Grandma Never Threw Away Tinfoil

As kids, my Grandma used to scrape our plates at the dinner table and pile the scraps on her plate and eat the leavings. All five of us would always say, "Eww! That's gross!" (little kid style).  But Grandma never thought anything of it. As we grew older her habit seemed to cease, but Grandma still would scrape our plates with her short red handled spatula to in order to save the scraps for the dogs dinner.

And she never wasted a thing. She washed tinfoil, plastic bags, and  margarine tubs. She saved tinsel for decades, birthday cards, (cards are always reusable), and she never bought clothing. To this day, I don't know if I have ever seen my grandma go clothes shopping for fun. And if she did, she went to the used clothing store to get the $1.50 bag deal.

 Everything could be used again if the right job was needed for it. And boy could she store things...

My grandma is a veteran of an age past. I am spoiled in comparison.

But in a way, I have found that I'm doing a similar thing in my classes. Ideas form in one and I use them in another. I'm trying to squeeze every drop of life  out of this silhouette thing. During the semester, I have hit a lot of frustrating walls, but today was a precious moment. I am seeing a window open...

Today, I had two objectives:
to start to feel comfortable in the 3rd floor studio, and to make art for Whitney.


I used different hot light gels and a flash to get some color. I covered the flash in the gel paper and covered the flash with my hands. the more the flash, the lighter the silhouette.. and the lighter the color. This was very interesting to me. See another idea! I am hoping one day to start incorporating people to interact with shadows, but for now I am keeping it simple.

What Can I Say

... and it has been another great long day.

We're going to do a run in Bartlett tonight right? That was the plan for a few of us at school who wanted to participate in tonights activity. The location was Chris's house and he lived in Bartlett, the same city as I. The only problem was that he lived on the other side. The side that I don't dare go unless I feel like loosing every ounce of my sanity.

7 pm after class:

Me "I follow you Natalie right"

Natalie, "Oh I was going to follow you!"

Me, "I can get to Bartlett, but I don't know where Chris lives."

And so the evening began with three cars trailing each other down the freeway to get to his house.

 I have gotten lost innumerable times this semester, and realize that when this happens, I tend to loose head and all hell breaks loose. It's like caging a wild bird in a cardboard box. My ears begin to hurt and all I see are lights and cars. No rational thoughts, Nothing. Just pure pain. lol

Natalie drove in the lead, but after about twenty minutes,  she pulled over, rolled down her window, and told me that her GPS was lost and she was confused.

"Oh, I think we missed the exit anyways!" I said oddly confident. "It was back a bit. Exit 12".

I took the lead this time, driving back the way we came. But as soon as I was getting onto the freeway, I noticed a familiar landmark and realized that Natalie had been indeed going in the right direction after all. But it was too late, I zipped back on the road and drove to my "Correct" Exit before pulling of to a gas station.

It was getting dark and I was a little embarrassed. Natalie and Emily pull up to my window, "I looked at her dryly, "I think I'm lost." Natalie burst out laughing in unstoppable way. "You looked so confident though!!" I mentally hung me head and followed her back on to the freeway.

Natalie, "We'll try this one more time, and if we get lost, we'll call Chris.

Me, "Tell him to bring his running clothes, we'll just run where we are."

Natalie laughed. Her GPS was now working and we went back the same way we had come.

Now did I mention it was getting dark out? I was a little concerned. Not only for me, but for Emily  who was driving behind me. I was hoping she could keep up with us. I noticed our exit coming up.  Ya, the correct one.... Natalie didn't take... oh heavens... she didn't take it! We are going the wrong way again.

Or maybe it's just my mind. Maybe it was this next one. I kept looking behind me. Poor Emily is going to get lost! Yup, I spied Emily's lights. She was taking the wrong exit. OH NO!

Natalie kept going and made the next exit in due time. I followed behind her. I was good at following...

Natalie soon enough pulled into a housing community area. But curiously, she began to speed up. "Wow, I thought" Doesn't she know I am trying to keep up!! I kept my eye on her as she began to zip around houses making a few quick right and left's onto smaller roads. In an effort to maintain her in my sites, I began to quicken my pace as well.

