I hope they like it!

It was so relaxing and weird to turn it in, if that is possible?

Pin Hole Photography

I never have time to go down to the photography studio this semester. I can do all the stuff I need to on my MacBook and the only time I am ever in the art building now is to go to the painting studio, going down to see all the pretty computers and shiny printers would be a major distraction.

When I went down a couple weeks ago I noticed that Jon had put up some pin hole photos in the hall way, one of them happened to be mine.


It is a photograph I took with a oatmeal box camera. I put it down at the bus stop in front of Shriver and let the paper expose through when the bus pulled up sat there for for three or four minutes and then drove away. That is what made the ghostly "MIAMI" in the photograph. I had no idea he scanned this in and kept it.

Kamal and I got our Graduation Outfits

Today has been crazy! I woke up thinking it was Monday, hoping it was Monday because Tuesday I had crap to get done! Kamal is here today working on the video. He has been here since noon. We also got to pick up our pretty robes and hats! Turns out we get a special sash for graduating during the bicentennial! I also found out that The School of Fine Art's color is brown!? We're in the arts it should be something pretty. Kamal said it is pay back for getting to be a hippie for the last four years.


After that we all stopped at the CAB building to tie up lose ends there. I also switched out my self portrait and food paintings. Time to work on the food painting at home!



PLUS! Remax called yesterday and asked if they could show the house from 6 to 7 today sooo Mark and Kamal paused editing for a bit and came to pick me up from my meeting with Rob around then. We got a quick stop in at Ace and Starbucks. Thank God my class was canceled today.

It's only 8pm right now. Lets see what else I can fit in.

Goal For Today

Get my awesome graduation announcements I made. When I looked at the price for the offical Miami announcements I knew I could do something way better for under $200. I design this "telegraph" last week and got them printed at Staples on pretty pearly paper. I also got bright red evenvelopes to send them out in. It cost me $8 to print the invites and $15 for the envelopes.


Today I am going to get these in the mail, or at least stuffed, addressed and stamped ready to go tomorrow morning.

Senior BFA Capstone Show Fall 09

The Head Chair of the Fine Art program checking out my stuff

Markie checking out all the works.

And this is me right outside the gallery after the show. Isn't Miami Beautiful in the fall?

I am making art

I have 51 days until graduation and I am soooo excited! I am ready for college to be over, but I am not ready for art school to be over. I love being in the art environment, feeling completely submerged in the culture it creates. I love being a Fine Arts major and these past two years were amazing. I felt so connected to and inspired by all the people around me. I was sad to see last semester end it was the end of my photography classes, printmaking classes, and advanced drawing classes. My last semester I am stuck in classes that feel like they are a list of things I need to get done so I can be done.


Today I went out with Mark and Kamal and helped them come up with a list of questions to ask DeeRanged, had a meeting with Rob about my independent study and went to capstone for a couple minutes to over what is going down during our exhibition this Thursday. I also cleaned the house, I mean cleaned, I moped the kitchen floor. It was a very productive and inspiring day! It made me realize that although I am taking a bunch of classes I am not enjoying that much this semester every once in a while I get to feel that feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction of working on something that means something to you. I am going to be happy when I graduate but sad to officially say good by to the art building and Heistand and everything great that happens inside of them.

I only have one class today and for some reason that seams like to much.

One thing I love about school is that when you dont want to do anything you can show up looking like this and no one cares.

I am off to school. Be back around 6:30.

Unruly Things

Now its time to sit back and enjoy

You know that scene in Chocolate where they are having the birthday party for the old woman and there is this kind of weird euphoria in the air and they are eating yummy food and everything is calm? Well thats what it was like tonight after we all got our projects hung and gathered in the small back room of the library to enjoy the birthday cake some of us had bought for our professor. I know that this sounds like an exaggeration, but really its not. It was twenty minutes of just relaxing and not having to worry about anything.

It's only ten?

Today was one of two mandatory excursions I have to take for my African Art History class. I spent most of the day in a Miami Van going to and coming back from Indianapolis. We went to see the Art museum's collection of African Art. Which was lovely and much more interesting now that I know something about what I was looking at. We rolled out around 8:45am and got back around 4:30pm, and for some reason all art students get extremely busy at the exact same time so we were all pretty grumpy by the time we got back. After the hour tour was over all of our minds clicked over to all of the other stuff we had to get done today and we wanted to be home NOW. Next week is the Cincinnati art Museum which wont be nearly as bad.

