Downhill

Yikes.  I am sitting in my studio completely bored and disengaged and uninspired.  I realized this morning while watching some film on the YBA's, that "Artist" isn't even my DREAM JOB.  Don't get me wrong- being an art student has been (for the most part) extremely enjoyable and eye-opening and self-discovering and all that crap, but it all dawned on me as I drew the venn diagram for my "dream job", that this is resolutely NOT my path in life.  The venn diagram looked something like this:

Circle #1: Creative intellectual
Circle #2: Writer (non-fiction, and opinion-based editorial stuff)
Circle #3: Gardener/greenhouse worker

Update: there was an asian man sitting near me on the bus with his shoes off while I wrote this

And there, at the crux of these three circles, lies my dream job.  It'd be cool if it paid a decent salary, with benefits and vacation time and everything!

77 days until graduation.

Procrastination

Ah reading week. The sweet respite from school.  Don't get me wrong, my schedule is incredibly wonderful, what with only having classes three days a week, and having the freedom to more or less come and go as I please, not to mention that intrinsic optimism that tells me to enjoy these scarce few final months of art school.  But I just can't seem to muster much motivation to continue making art, let alone applying for various shows and publications that would be well-suited to my practice.  So instead I put much of my effort into compiling a suitable list of TV series and movies that I want to download and watch, now that I have successfully finished watching the entirety of several shows (in order of viewing: Mad Men, Daria, The Big Bang Theory, The Walking Dead, and Roseanne- all since September.  Except Mad Men, I suppose.  That was last semester.)  And also I have stocked up on my yarn collection, as the only thing that I find more enjoyable than sitting in my bed and watching countless episodes of a program, is sitting in my bed watching episodes and knitting.  So yes.  I lack motivation to go on.  And I have to be at school tomorrow at 9 to set up for a group show.  But I digress.  This was by far my best reading week ever- the last three having spent holed up with 

a) the flu

b) a terrible cold/wisdom tooth extraction

c) strep throat. 

This year I spent a week in Oklahoma with my love visiting his family and generally eating everything and anything in sight.  We went off to Dallas for two days to view the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (much to my chagrin the Lynda Benglis sculptures that I beyond love were sitting in storage collecting dust! FUCK!) and also to see some beautiful japanese botanical gardens.  So that was pretty cultural, I'd say.

Overall a fantastic week enjoying nice weather, sleeping in, shopping, antiquing, and eating tasty Southern fare.  

Back to work now.

Oh but first, a few snapshots of the gardens:

STUDIO

A quick snapshot of my studio today.  Looks pretty awesome all mirrored 'n shit.  Also, I don't have a head.

It just occurred to me

that next year, wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I probably won't be making the most of my school-hours by sitting, listening to some tunes, while hot-gluing crushed mirrors onto various surfaces.

And that's a rather depressing thought.

Pinkie and Me

Some stills from a video series/installation thing-y I am working on! It's sort of a fictional narrative about my metamorphosis from human to invertebrate! Hooray! BRB, time to wash my tentacles.

Sassy Sally: The Zine

I decided to make an awesome Zine! So far I've written an introductory statement.  I'd really like to put on there "Editor's note" or "From the desk of the Editor-in-chief" or something overinflated like that.  Anyways, I hope the zine comes out cool, I figure now that I have two free days that I'm not spending in my studio at school, plus no car to go anywhere, I can work on this and count it as legitimate work.  Plus, since I have high hopes of being a writer, maybe this is the kind of idiosyncratic thing I can use as a portfolio or something one day.

Here it is.  The inaugural issue of Sassy Sally: The Zine.  I kind of feel like this is a hard-copy sequel to my ongoing, formerly eponymous blog.  

Who is Sassy Sally? Well, ol’ Sally is kind of like my alter-ego.  I think of her as a hybrid creature, comprised of Darlene Conner, Enid Coleslaw, and Daria.  With a little bit of Elaine from Seinfeld thrown in for good measure.  Sassy Sally is the spritely postmodern reincarnate within a world that keeps tacking on more pointless, self-negating prefixes.  I think we’ve now crossed the frontier into Post-Post-Post-Modernism.  Anyways, that’s the perspective from whom I write.  Come to think of it, I don’t think Sassy Sally is my alter-ego, as much as she’s my analogous-ego.  But with a snappier, alliterated name.  

In real life, I am a multi-media and process-based visual artist.  I’m vehemently obsessed with the tactile, and I love the dollar store more than anything, for its endless supply of cheap, colorful and sensory-stimulating items.  I hate crowds, I’m an eternal scab-picker, I furiously write to-do lists that often include the task “write to-do list”, and dogs speak to my heart more than human beings ever could.  Basically, what it comes down to is this: I am a twenty-two year old almost-BFA-grad, who is plagued with self-doubt, insecurity, and uncertainty.  I fancy myself both ambitious and incredibly lazy (an archetypal quality of the Millenial generation).  I don’t know how to put together an outfit properly, and more than likely, I’m threatened by you.  

Maybe one day I’ll expand and get an “Ask Sassy Sally” advice column.