getting down to the he(art) of the matter

So my art life was on a downward course and spiraling rapidly out of control.... I was really disappointed with my WOA with letters/numbers (or lack thereof) because I feel like it was a prompt I could have thrived on because I love using words in my work.

But that aside, I have decided on my concentration, which feels really good and I am motivated to get back on track with this. After brainstorming lots of things I like and ideas for a concentration, I decided I would combine two things from my list: city images and outdoorsy images. It's a kind of urban vs. rural thing and I'm really excited about it because it also shows how contrasting my interests are. Shout out to Claire/McBride for helping me decide on that.

After a short period of overwhelming stress, I am getting back into an artist's mindset and it feels good to be back. I want to redeem myself for the past two months with the rest of my art this year. The schedule has been working out a lot better in the past two weeks and I'm going to make the whole two classes/one period thing work if it's the last thing I do! I'm excited to review my pictures tomorrow :)

October 31, 2010

I had a rather eventful day, and I decided that it was definitely blog-worthy. (Warning: this is a novel.)

I wish that I had had my camera with me so I could have salvaged some AP Art worthy photographs (because this day definitely could have yielded me a couple of those), or at least I could spice up this blog entry.

I played lacrosse with my club team in Seattle and was madly working on my APH Wizard of Oz paper (It's a parable of Populism, FYI) on the way to and from the tournament this weekend. A 3.5ish hour car ride there and back in the Euro-van allows for some time to hanker in and get work done while simultaneously rockin' out to some great tunes. Lacrosse trips like these always remind me about how much I love the sport, and about how much I love the people associated with the sport: my teammates and coaches. We had a really fun time and learned several life lessons along the way, including how to pump gas. We also beat the select team from Seattle who we lost to this summer... Revenge is sweet?

In this way, it was one of the best days I've had in a while.
In other ways, NOT so much.

So my history paper was due tonight at 10 p.m. It definitely got turned in at 10:51 p.m. but that's another story. What was cool was that it could have been at least 10:43 p.m. had I not been followed by the Lake Oswego Police from downtown LO to Dr. Hoppes' house. I was terrified because I had forgotten my wallet and I'm pretty sure that because I'm 18 it's some type of felony to drive without your license. Hopefully the LOPo never read this because I'm pretty sure that would constitute an inquiry at least. I expected the police to be busy dealing with hooligans on Halloween, but then I remembered that it's a Sunday. And then I remembered where we live...

When I got home I started thinking about how I hardly celebrated Halloween this year. Nerd glasses and a NASA shirt with physics equations on it don't exactly constitute a Halloween costume, but this is what I wore when not on the field. I didn't carve pumpkins for the first time in my life, I didn't watch scary movies, and I didn't go to a haunted house. I didn't even have time to help out at Halloween Night. Saddened by this, I started to check out some pumpking carving art online in order to get into the spirit (given it's now early morning of November 1st and not even Halloween).

This is what I discovered:



I feel like these would require lots of patience, but I think they are awesome!

(WOW Common App just logged me out automatically because I've been writing this blog and thus not on their website, and I thought I was being logged out of this and I was about to be REAL mad... but it's under control and my novel is still intact... Phew)

Hopefully I can redeem myself and have the opportunity to make an extravagant pumpkin like this come Halloween 2011. But something tells me that collegiate Halloween is a little different than the K-12 Halloween we know and love. Which is why I'm sad about the fact that I didn't celebrate. It makes me think a lot about what we sacrifice in the name of other obligations. At least I have extra energy for Thanksgiving and Winter Holidays? :/

To totally change gears: I'm still working on my concentration idea. I like the idea of collage that Mrs. McBridge suggested at the beginning of the year to me, but I feel like it possibly needs to be narrowed down a little further or else I will struggle with making them very similar. Just needs a little more thought.

I'm legitimately sorry to anyone who actually read this because it is basically a running thought process/large digression and probably incredibly uninteresting but it felt good to revisit my day! Can't wait to learn about the new Work of Art project!

update!

I really enjoyed the field trip on Wednesday! My camera did not enjoy it as much, as it began its slow and painful demise early in the day at Oaks Park. Luckily it lasted until we got to the church, with a few hibernations and a couple revivals.. I definitely learned my lesson when it comes to charging my camera/bringing a school one instead.

It was a really eventful day though. I got to take lots of pictures (which I love to do regardless of if I'm good at it), I registered to vote, and I checked "Ride the tram" off of my list of things to do before leaving for college. Woooohooo!

Here is one of my favorite pictures from the day:

On a different note: I'm starting to get a little stressed about my self-portrait, seeing as I haven't made a whole lot of progress on it quite yet....

Well, here we go.

This is a picture of my summer art in progress:

I made mixed-media collages of the three cities I have lived in, and then spray-painted their skylines over the collages; these are their templates. There's something about cities and skylines that I really love. I enjoy the familiarity of a skyline and being able to say you know your way around a certain city. It amazes me that a simple skyline can relate people, yet that everyone experiences specific cities differently. These collages were my personal interpretation of the three cities.

I also love the way words look when incorporated into art. I'm still trying to figure out why this is....

p.s. So Allie and I went to the Portland Pirate Festival..... It was an adventure to say the least.
We bought this live bird as a class pet and for the poster:

Just kidding... but could you imagine?!