i can't believe how much i have to do!!! I haven't spoken to any of my friends in nearly a month. Well, except for pip and Andrew because they just showed up one day but besides that... i'm sorry everyone! there's just so much going on and i'm just trying not to get overwhelmed. lots of it is good...the rest is just my stupidness.
anyway. okay.
so, there's this class. i have an assignment wherein, i have to do a painting about "what i feel art is"
or something
it's very vague
and it has to be figurative...hmmm
this assignment is the result of a big ol' controversy that happened here at LCAD a few weeks ago when one of the teachers (my figure painting teacher, actually) put a painting into the faculty show that was...well...a bit explicit. Now, in figure painting, there's artful nudity, and then there is tastless nakedess bordering on the pornographic. This painting was without a doubt, the latter. Anyway, i was shocked, appalled and offended when i saw that the painting was going to be put up and displayed. What were parents supposed to think...? Young prospective students...? Families? This wasn't a show in a museum focusing on erotic paintings of females...this is a private school! I was so close to saying something about it. And i think i would have.
Thank God, however, someone came to their senses and the piece was pulled from the show. My teacher, of course was beside himself with anger and offense and considered himself as being misunderstood, censored, etc...in his class we got to hear allll about it. Not surprisingly, everyone in my class was in passionate agreement with him. So, my teacher gave us an assiggnment, due at the end of the semester, that is supposed to portray what our feelings about art are, what it is, what it should be or some other mumbo jumbo. Using the human body as the focus, of course. So, many of my classmates have been talking about what they want to do. Brilliant ideas like gigantic paintings of male genitalia, transvestites, or just about anything shocking or offensive. How immature and pointless can you get...? Talking about the whole situation with another one of my teachers, Betty, she agreed with me. What happened to art that is meant to be beautiful? Art that is uplifting? Art that is...HEAVEN FORBID...Godly?
Granted, some of my favorite works of art (visual, musical, &c...) revel in the dark, the melancholy, the downright depressing... Yet that is only one side to being human. One of my all tima favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha, celebrated beauty, life, color, delicacy, and hope. I wrote in a paper recently: "Mucha was once quoted saying: 'The aim of my work was never to destroy…but to build bridges.' ...He built bridges, and that’s what I want to do. I was inspired by individuals who tried to be a part of something bigger than themselves, to celebrate darkness and beauty; death and life; joy and sorrow. We weren’t created to do without one or the other. To forget that there is love and bliss to be had in this fallen world is to fool yourself into the belief that there is nothing worth living for. To ignore the existence of hardship and strife is to cheat yourself of the pure joy of being joyful! Mucha found this balance and flourished within it. As an artist, that is what I so desperately hope to do."
Why is so much art created only to destroy?
Betty suggested to me that i paint something religious (as much as i hate that word, it will just have to do). I said that i had actually been considering doing that, and i told her some of my ideas. I mean what could shock people more these days than a well-executed work of art that is rooted in spiritual truth? That is inspired by the character of Jesus Christ, and depicts what and who God is? i don't know...it's a beautiful dream (as Pip would say), but it could come off as pretentious and cliche and altogether unsuccessful so easily... i need to be very careful and prayerful about this...
and prayers and suggestions from anyone would be greatly welcomed. i won't say any of my ideas yet...not until they're a bit more concrete.
i need to go eat lunch and go home and do homework now. and try to get the paint off of my shirt...
some photos of an oil painting i did in 3 class sessions. yesterday was our last day. (yes, the model was pregnant) the last one is the "finished" painting...i forgot to take a picture with the feet in it. /:
i wish i'd had more time to get little things like the hand and the arm just right...painting hands is HARRRD!
Yesterday after my portrait class was over i drove into Laguna and went to my favorite spot to eat my lunch. Said spot is a bench on the top of a ridge overlooking the ocean, one of the best views in the world. Yesterday was no exception. It was around 1:30, and the sun was high and he breeze was cool...and i had never seen the water look so incredible. It was like looking down from a cliff in Cancun or Fiji...the water was so bright and clear and dyed with such brilliant shades of blue! i breathed deep and just gazed out into it with joy and wonderment. What an awesome gift...