When I got home Mark made me dinner and then we went on a lovely fall walk. Which was a nice break. I have been doing homework since then and expected it to be at least midnight when I looked up at the clock. Nope ten pm. I think I might have to go to bed, at ten on a Saturday night.

Spending the rest of my life in college

We have been messing around with my argoflex and d80, I am not sure I have the right lens to get these to look right. Although, there is something I like about these fuzzy bright scenes.

This is my bag filled with portfolios that need to be graded.

Today concluded my first five week beginning photo class that I have been teaching this semester. I was asked if I would like to teach it right before the school year started I said yes and didn't have much time to let it sink in.

The teacher roll is not my most comfortable one. I am just settling in to being an art student, the fact that I now know enough that Miami University would trust me to teach their students is ... I don't know. Part of me feels like I am tricking them, they think I am qualified and I am playing along.

Before my students left today I asked them to write down somethings they liked about the course and somethings that they thought I could improve on. I don't know what I was expecting to get back. The consensus seemed to be that I had explained everything clearly and they really liked the one on one instruction I gave if they didn't understand something right away. Which immediately made me feel better. My biggest fear the whole time was that they had been politely nodding while I was showing them how do develop and print, but when I turned my back they were looking at each other mouthing "WTF"?!

Before the class started I had never thought about teaching photography, when I was asked to teach I thought maybe this was the beginning of a new career path. During these past five weeks I had so many doubts about my ability to explain things clearly and lead the class in a organized and fluid direction I decided I was never going to teach again after this semester. Now that I have a stack of papers telling me otherwise who knows?

PERFECT!

I needed chatter teeth for a project I am doing. I went to the Dollar General, Meijer, and WalMart in search for some. I would have gone to a party store but there aren't any around here for enough miles that I didnt want to drive there.

So last night I settled for using an image off the internet, and of course it didnt look at all how I wanted it to. But I still had a week to work on it so I knew I would figure something out.

Today when I walked in to class my professor told me that people in his other drawing class had bought chattering teeth over at Shriver. I would have never, ever thought to look at the place that I am around all day, everyday of the week.

Drawing III Final

I volunteered to go first during my final critique for drawing three. It went really well, everyone seemed to like my project and had some really good ideas on how I could display it better. Plus, now all I have to do is sit back and listen for my last couple days of class.

For our final we could come up with our own project so I decided to mess around more with drawing with light in photographs.

I looked at old masters works, and modern works of art to find the lines I wanted to create. Then I set up a scene and tried to take a picture of something that I felt represented those artists works.

This one turned out to be my favorite.

I used this work from Leonardo DeVinci as the master work. Then set Haley up in bed with a book and tried to recreate the lines from DeVinci's work to give the felling of knowledge or enlightenment coming from the book. The line didn't turn out how I wanted it to at all, but I think it works.

Let It Be

I bought my Lomo LC-A three or four years ago off of ebay before they went out of production and became insanely expensive. It never worked right when I got it and when a couple of rolls of film turn out blank it was demoted to decoration. I got it out a couple days ago to see if I could figure out what was wrong. The shutter wasn't opening.




After an operation I got the shutter actually working. It's not 100%, I have to firmly tap the camera on my palm before I take any picture just to make sure that it will open. I took a roll of film and took it to Kroger to get the film processed. I tried to figure out what I got by looking at the film, but I have no idea how color film works so when I scanned this in the other night I was a little surprised. Lomos are popular because of the distortions it gives images, but this was way beyond anything I had seen before.

After a talk with my professor I have decided to roll with this. After all I wanted the pictures to be up to chance. I seriously have no idea how any picture is going to look when I am taking it. I guess we'll see if I can let myself go enough to actually use this. Maybe I should do a couple pages out of my Wreck This Journal to give me some confidence.

I love Oxford in the Morning.

