My show is up, the artist's reception is over and went pretty well. My stress has gone down immensely. Now it's time to look foreword and start all over again. Now it's time to specify exactly what I'll be doing until and after I graduate. I've decided against going through the whole show of graduation. I didn't enjoy it the last time and so why spend money to do it again when I can just get my diploma mailed to me? Anyway that's my philosophy on it.
In class on Thursday we had a fascinating discussion about Albrecht Durer's piece "Melencholia I". Durer is absolutely amazing! While da Vinci usually holds the top spot in my favorite artists, whenever I study Durer, he comes very close to taking the top spot. You simply can't imagine all the things that go into a work by Durer, all the symbolism and geometry and pure planning. Durer didn't do things randomly or by accident or to "express himself" If you are not familiar with Durer, his work, or Melencholia I, I highly recommend that you change that. This might be a good place to start. You'd be amazed at all the cool stuff you could learn from Durer and the symbolism in his works. I don't know why people praise abstract expressionism when there is so much better out there, when there is something real out there. Find the real. Seek after truth.

relief

The marathon is over. I put up my final show tomorrow. All my pieces are finished and framed. I only need to take my pieces over to where they'll be displayed so I don't have to drag them and everything else I'll need tomorrow. A huge load has been lifted.
I scheduled this show way back in September, I figured I'd be done with everything by December...ha ha ha. I have been a procrastinator for far to long for that. I did work on art, but I also was doing a full schedule of classes, 20 hours of work a week and homework. Art sadly gets pushed to the back burner all too easily. I did get one piece mostly done last semester, and to be fair I made about three versions of a piece to try and get it to work right...which latter became four and five versions...anyway, bottom line I'd thought out most of my pieces, but I hadn't actually put brush to paper on them.
This semester I'm only taking three classes and that's helped a lot. Another thing that helped was finally getting to use some studio space, that truly boosted my productivity. Hours that were usually wasted on campus in between classes were suddenly very convenient times to go to the studio. Anyway while my working time was up immensely, it's still been quite a mad dash to get things finished. I've been doing a lot of pieces water color which has limited how quickly I can work, I can't put another layer of paint down while the paper's still wet from the last layer... this is why it's a very good idea to work on multiple pieces at once, so you have something to work on while you're waiting for things to dry.
Anyway, around midnight last night I finished my last piece. Prayer is a wonderful thing, as are blessings. Tiny miracles happen all the time once you start realizing them. I've been very blessed.
For those out of state, I'll probably post pictures of my show here eventually. Stay tuned.

in case you wondered, I did pass my cleaning check...

The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,--
I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good
swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and
a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers,
whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a
blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned
over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I
cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find
out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent
rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for,
'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous
endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming planet,
nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

Benedick Act 5 Scene 2 Much Ado About Nothing

For a change from the blah of every day, I desired some Shakespeare. I love Much Ado, it's probably my favorite of Shakespeare's works and how well I can identify with what Benedick says, it is so hard to write of love without being utterly cliche, to rhyme without sounding like a dribbling idiot... at least I find it so. I'm told that English is one of the hardest languages to rhyme in. I believe it, as mentioned, I'm studying Italian and it's amazing how much easier it would be to rhyme in Italian; most of the words end in o, a, i, or e opening up the options of words one might rhyme.
To write like the bard, that would be wonderful, alas I dislike taking the time to count out my syllables, I dislike the work of finding rhymes. I will not take the effort to be as Shakespeare and so I must be glad that his works exist for me to read.

count down

I don't know about other schools, but where my live, all the non married residencies aka dorms and apartments, have cleaning checks at least once a month. As I near graduation and moving away and as yet another cleaning check looms over my head tomorrow, I find myself eagerly awaiting the day I move out and no longer have to deal with said checks. After tomorrow I will only have two more... huzzah...or wait maybe it's three, one in the middle of April and one when I move out...bah. oh well, the sooner they're over, the better.

February 14

I've been thinking lately about Valentimes day and how I feel about it. Going back to the origins of the holiday, St. Valentine was flayed, okay so according to wikipedia there were several St. Valentine's who were martyred, at any rate, there was a St. Valentine who was thrown in jail and later executed for marrying young men who were supposed to remain single. I suppose this is where the western romantic take on the day springs from.

More recently there was the Valentine's day massacre. On Valentine's day 1929, Al Capone rubbed out about 7 people, this story factors into the plot of the movie Some Like It Hot, it's not Capone in the movie, but the essentials are there. I watched this movie last night with my brother to commemorate the massacre, it's a very funny movie.

One also hears of "single's awareness day" or "anti valentines day," mostly instigated by people feeling fairly lonely, sad and/or bitter. These days, well personally I was over the whole idea after high school. It just makes people miserable. I don't really love the idea of the traditional valentine's day either, it's gotten to be a holiday where after elementary school, most people love it or hate it with little in the middle. My freshmen year one of my next door neighbors introduced me, and the rest of the floor, to the idea of "Love week" a week long celebration of love and all the trappings that go along with valentines; however love week isn't really a celebration of couples, it's more a celebration of love, friends, romance, whatever... I've sort of adopted that idea, that we should be celebrating love in all it's many facets, because in the very famous words of John Lennon: "all you need is love" and it's absolutely true, it doesn't have to be a significant other's love, but we all need to be loved, and I think most people are loved, I should very much hope so any way.

The Little Prince

"The Little Prince," I guess technically it's a children's book, I just read it a few months ago for the first time though and I loved it. I am now legally an adult but I still feel like a kid, I still want to be a kid. Come to think of that that's probably why I like this book so much; I want to say that the author, Antonie De Saint-Exupe, is the narrator, a person who doesn't understand grown ups.
If you haven't read "The Little Prince" I think you really should; it's not your average book, it's a bit strange and also very deep and insightful. The rough plot is that there is a man who's crashed his plane in the desert and while he tries to fix his plane he meets the little prince. The little prince is not from Earth, he's visiting from another planet and he tells the pilot about what's happened to him since leaving his home. As an art major I found these quotes especially poignant:

"I is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

and

"But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart..."

It's so true, our eyes are so easily fooled, we know this, just look at an optical illusion. Children are often pushed aside as merely being children, youth who have not had the education the elder people have had, but so often it's the children who have deep and wonderful thoughts that stop us in our tracks, until they learn to be like those who are older and 'educated.'
There are many more gems in this book but I'm not going to post them, you need to go get this book and read it for yourself.

untitled

void
nullified
avoid
big giant gaping

hole

fill it with some spakel and some putty
fill it
become

whole...

forget, forgo, forgone
patchitup sealitup, plugitup, stopitup

NO!
no more, no where, nothing ventured nothing gained
check.
Find some stuffing, find some filler

keeping busy, keep on slugging, keep on crying, keep on dying, keep on keepon keep on smiling
don't stop thinking
don't
stop thinking
don't stop
thinking...