, don't worry. Just step back for a sec and leave them alone. Thank you, FIT.

There was a segment about 'what causes the most medical problems, the top 5'.

5. Fainting, due to excitement or lack of breakfast.

4. Throwing Up, Anxiety-Related Problems, Or Being Sleepy, it's probably your own fault.

3. Cutting Your Finger, Xacto knives.

2. Burns, Flame torches are used in the jewelery class.

1. Sewing Your Finger, it's a fashion school- this happens.

Of course, I had to compensate with making up grievous medical problems that are associated with drawing with neglect.

There is a coffee shop by the train station that has everything. Hand-stuffed teabags. Mason jar cups. And what I think is an original Donkey Kong arcade machine. GEEKING.

The tables have trivia cards, and the lemonade is too acidic and too sweet and too cold. It's wonderful.

The garden is officially planted. Late enough.

you haven't lived until you've cleaned an art studio's sink with bleach-AJAX and large yellow gloves.