What a week! But today was so warm that it was a good day to work outside. Imagine that! In January. God's affirming goodness is ever so strong when one looks for it.

Sasha, of course working on her drawing project while getting wise and helpful tips from yours truly.. all of which were not heeded. 

 This is real cheap priming paint.

You. Are. Lost.

That was this mornings comment given to me by my print teacher, tiny in frame, and thick spanish accent.  She was genuine as she stared into my soul after glancing over the last sketches of "The Bull". I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded. She had a way of making me loose my train of thought very quickly.
"I know how you feel, you are lost." ... what can I say.  She closed my notebook and handed it back.

This woman thinks I am now a very lost homesick girl. Homesick came from my last critique.

 Maybe she's right.

Here a couple more sketches coming from the tired weak hands of a girl who feels out of place and alone.  (You all know I really just want to draw plants). But I don't want to bleed to death from her passionate corrections.

Full of Bull

My first drawings for our etching project were rejected by my teacher do to to their simple literiteness. I like plants. What can I say. . . seriously, tomatoes have an overwhelming amount of metaphorical meaning!

So today I go home and draw bulls. Why? I don't know, that is until Vickie came home and commented "It's because you are full of bull." And just like that, a genius concept conceived.  I swear, tomorrow it's going to get some looks.

I never told Grandma I took her old windows to Memphis...

     Christmas break was an unexpected dose of winter for sure. It was unbelievably cold... no it was FRICKIN cold. The air seemed to maintain a temp of -20.  And the snow on the ground was more then I had recalled in about fifteen years. But dawning snowsuit and muk luks two days before I left for the south, on I decidedly tramped around the fields and buildings getting some fresh air and needed exercise. 

            The buildings on the 180 acres of  my grandparents property are very old. I always seem to forget the history of this place. But as I stole my way into one of the old log sheds, crouching to avoid the low standing beams, I felt intrigued to again take it all in. There in the back of the shed I noticed old heavy iron parts of plows and wood yokes lying in a bit of disarray. As I drew closer, I began to take in account the homemade feel of everything. The wood of the handles and axels were as smooth as rock agates from years of handling. Nails and wire were the glue that seemed to hold everything together. A pair of skies lying up in the rafters that looked to be about ten feet long. Too long to easily lift or budge from their coffin beams. I began to feel emotion swell inside of me. All the work and toil that made my existence possible lay amongst these relics. And I would never get to know that history personally. The past has a way of closing it’s own doors no matter how close we may be to it.

            My BFA project is an homage to my mothers family history. As the story above accounts for me digging around the farm, it was also the day I spotted my grandmother’s old window frames. They were screaming for me to take them. And with the help of my mother they were retrieved and brought to Memphis.

And so begins the task of stripping and repainting ..

Trying to remove the panes of glass.

I'm more then blessed to be working alongside a great artist- Sasha Sorokina.

texture

The semester is going to kill me, so I need to call this project done and move on to the important assign.. this was a learning experience for me.

It's called, " My really bad outcome from a genius idea!" Studying texture and materials.

A lot of you folks may be shocked or even repulsed when you start to scroll down to view the images... don't worry, like I always say to my dearest friends, "It can only get better from here!" 

You wouldn't sew an orange peel back together just because it was torn open, would you? Sometimes time is most foolishly spent.