this girl has a mission

today is a day of travel! this next week and a half are going to be spent smoking with the fam, learning to knit with garbage and playing in the snow. oh SNOW! how i've missed you! you don't happen in florida and it makes me sad.

my christmas gift this year is an ultrasound of my abdomen to find out what's wrong with me! yay! i'm sure it could be much worse though. i could get a baseball for christmas... or a gift card to some sort of math based something. not that i don't like math... i just don't want to do it when i don't have to. unless i'm bored and my grandaddy is showing me how to find the square route of i. that's right. we do those kinds of things for FUN.

christmas brings out the crazy in families. mine is already crazy.

there's something about animated propoganda that i just love!

20s gangster voice (that i learned from bugs bunny)

so i'm gonna take this tape, see? and i'm gonna cut out some words on a piece of paper, see? then i'm gonna put the piece of paper with the cut out letters on the tape and i'm gonna rub 'em together real good, see? and i'm gonna spread it on the floor, see? and then i'm gonna peel it up, see? and THEN i'm gonna RIP that tape off and entomb it forever in a block or RESIN, SEE!? SEE!?

/20s gangster voice (that i learned from bugs bunny)

today is a day

studio visit with shawn petterson today! gonna be fun AND educational. super!

evolution of ideas

so right now i'm working on some drawers. i have three, but i only have solid ideas for two. the first is going to have a folded outfit encased in resin. the second drawer is going to have an outfit that has been totally shredded. the third one might have a pair of shoes in it.. but i think the shoes are going to be a different piece. i'm just not sure what to do with the third drawer. i might fill it with cloth strips covered in wax. the point is to render these clothes/outfits completely unwearable, no matter what size i am, these clothes will never be wearable. once i get this rolling i think it's going to be a crazy strong piece. the only problem is that i don't have enough resin! i really hate having to ask my mother for money, but i don't have a job or a car so going out and making money before next thursday just isn't going to work.

today i'm going to start painting the drawers so that they can dry today and i can start filling them with things tomorrow! this weekend is going to be about getting things done, finishing things up and getting ready for thursday's thesis crit. i just hope that i can work around this whole money issue. telling your thesis teacher, senior year, that you can't make work because you don't have the money might be TRUE, but it's not going to save my ass.

three

draw

from the top.

the plot so far.

this is my progress between last tuesday and thursday afternoon (before the crit.) 12 pieces in what amounts to about 2 days of work. not bad. these will grow over the next few weeks, but progress is going to be slower. i'm going to be dividing my time between sewing and sculpting and casting. there are going to be multiple incarnations of these stones and cairns. i think of the stones as individuals and the cairns as whole pieces.

i'm going to be building some stones out of plaster and maybe stuffing and nylon. i'm not sure what's going to make the best base. maybe even clay. whatever will cost less. probably the nylon and stuffing and plaster. i'll have to ask wendy or john mack if i can use the school's plaster. i might need my own. maybe i can be sneaky? when i'm done building enough stones i'm going to start making molds from them and casting resin stones filled with layers of clothing, glitter, potato chips, various japanese paraphenalia i own. the list goes on and on. i don't think i'll stall out this time. i can't really fail with these things. i can make mistakes, but i can't just completely fail.

it's so amazingly freeing to have an idea that you feel is solid. i know that i'm going in the right direction.

thesis crits

yesterday was so good for me. i've never had a better crit. amanda got it right on the money. the cairns made out of my old clothes that don't fit me anymore (or that i thought would fit and just never did) are talking about who i used to be. they're the death of the person i was, the person i thought i was supposed to be. they're about saying i was here once. they're my reminder that i'm still alive. a memento mori that's also life affirming. people got it! i didn't have to sit and try to walk people through what these cairns were about. certainly some of my classmates didn't make the immediate connection, but that's either because they had never seen the symbol before or just didn't know what it meant.

for once i feel sure of myself, my abilities, my craftsmanship, my logic, my ideas. i'm finally excited about my thesis. i can imaging the next few weeks being really integral. i think, now that ideas are free flowing, i'll be able to get a lot done in a pretty short time. i have about a month before orals, so i have about four weeks to just make make make.

i'm playing with layers, history, disappointment, fear, death and rebirth. i need to make the death part more felt. i need to really emphasize the absence in the work. the absence being the thing that i'm symbolically killing and erecting a memorial to. i'm not sure if these things belong in a gallery, or if they belong on location (don't know the location yet though.) i'll find the right place. i know in my gut that i'm not going to have to fight with these things like i've fought with the eyes or my paintings and drawings. i don't want the creation of art to be a battle. i want it to be a peaceful collaboration between all the parts of my brain and my body. the zen like aspect of the 'stones', the making, the stacking, is really important. because these things are so specific i'm not having any trouble setting rules for myself.

rules are so important. i'm examining my rules and structure. where it needs to be changed i'll make them. these rules will really inform my work. my thesis is going to be really strong as long as i follow through with this. plus i'll get to use resin again and i LOVE resin!

and thanks so much to shawn for talking directly to me, not talking to the room in general. i don't think what he said would have had the same impact if he hadn't been looking right into my eyes while talking to me. his comments stood out the most (besides amanda's brilliant comment and i will love her forever for really understanding that aspect) and helped me the most. i understood what shawn was telling me and i'm really going to take it to heart. really i want to thank everyone who commented. everything that was said (even the few comments that were condescending/judgemental/totally wrong) sparked a dialog between cori and i. there was so much to digest, consider and talk about. it was so great!

clothes cairns

a cairn is used to mark a path. they're landmarks. out in the desert (and i'm sure other places too) we use these stone cairns to mark the way to good places on trails, to show the best place to ford a river or stream, to show that we've been there and sometimes just to play and be pretty. cairns are a semi-universal symbol of finding your way, marking your place. in history these conical stone piles were used to mark graves.

my cairns aren't made of stone. instead they're sewn from clothes of mine that either don't fit anymore or never fit right to begin with. i'm trying to take the viewer on a journey of the struggles i've had with my weight and with finding clothes that fit my body type. it's something that most women and a lot of men can relate to. i'm constantly trying to catch up with myself. my mental idea of who i am doesn't always fit the way i might be presented to other people.

i think these cairns are probably going to get the most reaction tomorrow in thesis. at least thats what i'm hoping for. i've stalled out mentally on my eye shapes. i don't really know for sure what they mean anymore and i'm not sure they're saying what i wanted them to mean in the first place. i don't what to completely abandon them because i do feel a connection. i might have to leave them for a couple of weeks or a month and focus on these cairns and where they might take me. maybe then i can come back to the eye shapes feeling fresh again.

i might have more little doodles from this red notebook. i'm storing my life and my thoughts in it so there's always more weirdness to dissect.

this is a blog.

i am a girl.

i'm not sure what i'm going to do with this space. probably put up pictures of my art, my life, talk about stuff. you know, all those original things that no one else EVER uses a blog for.