Saturday, February 26, 2011

Work in Progress

The work for my Graduate Art Show is due on Monday, so this weekend, the goal is to wrap up and finish my pieces, frame them, and make sure that they are ready to hang/present.  I'm still working on the biggest piece, however, once it's finished, I'll scan and post it.






Friday, February 11, 2011

Personal Artwork

This page will track what I am working on in my personal work.  Right now, I'm working on my Graduate Art Show, and Joey's V-Day present...  It's not finished yet, but here's a sneak peak:


8x10" Mixed Media Collage
This was inspired by a project that Joey and I came up with in order to challenge each other to create something from random bits of information.  I'll go into more detail once I've finished.

Back to square one...

It seems as though that since I was a young child, when I first picked up a pencil, molded clay, and began to enjoy the actual process of making art, life hit fast-forward and sped up entirely too fast for me to keep pace.  During Elementary and Middle school, Art was hands down my favorite subject.  I enjoyed drawing and was good at it, so, naturally, along with Algebra, Economics, Junior Varsity Volleyball, and other required subjects, I took Art in High School.  When I soon realized that creating Art was just about the only thing that I was good at and one of the few things that I truly enjoyed "working" at, I decided to go to college to focus specifically on Art.

Here, at a higher level of education, I could delve deeper into the skills, the history, and the concepts that one must learn, understand, and develop individually as an artist in order to succeed in the more abstract and emotional world around us.  Then, as I'm sure most people are familiar with, four years of Undergrad simply exploded in front of my face with the intensity and passion of an orgasm.  It was fun, beautiful, I worked hard, stayed up entirely too late, and nearly starved to death.  I hardly understood life or my education half of the time, hardly understood myself half of the time, and it was four years of my life that I hold dear to my heart and would never take back... ever.  

After graduation, however, there was a lull... a slight panic if you will.  I'm sure I'm not the only person who has experienced this neurotic rest stop in life where one finds themselves in an ordinary job (I was waiting tables) and you realize that all of the information that had been stuffed into your brain is slowly leaking out... oozing straight from the grey matter of the brain and out of the ears.  At this point, I looked for a change... a badass tattoo, moving to California, leaving the country, anything; the real world was a scary trap that I didn't want to find myself stuck in.

However, by the end of the summer, just before I had decided to move out of the city, I was offered an opportunity that I felt would be silly to turn down.  I, through a grant from the governor and along with many other local artists and recently graduated art students, was called with a job offer to teach elementary Art in an inner-city setting.  I didn't say no, and, though I have had some of the worse days that one could imagine... ever; I have had some of the most intensely great and ultimately satisfying days that I know will dwell with me always.  My students are my kids, all 500 some-odd of them, and no matter how crazy they drive me sometimes, I can honestly say that it's because of them that I love my job.  It's the lack of time and energy for my personal artwork that I have recently missed and it's that aspect of my job/school that sees me "blue".

Shortly after I started the job, I started a masters program to gain certification and attain my Master's of Arts in Teaching.  Here's where we hit the "fast forward" button to "stop", at the finish line of gaining my MAT, and I am now in the scary reality of adulthood that I once feared in Undergrad.  I am in an extremely frustrating yet gratifying and dependable job... obviously nothing to complain about, and for that I am extremely grateful.  However, I'm also at a point in my life where I am extremely frustrated with the amount of personal work that hasn't been created in the past 5 years or so.  If you were to peek into my portfolio, you would see that there is hardly anything recent that I am proud of.  I have taken a very stable path in my area of skill where I teach my students what I can about what all the Arts have to offer.  However, my selfish inner spirit yearns for more me time, and the risk of working hard, failing hard, and, hopefully, succeeding with the passion of what I love doing... actually DOING, is the very thing that eats at me now.  This desire is screaming to be let loose...

Here is where we push "start" again.  I'm slowly devising challenges and goals for myself to right this wrong that I have done to my own artist.  I've decided to use this blog as a means to record, inspire, motivate, and challenge my creative side and hopefully, in the process, do the same for others as well.

To guide you through the blog, I'll have separate pages to link specific areas of interest, such as Personal Work, Student Work & Education, Photography, Illustration, Art History, Film, Music, and Literature.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to narrow it down to a shorter list, however these are ideas to be whittled, and I'll tweak as I go along and the blog and I slowly learn to use our legs.

Here goes nothing...