first Days of New York

Yesterday I went to the Guggenheim Museum. It was almost overwhelming, it was like being in a visual/sensory russian dolls. first of all to be in the city of New York with all of its stimulus, and then to be in the actual Guggenheim, my first time in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed building, and then to be looking at amazing old paintings by the likes of Vuillard and Kandinsky, and then at top of that to be taking in all of the brush strokes of the paintings.
It was difficult after a while to continue to take everything in, to try, during my 4-5 hours there, to keep noticing the building from its many levels and nooks and crannies and changes in light, as well as to take in all of the art.

The main attraction was Richard Prince. I got what he was doing with his work, his commentaries on consumerism, the american dream, its pulls and repulsion, but I didn't find it to be that layered of work, it got a bit tiresome after a while.

It was pretty intense, while going to the restroom, which were these intimate triangular rooms, to think, this space was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and I felt very close to his artwork in those moments!

My friends Nikki and Anjali going for breakfast at a diner before they both headed back to Providence then to England.



Today I will spend the day in Brooklyn, tomorrow, to the Met, which takes up something like four blocks. wtf!

pulled a rabbit out of the hat...pressure is off!

I'm here in New York with my two friends from Glasgow, I just arrived today at around 8pm. I was going to leave sooner, but found out the studios would be shutting down before I returned to Providence, so I had to go to my painting studio and take all of my canvases off their stretchers and then roll the canvases (about 8 of them) around a tube. Then I was out of there!

Actually, the day before, on Friday we had our final day of crits in painting (2 day crits - intense!). So the night before that on Thursday, I stayed all night in the studio, from the time our class ended at 6:30pm, until the time our class started the next day at 9am. I wasnt' the only one, there were about 4 of us all-nighters. And I finished up one painting, and started and finished two other paintings, plus added some colour bits to a large drawing! I had told my teacher I was only going to have one painting finished, but I felt really sick about that, I felt like I would probably get skewered in crit, so I thought I may as well attempt something. It was a good thing I had a concept in mind before I started painting. That's the hardest part usually, coming up with the idea.

So, the funny thing was that the paintings turned out well, and everybody liked them very much - Go figure! People were saying, when it was over, "keep painting what you're painting!" so it was really encouraging. The concensus was that my paintings showed a deadpan humour. It's weird because I don't ever try for that, for the paintings to be houmourous. I'll post the paintings as soon as I can figure out how to do it. Actually, I only took photos of two of the paintings, the others are rolled up, so it might be a while before they'll be posted. It was a raucous crit, everyone was exhausted and giddy, and it was actually a fun time. So last night I got home at 7:30 pm and slept until 10 am and I feel quite back to normal, it hasn't really sunk in that risd is over!!! Wow, it was quite the slog! Now that it's over, it's a bit like giving birth, I've already begun to forget the parts about the semester in which I was in excruciating hell (refer to previous post)!

My friends are leaving tomorrow, and then I will have a whole week in New York to do as I please, with no assignments to worry about, but it's funny, because as I was on the bus this afternoon, I kept thinking about what I'm going to paint next, and the whole process is starting over in my mind. New York!!!!

Still life with packaging (one of 4 paintings from final crit):

Is it over yet? or, procrastination central

This is an illustration done by a student in the illustration dept, Morgan Blair, I think it's really good.

I finished my children's book class critique today. We were critiqued by 4 people in the publishing biz, they work at Houghton-Mifflin and Candlewick Press and others. It was positive, for sure, and the feedback was stupendously helpful and bang-on. I need to work on my colours, they said, also to resolve the ending a bit. Will do, I say! I wish that I could take a watercolour painting class, as I really don't know what I'm doing! Oh well. I'll try to work on it over the holidays. One young woman from our class, Kate Pfeiffer, got chosen today by one of the publishers to get her book, "Crying is for Babies", published. That is sooo great! Her book is a young reader chapter book, it has about 4 chapters. Her book genuinely cracks me up, she has a perfect ear for how kids talk/think. She is graduating next semester. She kind of struggled throughout the semester in working in the picture book format, she was always kind of forcing a sweet style, but the easy-reader format is so perfect for her. Wow.

I didn't get any sleep last night, working on putting my book dummy together. Now that I'm done that project I'm completely avoiding going to my painting studio. I told my teacher I wasn't going to finish all four paintings required for the final project, because I couldn't see it possible to do 3.5 paintings in one week, plus a kids book dummy, plus two finished illustrations for that class.

