photo, second semester.

here are some photos from my final portfolio this semester.





half self-portrait, half others. it was a series of ten, the rest of them i got lazy and only made one print of so they're stranded in sackville for a while.

i started out wanting to do something and in the end i think it's a little different. it's sadder than i intended. i don't really know what to say about it but it's like when you're insecure about something so you try to cover it up but in the end your attempt to cover it up makes it even more obvious. so rather than wax your moustache and get those obvious little hairs growing back you might as well cover it up with a fancy stylish moustache.

i was impressed at how hard people had to think when i asked about their insecurities. i know i have a mental list of several things i could spew out on command. then i wondered if maybe they just don't want to say them out loud because they fear that maybe nobody noticed before but if they call attention to it, it'll be all people see. i feel a little weird about being like "hey, i have an above-average amount of facial hair!" because it's something i'm really self-conscious about but i also wonder if people really notice. i have no idea if it's a nobody-notices thing or an oh-dear-that's-unfortunate thing.

hi.

i'm home now. home meaning sussex although it is my home for less of the year and probably won't be again after this summer. that is a weird thing to think about. i never know anymore what to say when asked for my address.

i am still struggling to fix my sleep schedule. when i got back on friday i went to bed at 8 and slept through most of saturday, then i didn't really sleep saturday night i just pretended to and then last night i went to bed at 9 and woke up at 4 and pretended to sleep until 10. sleeping is hard. so is getting out of bed.

i'm going to try to not be lazy this summer. i'm going to try to make something every day. cut up a t-shirt or do a drawing or take a photograph. i'm going to try and do some drawing, actually. this past year i have neglected drawing as a medium in itself rather than just getting ideas out. i don't think i like any of the drawings i did in class this year. other than perhaps my final project which was a book of all my clothes. but i like it more as an object than as a book of drawings. it's actually the only drawing i brought home rather than leave it in the studio, probably to be thrown out.

i feel like i should include some pictures but i don't really have anything. i need to scan in my photo portfolio, but i don't have all of it here because i had to pass it in to be marked and i got lazy and only made one print of some of them.

i had a dream last night

where there was a concert in sussex that was really big and at first it was miley cyrus so we went for laughs and we were at the front and we were really enjoying it because now it was a lady gaga concert and then she sang just dance and nobody likes that song so they all went to sit down at tables because now we weren't in a large concert space we were in a bar and it was the timberland bar and instead of lady gaga it was my aunt cathy and then she got sad about something. and then we left to go home on trains and there was a lady gaga song on the radio that was a cover of a song that sunset rubdown had covered in this dream so i was like i know this song and it turned out to be a cover of a song from some 80s country rock band but the song when sung by lady gaga or spencer krug was really good and i saw a train go by that was huge and made of big fancy yellow houses for cars with windows through which you could see fancy people dining and i was like look at that train! and then i fell off whatever we were driving in and we went to get on the train but it wasn't that fancy anymore but it was little yellow and pink cabins that were really cute and i was excited to go on this train but it turns out that the cabins were relly poorly constructed from plywood and that was a little bit unfortunate.

i like it when i remember so many things from a dream because i usually can't remember enough to piece back into a coherent story. i love how dreams are always like we-were-doing-this-but-then-suddenly-we-were-doing-this-other-thing-but-it-wasn't-suddenly-it-was-just-how-things-were. and i always think of my dreams in terms of "we" but i have no idea who the other people with me were.

i'm making a shirt right now

and i think it's going to be really cool. a clever refashioning of a simple t-shirt, really. i've been thinking about perhaps in the summer making some things to sell at the farmer's market, if this shirt works the way it does in my head i think that it is a cool thing.

i haven't slept for about 30 hours and i don't feel that tired but my typing is pretty bad so i think i should sleep.

whenever i'm in conversations with groups of people i seem to always try to be more conversational and get a remark in every once in a while but then i like zone out for a second and miss part of what's happening and then i'll say something and it will be in the wrong context or something and i spend too much time thinking about how people think i meant this thing when i meant something else and i feel really bad or stupid or like i said something untrue even though they probably don't even notice or forget after a few seconds.

i think i have at least one thing i say per conversation i have that i regret. i dunno why, it's annoying.

ugly afghans.

i started this blog with "knitting blog" in mind. knitting and art blog. i don't really knit a whole lot now. last night i had an urge to crochet a really ugly afghan.


i'm pretending that my grandmother crocheted it for me as a "first apartment" present. because my grandmother is not so much into crafts. i love my grandmother, she is a pretty awesome lady, but it seems like everyone should have a grandmother who crochets them a mismatched afghan to commemorate an important life event.

i remember when i was little seeing in one of those home-decorating-colour-schemes catalogues a room that was all a dusty rose colour with accents of bright orange. i thought it was hideous but i was strangely attracted to it. this afghan will look like that room.

interesting fact: i did not know until today that washington DC is on the east coast rather than over in the west with, you know, washington. i totally thought they were in the same part of the country. sorry, americans, i'm dumb.

art history exam:

it's almost 7am, it's due at 12, and i have a page written of 6-8.

she said to take 5-6 hours for it. LIES.

it really does get worse every time. i just want to go to sleep now.

7:34 and i've got not even two pages. this is the part where i get a nice little chorus of "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" going through my head.

i use that word a lot more in my head than i do out loud. interesting fact, i guess.

