Feeling Weird

Subway from Lee Bretschneider on Vimeo.

I promise to start writing again once I get back into the semester grove.  

For now I'll say that:  Art to Art is going well (Elisabeth and I have made neat, laminated schedules using clip art she found), my fish are growing by the hour, Stephanie is finally back in our lives, Jenna's got a boyfriend, I cut David's hair really, really, really short, my hair is growing at the speed of light, I'm still working on applications for graduate school, yesterday I started throwing on the wheel again and got back into the swing of things, there is already a lot of dried clay on my pants (which looks like mud and dirt to normal people I walk by on campus), my sculpture came back from Denver undamaged, I really like my art history teacher, I had to drop my installation class (sad :( face) for fear that it would interfere with my honors thesis, I feel very prepared for this semester, this blog is one year old (not today, I missed it's birthday), I missed Irina's "birthday" too, Jenna and Alexa got into NCUR which means Stephanie and I have the apartment all to ourselves for a few days in the future, I went to the gym yesterday and ran three miles very quickly, the ping pong tables were taken so I couldn't play yesterday, I can't wait until next weekend because I get to go home and celebrate my favorite holiday (Chinese New Year), I got a new kazoo after my other new kazoo was busted from me blowing/humming too hard into it, I'm waiting to watch a documentary I found in the library on noodling (bare-handed catfishing), and I'm finally taking piano lessons (I think I found my teacher on wikipedia).

The stockings are hung by the fireplace and there's a nice smelling tree in the house but I still need to bake pies and decorate things

There's something smelly going on with the dog, and we need to do something about it immediately.  But that's not the purpose of this post.  I'm gonna take a second and brag about my grades for once:

Fundamentals of Design: A

Professional Practices in Art: A

Honors Thesis: A

Senior Seminar: A

Statistics: A

For winter term, I'm taking my upper-level GST (Plants and Civilization...should be neat).  These are the classes I'm taking in the Spring:

Advanced Projects in Ceramics

Honors Thesis

Art History III Cathedrals/Conquest

Installation Art

Senior Seminar

Whitewater Canoeing

Piano

It should be busy, but EXTREMELY fun.  I'm especially excited about the installation art class and the whitewater canoeing.  I just got the syllabus from that class a couple of weeks ago and my professor (coach, haha) said that some practices will be taking place in school lakes.  That makes me nervous because of all the stories I've heard about people getting e. coli from polar-bear-plunging into the waters.  I guess as long as I don't fall in, I'll be okay.  After all, it's canoeing, not kayaking (though I strongly wish there was a kayak class).

In other news, Rachael is officially done with school.  I'm jealous, but not jealous at the same time because I have a lot of loose ends to fix up this Spring.  I'm excited to see her this break and go to her graduation!  Now I've got to do some holiday shopping/make myself poor again.

Love,

Monica

P.S.  My artist website, for any that are interested:  My "website"

For Mommy (Fall Break and Update on life)

So, while life has not actually started to slow down, I have gotten some big presentations out of the way.  I spent fall break in Cary, NC this year to show my stuff at a day-long final interview for TFA (Yes, that's me in a suit of sorts to make a good impression).  It felt nice to look all sleek and put-together.  My roommate, Stephanie, is a business major and always knows how to dress up professionally.  I'd say I felt a lot like her. 

Because I spent most of my short fall break preparing for the interview, I spent the rest of it catching up on neglected homework while attempting hibernation.  Some highlights were Indian food, shopping w/David, making dark chocolate chip pancakes from scratch in the late afternoon, taking Gizmo to the dog park, and going to see Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (I cried).

The break in general, though, was filled with lots of cute animals.  That's Gizmo above wondering what-in-the-world I'm doing, flashing at him like some paparazzi.  I'm basically obsessed with getting him to like me, even when I'm not holding food in my hands.

And here's a very recent picture of Irina (who came to David's home with me).  She's still alive and kicking (not to mention biting).  In just a couple of months I will have had her for one year!  It's exciting, but also a little depressing because I think her breed is only supposed to live for about 16 months (and she hasn't grown that much since I got her).  She, too, was curious about the camera.

And this is a picture taken from my powerpoint presentation (yesterday).  I had to give my "Presentation of Progress" for honors.  I went first and despite my nerves everyone said I did an outstanding job.  It was actually a really nice opportunity to get 15 minutes to tell an audience (some, complete strangers) about a project that I've almost been working a year on now.  The other presenters in my group were wonderful too.  I was lucky to be in a fun, creative, enthusiastic group.  There were eight concurrent presentation sessions spread across two floors and grouped by like-majors so that all of the 37 honors students could present within two hours.  My group had an art major (me), an art history major (my talented and genius friend, Nichole), a Music Technology major (rock n roll Andrew),  a Theatrical Design and Production major (cute and confident Sarah Linn) and a Music Theatre major (Topher, who was wearing his signature vest).

Nichole is doing a presentation comparing perceptions between flat, abstracted paintings and their realistic, 3-d (using perspective) counterparts (Flat Can Be Deep: A Perspective on the Valuation and Common Perceptions of Two-Dimensional Artworks).  Andrew is busy writing, directing and composing music for a Rock Opera with a story line comparable to Westside Story (Beautiful Disease: A Rock Tragedy).  Sarah Linn is stage managing the spring musical (State Management for Musical Theatre: An Artistic Presentation of Elon University's 2009 Fall Musical, "Kiss Me, Kate").  I loved learning a lot about what goes on behind the scenes and I will never look at her in the same way now, knowing all the hard work that she is doing.  Lastly, Topher is writing the script and lyrics for an original musical (Finding "i.d.": Developing an Original Musical within the Workshop Process).  I'm really excited to see Topher's musical in the spring because last spring I went with some friends to see a preview and the writing was hilarious as well as the music fantastic and inspiring.  In a sentence, his musical revolves around a young woman with dissociative identity disorder whose father has just died.

Speaking of fathers, my dad is coming on Tuesday.  I can't wait because he's going to take me to a bike store to get a rack which I can use to tie a milk crate to.  Kind of like this:

Love,

Monica

P.S. David and I might venture out to the football game.  That might change, though, as it's Homecoming weekend and crowded like mad.  Our back-up plan is to see the lemurs at Duke.

I've always loved colored pencils

Colored pencils are a classic.  Everyone should have colored pencils available to them.  I have multiple sets and they are never more than a few feet away from me.  I've used them for doodles like this:

Co-authored while watching the summer Olympics with David, who drew the monkey

And for more time consuming doodles like this:

Done for an art project in high school.  We had to visualize song lyrics.  Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

But, I never ever ever imagined that they could be used to do this:

Both taken from here

And, yes, I realize that most of my blog entries are actually born from the blog entries of others.  What can I say.  "For opinions as for material goods: production is dead, long live reproduction."  Just kidding, but Baudrillard said that and it came up in my art history class yesterday.

So, I'm sitting here alone.  All my roommates went to see "the really hot old guy" aka Anderson Cooper.  He's at my school today.  I wasn't interested.  I think I'm going to go check my mailbox (I'm waiting for a necklace) and work on my Life Drawing project.  For those of you who forgot, I have to transfer my image into an art historical image.  I chose a photograph of Frida Kahlo (this entry).  And, in case you were wondering, I will be giving myself the unibrow.  I'll have updates of this project in photo form later tonight.