Life is good

Mike gave me this picture today and I thought to share it here. Things are starting to come together and camp (summer!) is just around the corner.

SURF

Today classes were canceled and oodles of students presented original research projects and theses at Elon's Student Undergraduate Research Forum (or SURF). As someone said tonight "I went SURF-ing all day and was no where near the beach!" Actually, that's not true. I wanted to see all of my friend's presentations (which was about 40, give or take), but my presentation took too long both to install and de-install. Here is a video of the way I set the installation up today (I might change it a bit for my gallery opening on Sunday):

Honors Thesis Preview from Monica Huang on Vimeo.

Along with allowing viewers to, um, view the artwork, I gave a brief speech and participated in a Q & A session for about 15 minutes. I think I did well and people seemed to really enjoy the session.

After a hard day's work of presenting, the students and their mentors were invited to attend a dinner celebrating and congratulating everyone on their achievments. We got little awards! :

Love,

Monica

Also

I recently added some photos to the "thesis/current work" page on my website, as well as two new pages called "life drawing" and "printmaking".  Just for fun.

-Mon

Thesis progress

These are the four I made since spring semester started!  And below is me for height comparison:

Love,

Monica

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).

Flying high

I finished working on these (above and below) before I left today.

And took these pictures before landing in Baltimore.

Now I'm home, after eating Korean tofu soup, hanging out with the new dog (he's sweet).

Big wheels keep on turnin

Current Work

Franklin-stein Street

This past weekend, David, Stephanie and I went to Chapel Hill to visit Elisabeth (from camp!).  We did lots of walking back and forth between cars (because of strict parking rules), hung out at her characteristically-high-ceilinged dorm room, played bananagrams and had dinner at a conveyer belt sushi place all before changing into our costumes.  Elisabeth was a Jedi Knight (probably a young obi one), Stephanie was a sultry devil and David was one of those endangered, yet plump bumblebees.  As his girlfriend, I played his flower counterpart by wearing a flower-printed dress and stapling flowers that I cut out of an old Georgia O'Keeffe calendar to a green cardigan.  All of this was topped off with a flower smack dab in the middle of my head:  

Then we walked Franklin Street...

What I DID NOT know was that Franklin Street is basically a giant party in the road.  Plus lots of drunken girls in small animal costumes and boys wearing anything from pizza boxes to Elvis garb.  

I'm exaggerating, of course, but maybe only a little.  Here are some of the highlights from the night:

Fun for all the ages!

Everyone wants in on the picture!

I am proud to say that I got the cone reference.

These are my friends!

This guy was cool.  He asked me where I was from because he said it was what he asked when people said to him, "Can I take your picture?"

I saw the balloon kid at the very beginning but he got away before I could take a picture.  Luckily, I was OBSESSED with finding him and snapped a shot of him on his way out.

Believe it or not, he was not the only peacock on Franklin Street that night.  And I thought it a pretty original costume.

This guy had a dance-off with himself.

Swim team? or Triathletes stuck in the swimming portion of a triathlon?

Octo-mom!  And Franklin Street isn't just for college kids anymore...

"Oh my gawd!  A Big reference?  It isn't every day that you get a Big reference!!" --really drunk guy who saw the Tom Hanks classic 

First costume I saw that night, and the reason I love group costumes

Oh, and this is what I meant by pizza box earlier.

After all of this craziness and more, we went back to Elisabeth's friend's apartment and watched creative people build halloween cakes for $10,000 in prize money.  We would have gone home after that, but with the extra hour from daylight savings, we decided to watch Corpse's Bride, a movie witch (haha) Stephanie had yet to see and ended up sleeping through.

Now, life is moving very quickly.  I'm busy working, of course, on my thesis and am trying to keep myself out of trouble (and by that, I mean keeping myself from adopting furry little animals).  My dad came to visit yesterday, installing a nice little blinker for night-driving safety along with much-needed new brake pads.  I've got babysitting this Friday for six hours and will be helping out with some kiln firings on Saturday with the other claydogs.  I've also got to greet the jurors that I selected for the Juried Student Exhibition this Sunday .  With all of that on my plate, I can say for certain that I am looking forward to a relaxing matinee showing of Kiss Me, Kate at Elon on Sunday.

Love,

Monica

DCC Community Art Show

For my Professional Practices in Art class we are required to regularly submit art to exhibitions to get exposure, circulate ourselves into the art community but, mainly, to get experience doing things that artists people do.  So, I submitted some pictures of pieces around to random exhibits that I saw online thinking that no one would really get back to me (because of this, I didn't pay too much attention to location).  However, there is this art show called Convergence: An Exhibition on Community that liked one of my pieces.  The only problem is the show is in Denver, Colorado.  HAHA  The funniest part is that I'm thrilled and am going to pay shipping and handling to get it there!  Here's a little blurb about the show:

The DCC Community Art Show is seeking applications for its annual art show/wine tasting event, November 14 being hosted at 1101 S Washington St. in Denver, CO. We are currently looking for artists who are looking to gain more exposure for their work or are new to showing and/or selling their art. This year's show has an emphasis on the greater community and what that means to its artists. 

I'm thinking I might try to sell in order to make up for shipping and handling, though.

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.

Will I make it through alive?

It's the final week before fall break and I couldn't be busier.  That's why I've been neglecting my beloved blog (sorry my few but faithful followers).  Have no fear, though.  I've been giving myself lots of fun things to do amidst the academic chaos.  For example, yesterday I helped out at my second family fun day and got to see a lot of adult campers from summer camp (I think a few even remembered me).  The best part, as always, was "duck, duck, goose".  They made it INTENSE!  And two weekends ago, I went to the NC Zoo (yes, again).  I'll leave you with some highlights from that trip, as well as the promise of a better update after break:







Later alligator

after while, crocodile

Getting tall