8:19 it's time for more distraction and badly typo'd and puncgtuated rambling because imy brain doesn't work anymore for tihngs it should and i just want to go to sleep all the time and listen to the menfding of the fucking gown for my whole life because that song makes me real happy and it's about mending gowns ehichj is a really good thing i would like to be a gown mender for my job but i don't think tghere is mcyuh demand....i seem drunk but i'm really just frustrated obviously i would not be drunk at 8:21 am whilst sttempting to write this exam...i am glad that i do art for school because i forget how to do everything else but also i think i should do ther things make because art is impracticval and i don't know how to do other tnhigns anymore...iwent to breakfast to getr coffee looking all ugly and half wet haired thinkging nobody i know woulfd see me but thenm someone came and sat with me and i was all bye see you later but i probably eont'r and ewent awawy and he was like have a good summer and i was like awkwadrd thumbs up and went awawy and then i wrealkised that i am really tired hand that is not a prober goodbye for the summer, the cyle of procrastinateinf and complainting about it and it getting worse and compainting about that really never does end.... my hands are all jittery and my freakingoutaboutfinishingthingsintime part of my brain has turnied into a freakinginoutbecausreheresnowayicanfinishitdoimightaswellprocrastinarre nmore patr and i really want to keep tyoing horrible and saying thisngs that are unimportant adn don't makes sense forever because it vfeels much nicer than attempting to fins information anbout whilsletdsrs white girl that doesnt'; fucking exist because i don't care if you're telling me that the scritis talked about it a lot if you're not telling me what threyte said about it guh

this is funny.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

850 am i can't fucking do this. why is this so hard for me? everyone else can write a fucking essay without wasting half an hour between sentences. take home exams remind me of this time last year when i was frantically emailing my prof asking for extensions while my grandfather died. i'm totally just screwing myself over here but every time i have to write something like this i get this overwhelming sense of hopelessness that i'm going to lost my scholarship over this one stupid fucking essay that i just couldn't be bothered to start on time and i don't even know why that matters to me that much i mean the 3000/year is great but will i even notice that in a few years when i'm tens of thousanmds of dollars in debt with a useless degree and i lack the ability to even write a fucking 6 page paper?

i like the rips in my pantyhose.

they just look really nice tonight.
one leg is ripped all over and if you look at it up close there are really nice lines where one set of runs meets another or one thread catches another. and the other leg is ripped to a lesser degree but all over the knee there is this scattering of round holes without the vertical runs.

it's just one of those things that makes you feel cool even though nobody else would notice the finer details of it. to most people they're just ripped tights.

in high school i remember being afraid of wearing ripped tights because they had a certain i'm-so-hardcore attitude that came with them and i was more the shy smart kid type even though i dressed strangely. ripped tights were the line i wouldn't cross.

i just read a bunch of this blog about things that are really awesome. like the little things that make your day. i think i should take more notice of these things because i was reading the list and being like "yeah, that totally is awesome but i never realized!"

for sculpture class our final project was to make a piece of furniture to put in the fine arts building lounge-area. i made the corner part of a couch-like arrangement of chairs and it has a curtain on it so if you want to get away from people for a minute you can close it and be alone for a while. a couple of people have told me that they like my chair and want to sit in it but there is always someone else sitting there. that was another nice thing.

knowing how to weld is probably not a good thing for when i go to furnish our apartment. the i-could-make-that attitude is okay when it comes to clothes and things, but some things? not so much!

but i do really want this tree bed, and i could make it for much less than $6000. anthropologie has such pretty pretty expensive things!

no, stop thinking these things! you cannot make everything!

it feels like it's been a long time

i've been sleeping during the day and being awake at night in buildings without other people sewing cushions or embroidering messages on curtains or covering up my insecurities with even more of them and dancing in the darkroom and listening to the same old songs.

sneaking in and out of locked buildings by slipping discrete pieces of cardboard in the cracks is kind of exciting in that my-life-is-pretty-dull-so-this-is-interesting way. yesterday i was in the basement of hart hall working on my furniture project overnight, and at about 6:30 a bunch of people walked through the building talking and singing and having a great time. i don't know who they were, custodians maybe, but they were really happy for 6:30 am and that was kind of nice.

i think i'm going to try to get back to being awake in the day, though. because i have to find some jobs to apply for. i realized that i only have like four days left before i'm done and i don't necessarily like that.

colour photos are in!

...and they're really bad.

completely pink and grainy-looking. i'm going to try and fix them up a little with (gasp!) photoshop. i know, right? i should be preserving the integrity of the film format. i should get the negatives scanned, they seem to have more information than the prints do. but i don't really know how to do that this week since the photo tech is away and my prof is never around. which is the same problem preventing me from getting a key to the studio to start (and complete) that portfolio project. oh thaddeus where are you?

(but, technical problems aside, isn't that an adorable picture? judging from the glimpse of dan in the corner it was probably one of my of-course-i'm-taking-pictures-of-the-other-band-members-i'm-not-creepy-at-all photos.)

i decided to watch some pushing daisies while working on my drawing...

INCORRECT!


i think that people are interesting when i don't know exactly what it is they're talking about but it sounds nice. i think that people always want to be friends with people who are one level of interestingness above them. except the people who want to seem more interesting by being friends to the people one level of interestingness below them. this makes things difficult because you don't want to end up with friends who are using you to make themselves seem more interesting. it's kind of similar to how some people like to have ugly friends to make them look good. that shit's not cool.