In my portrait class we finished a head painting we started last week. I did mine of a student who sat for us. I thought i'd put it up since people always ask me to post my work...so here you are! The first is the underpainting...more of a drawing, but in paint. I did that last week.
The second, of course, is the "finished" painting (sorry it's abit blurry). It was only meant as a quick excersise, so altogether we only had about 4-5 hours. Less than 3 hours to do the actual painting. But i enjoyed it...i'm excited because we're starting another one tomorrow, and we'll be finishing it next week. I love portraiture!! i could just do that forever, if i was able to.
I had that class this morning...the lesson learned? Pretty much that Yayway (Yaweh...as my teacher spells it) is "Really mean and unfair." amazing.
At least it's another beautiful day...(deeeep sigh...)
Sometimes there is so much to write you just can’t write. I’ve felt that way all day every time I’ve attempted to compose this post…and I keep starting over and over. There has been a certain disquieting thought occupying my mind for the past couple of years, and rarely do I let it overwhelm me. But for the past week or so I have let it take precedence over most other things...mostly because it just keeps popping up in my head…
I don’t know if I want to be an artist anymore.
okay…big deal. Except for the fact that my entire life, that’s all I’ve worked for. It’s all I’ve felt I could ever do well. Yes, I’ve dabbled in other things that interest me. I write a lot. I’ve taken singing lessons. I learned web design and computer graphics. I love traveling and learning history. I’ve studied French, Italian and German with great enthusiasm and interest…but not with great success. But I’ve never felt like I excelled in anything. I’m a good reader…but there’s not a lot to do with that; however much I adore it.
These days school is hard for me for so many reasons. Many I’ve related before, but many I have not. I just don’t find the same joy in painting as I seemed to before. Drawing portraits I will never tire of…but what about illustrating my own graphic novel? Living in Italy? Creating music? Studying literature? Learning Japanese? Animation?
Perhaps i’m merely in a slump…but I feel like I’ve been here for a very long time. Check out these posts from June 9, and June 18 2004... I know i am where i am for a reason. But i’m not making the most of it and i’m discouraged. If i even had the chance to do any of those things…would i?
i really don't know. or maybe i'm just afraid to say i wouldn't. i hate feeling frightened of life...! What a wretched, shameful, impossible burden!!
it's about 12 hours later than when i started this post. my eyes are heavy. but i can't go to sleep yet...first i have to wash my hair...which is now past my waist. (that's just for future reference for me).
You know what...? i'm starting to get very weary of school. i've been going to school for nearly 19 straight years of my entire life. There are days when i love the idea of just being able to absorb and learn and not have to worry about working full time...but mostly i can't wait to just get my life started...whenever that may be.
Last night i was so tired driving back to my apartment from Pasadena that once i was in Orange County around 0023 i came to a nice slow stop at a green light, waited for it to turn yellow, and drove on through when it changed to red. no, i'm serious. Praise Jesus no one was coming the other way...i didn't even realize what i had done until i was through the intersection.
I'm sitting outside at school on some steps on the hillside where i can still get wireless. I just finished classes for the day...my hands are nice and raw and sticky and blackened from making a wire sculpture of my head. Actually, it was fun. Hot, difficult and frustrating, but fun. I'll take a picture of it at some point and post it.
I was kind of dead all day today...especially this morning in my history class where i got to learn all about how Moses got the Ten Commandmants from a burning bush and why the four gospels were actually NOT written by Matthew Mark Luke and John, that God is a big old spoilsport because He wouldn't let Adam and Eve have sex and that their noble rebellion from his rigid rules was what caused the fall (which was ALL Eve's fault, of course, further proving what a Patriarchal, tyrranic religion Christianity is), and about how we can't really trust anything written in the Bible because its history and origins are so unreliable, but why we can trust the authenticity of the Qur'an. I wanted to throw up. I kept my eyes on the table when i could, so my teacher wouldn't see the horrified look on my face. There were times, however, where i was looking around the classroom to see if anyone else was as appalled, or amused, as i was. Quickly realizing that i was more likely to be surrounded by Atheists and Buddhists rather than fellow believers, i gave up. The only other Christian i knew of in the class was dozing the whole time.
uhuhuuhgggggg. i'm sleepy and dirty and gross. Time to drive back to the apt...get a workout...make dinner...do homework...wash my hair...and then, MAYBE then...i can go to bed.