Soon enough she pulled into a drive way and I slowly pulled in too and parked along side of her, partially in the grass. Natalie sure took up space... Gosh.

As I looked out my window, my heart dripped to the floor. A strange woman was looking at me through the glass pane. That was not the woman I was following twenty minutes ago!

Now all mature adults at this time would have rolled down the window and apologized for the irregularity of such a meeting, but for me, it was only the dust my tires that begged her pardon a second later.

What can I say.

Panic Attack...

Lost...

Oddly enough,  after having nearly loosing it and giving up, I found myself in familiar spot and by the grace of God, located Chris's house.

It was a fabulous run!!!

The End

"Now You're Making a Cognitive Leap"

  One of my teachers made this comment to me after I had had quickly blurted out my assumptions on a students project for IPC. If I could have visualized my brain around the time I said these words and put it into a recognizable form, perhaps my synapses would have looked like a human figure jumping or twirling in space... or perhaps a dozen people. . . I don't know.

     But I am VERY excited to be creating some work for the Duluth Art Institutes this spring centering a concept simply on the creation of art. 

    I am also a little concerned with the simplicity of silhouettes. Though I am going to be using the transparency projector again, I am nagged of its limits. So instead of cutting out foliage, I thought I would look around for real deal greenery  to incorporate with the figures. If it's transparent enough, some depth and color will project.

Here's hopefully some of the characters that will be used.

                                         

Cross Processing

This assignment was a simulation of true cross processing. MPI wouldn't throw our film into slide chemicals and so we had to make believe in photoshop with our film, to try and visually get the same result. Whether I did it right or not, I'm not sure. We will find out tomorrow. It's been a long day.

Artist Intent

    Currently I am playing around with idea of taking the image myself completely out of context and putting myself into another environment. This is done by making cutouts of myself and then photographing these characters instead of simply shooting myself in reality. This process takes a bit longer then my previous undertakings, but after I began doing this, I have finally found excitement in photography again! I want to use the image of myself the same way that a painter uses water and pigments. I want to put the creation back into my art.

    This series is starting to try and address the disconnect of my generation and the addiction to self-entertainment.  There is nothing wrong with music, but I have noticed in in my own life and in the life of my brother, that it’s an odd compulsion that needs to be addressed more.  Why do we feel so lonely all the time? And does this have anything to do with our need to always be diverted into some physiological place?  

I have glue all over my hands

"The way we make pictures, is we make pictures for people that are interested in specifics. They are not going to be interested in everything. They're going  to be interested in that scene. "I love that scene". Somebody else going to say, "I hate that scene." It's because it has something to do with their life. And in that sense it's not like a movie. It's Ahh... A movie tries to pacify people by keeping it going for them so that it's sheer entertainment. I hate entertainment" John Cassavetes.

    It's the second half of the semester people! And it's a awake call with mid term grades...

    Today, after oversleeping and missing church, I groggily drove to school to pick up a battery that I ordered for the camera, and then hit the ground running trying to start and finish a couple projects that are due for Tuesday. I know I've showed these, but today I had to shoot with film.  I was trying to meter with my digital camera since my film was acting weird and telling me strange things that I didn't believe. I still enjoy looking at these characters, but I feel like it's gosh darn time I moved on to different ones, and a different backdrop.

I'm using characters who are indifferent of each other, 
who live in mental bubbles, 
but yet share the same space. 





    My dear mother sent me a lovely dress today, with a note that implied its potential photographical use! I didn't wait another minute. I'm becoming addicted to using flash during sundown. It's a nice combination of lighting.

    And of course IPC!  I'm creating an old western facade with drinking straws. Who would have thought I would be doing this today. (You know as a kid I used to think that straws were a treasure. Now I after touching and gluing around 500 together, I think pretty much the opposite of that).

  We'll see if the class gets what I am trying to say at all. Context will really bring this deal to life.

Trying to think like John Cassavetes

    "Nothing that you plan is ever on the film - something else may be on the film but nothing that is planned will ever come to life." Cassavetes