I did not know this when I started Ceramics but firing a Kiln takes f...o...r...e....v...e.....r two days actually. And there are a whole bunch of different shifts that have to be taken care of in the course of those two days. I got the 8am shift today, sucktacular, I fell asleep last night thinking about how much it was going to suck when my alarm went off 30 minutes early. It did suck, lots, but when I got to Hiestand (right behind Shriver) I kinda liked it. The light was perfect, and the trees were in full bloom, and their were no annoying art kids hanging out around the fountain. Quiet and pretty, it made me wish that I could get up everyday at 8 and go for a run or get some homework done to enjoy this quiet time of day. And I though I could do it, I could totally do it.

I wont. I have always said I would do it, but I wont. I hate getting up in the morning, it always sounds good the night before but when that alarm goes off it is the worst thing ever. I have two more projects to fire before the end of the semester, maybe I will have one more day of getting up at 8am. Other than the danger of my pieces exploding I am not sure there is much else that can get me out of bed that early.

Since we last spoke, in list format

- Spring Break ended and we left Sunny 70 degree Dallas to land in gray snowy Columbus.

- Donna made us a yummy, yummy Easter lunch.

- Mark, Kendra, and I made some vintage suit cases even more beautiful. Pictures coming soon...hopefully.

- TealTown sold it's 100th item, a You Deserve Pie poster! Mark shipped it off to Texas today!

- We went to our first ever Craft show. You can read all about it over at Mark's blog, 8ounce.

- The stress of the final five weeks of the semester smacked me in the face Saturday. Mark declared Sunday as "Don't e'ff with Sam day".

Spring Break... almost

The week is over and I turnd in my Art History Term Paper, got both of my molds made for Ceramics, finished my five peices for drawing and made it through the critique, plus all that other stuff that I don't remember. I got it all done and we are now in the process of getting ready to get ready for Texas. I just put the last load of laundry in the dryer. Mark is currently printing out the postage for the last of the orders we need to send out, and apprently I need to iron shirts now.


1st I need an espresso.

Just what the facts is

For my first photo project of the semester I have to take a picture of a dream, and me being me I decided to go all out. I wanted a large landscape scene that I could place a fairs wheel, and myself in.

Taking inspiration from Carl Warner's Foodscapes I have decided to create my own landscape using food and whatever else I can find that fits in. I went to the grocery store a couple weeks ago and messed around with this idea and I got a pretty good landscape out of it. But as a work more on the image I realize it would be much better for me to set everything up that I possibly can in one scene instead of everything having its own layer.


So this weekend I plan on taking time out to set up a new landscape including my new fairs wheel that Mark and I spent Saturday night putting together eating pizza and Watching Flight of the Concords.

Here is when he super glued his finger too the base of it.

If any one has any genius ideas of stuff I could use let me know.

Heart Shaped Cakes, Owls, and Guitar Hero

I have had a busy weekend.


On Saturday my family came up to have a early Valentine's Day celebration. We went out to the Lodge at Hueston Woods for lunch. It was delicious. Emma and I shared the Club Wrap which was tasty and didn't make me feel like I needed a nap after we were done. After lunch we went to the Nature Center to check what kind of Birds they were rehabilitating, and the deer.

This guy was amazing. He was very regal and polite in a I am staring through your soul kind of way.




I think they should come visit more often. They make sitting around the house more fun. Plus, it gives me a reason to clean the house. Which, honestly, I can talk myself in to doing. It is easier if it is for someone else.

I also got about six hours of studio time in this weekend. With my first Ceramics critique on Wednesday I spent a good while in the studio both Saturday and today. I like being able to work on a project at a relaxed pace. I don't want to have to be freaking out about it all weekend just so I can spend all night Tuesday in the studio franticly working on my piece, and then have it look like crap cause I did it at the last minute .

Dream, Take One

First assignment for photo three is The Dream Project. I have to take a picture of one of my dreams. I have a lot of dreams where I am in amusements parks. I took that idea and played with it until I ended up with the idea of a country fair. I took some pictures tonight and mess around with them in Photoshop until I got something that I thought had potential. I like the glowy, haziness that I got.

I want the landscape to be very green and healthy, which I am not going to get in January in Ohio. So Mark and I went to the grocery store and picked out some things I thought might look cool. Did you know that there is such a thing as Brocoflower? Well there is. Thats what I use for my tree.

I didn't get anything I really liked tonight. I think I need to mess with my arrangement more.