Well, i finished The Lord of the Rings. And after a month and a half i emerge back into the real world...and for the fifth time, the search for a suitable replacement begins. It is always so difficult for me to get through the last few chapters of that book... a parting of sweet sorrow at it's best (and worst)! I will say this once, if you go your whole life without ever reading this story, and having only seen the movies (which i will not watch much anymore...perhaps more on that later) you have cheated yourself of one of the greatest, most beautiful joys in all of literature. With that said, i move on. (;
I have a few choices for reading that are tempting...among them are The Count of Monte Cristo, a Mozart biography, War in Heaven (by Charles Williams), How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Caihill (sp?)...and a few others. None of which i have ever read.
Any ideas or suggestions are more than welcome.
*(oh, and if you haven't already, make sure you take a look at the post below...)*
I got this in an e-mail my mom sent me today, obviously written at least a few months ago...but it is poignant and inspiring...and the perfect image of what love is. I agree with what my mom wrote...that in the video where he lifts his son, it is a beautiful picture of us and the Lord. The images in the video will bring tears to your eyes...but you won't want to dry them. At least i didn't. (:
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly] I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. "He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.'' But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way,'' Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain.'' "Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that.'' Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!'' And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''
How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. "No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. "The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''
Last night, after a day at my school finalizing registration and cleaning my apartment, i drove back to Pasadena to the No Future Cafe (a small music venue) just in time to miss Pip and Jeff (of The Dandelion Council) play. ): But there were two guys after them called El Ten Eleven who were pretty sweet. Actually, i liked them quite QUITE a lot. I bought a cd, and Sarah bought a shirt, of course. Most defenitely a new favorite. You can see videos of the bands from last night on the website...the sound is pretty iffy though. (by the way...if you click on the thumbnails, it will take you to a larger picture. just so ya know...)
afterwards there was goofyness. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sarah and Pip...can anyone say cutest picture EVER?? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sarah and Alec...looking "peaceful" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeff "I so wasn't making that face!" Adams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And then, Boba...naturally! We tried to go to the Karaoke bar (pip wanted me to sing a Doobie Brothers song with him) but we had to purchase more drinks, or what have you, to stay. Being the penniless artists we are, we left. But there was this man there singing a pop ballad in Chinese...blew us away. Instead we hung out in the parking lot and sang Father Abraham, talked about funny noises, and told stories and listened to music in the car.
A few days ago, Sarah and i were talking about how we would love to see Jurassic Park again...mostly because we haven't watched it in years. It's a subject we bring up every few months or so...and it's one of those things that you always forget about when you're at the video store looking for somehthing to rent. Last night, on a rare (honestly) evening of flipping through channels on our brand new directv system (the novelty has not worn off), Sarah and i chanced upon...what else? Jurassic Park! It had only been going for about a half hour...and we were just in time for the T-rex scene. The sfx are still spectacular. It was quite fun.
When the movie was over, we flipped back one channel and watched a special on the Nat'l Geographic station about ocean trenches and Tsunamis. The ocean has always held a mysterious, haunting fascination for my sister and i. The narrator said that only 10% of the worlds oceans have been explored...and the last attempt tp reach the bottom of the Mariana trench, the deepest in the ocean, was in 1960! Forget outer space...lets explore our own planet! Let's learn more about our very own alien life 7 miles below the surface!! 7 miles...i read somewhere that if you cut Mount Everest off at sea level and put it on the ocean bottom in the Mariana Trench, there would still be over a mile of water over the top of it. In the documentary, we learned that the pressure at the bottom is so intense (16,000lbs per sq inch!) that if the submersivle that was sent down had sprung even the tiniest leak, water would come through so fast it would have torn throught the mens bodies, killing them instantly. And there are creatures LIVING down there...it's incredible. And we know next to nothing about them. Or rather, no human has ever even seen most of them before. Doesn't that stir something in you...?? The ocean is so terrifying and amazing...if i were smarter (and braver) i would go and explore it myself.