I am feeling completely BAD about this. I have never sloughed off an assignment before. My teacher said I wouldn't fail, but it would bring my mark down, and I'm really afraid people are going to totally nail me for it in my crit. I do not want to go to studio, but I have to. Please God, let the next two days (a two-day long crit, no less) go by painlessly then I can scurry away from here with my tail between my legs. O, the pressure! & shame! I wish I could take some drug to make it all go by in a blur of painlessness. Is this too dramatic?

it snowed/ femSex is over

It snowed lightly yesterday. The sidewalks were long and narrow skating rinks.
Also, we had a femSex wrap-up party (the workshop I took at Brown). It was sooo much fun, and full of good vibrations, I only wanted to stay for a short time because I was so tired, but ended up being one of the last to leave, it made me energized with all of the lovely folks both from my unit and the two other classes. Here are some of the inspiring, beautiful and femsexy women (and one man!) from my class:


Watch out in Vancouver, I vowed to bring snapping back home with me - that is, snapping my fingers when I agree with what someone's saying.

ceramics show

A piece by current risd & former ECI faculty Linda Sormin

Wow, wow wow. I was so inspired by the ceramics show they had here. It was a juried show from all levels of ceramics folks at risd - undergrad, grad and faculty. I loooove ceramics, I can't hide it! Why am I not a ceramics major? I love it!



What really got me excited were these "painted" ceramics pieces. I should have written down the artist's name, it's so bad of me not to know it. I believe she is in one of the other junior painting classes, like me. I've been having ideas to add images such as painted images to ceramics, but wasn't sure how it would look, I think she did it very beautifully.

The following pieces reminded me of Grayson Perry. I love the pop imagery mixed with the olde-worldy medium of ceramics.


These ones were delicate and underwatery/with a fabric like tecture and covered most of a wall:

good old hockey game

Last night I went to the Boston Garden to watch the Montreal Canadiens vs. the Bruins. I never go to see a hockey game in Vancouver because it's really expensive, and I'm just not that into it, but it is funny how being away from Canada makes me miss it, that I went to the hockey game to be closer to Canada. And when I got into the arena, and I saw the white rounded rectangle of ice, it was so cozy and soothing. And then when they sang the Canadian national anthem, I sang along, quietly so no Boston fans could hear me, but I heard a lot of other people singing too. I think it's because one quarter of the fans were Montreal fans (I know, Montreal fans are so anoying at Canucks games, but I liked them in Boston because they were from home - even though I 've only ever been to Montreal for one weekend).

The Habs won, and it didn't matter, I was going for both teams and for a good game. Which it was, ending so quickly.

other programs at risd

Sand Dune house by Katharina

risd has a lot of programs here that we don't have at ECI. The ones I can think of are:

architecture
glass blowing (glass)
jewelry and metalsmithing
apparel design
textiles
interior architecture
illustration

I went with a couple of exchange students who are in architecture, Annabel from New Zealand and Katharina from Germany, and went to check out their studios:


It was one huge room, as far as the eye could see, full of drafting tables.

I also went to check out textiles one day, they had rows of looms, and rooms full of colourful threads/yarns that looked like it would be very fun to create designs with. I saw this work in a classroom:


I wrangled myself an illustration studio, so now I have one on the top floor of the Illustration studies building, and one painting studio. It is interesting to see some of the paintings in the illustration department. They are helping me to understand painting as opposed to illustration. Illustration painting is a lot about straight up representation & rendering, whereas painting, well, I don't know what the hell it's about! (but that's another story!)Here is my illustration studio with someone's illustration painting seen in the foreground:


There was a talk by a former risd illustration student, David Weisner, last week. He won the most recent Caldecott Medal for children's picture book illustration for his book "Flotsam". He has won a total of 3 Caldecott medals. Our class and another class got to talk with him in a classroom, a pretty intimate setting. He talked a lot about how he struggles struggles struggles! to come up with story ideas, and even after he has received his advance payment from the publishing company, and it is done and spent, he said he still has no idea what to write about! Such pressure! It takes about one year to illustrate a book, once he has his story idea figured out. And he said that he is now in the position where he doesn't have deadlines, he takes as long as he needs to illustrate a book, because of his success. It was refreshing to hear that with all his success, he still struggles to come up with ideas. On the other hand, this was also daunting to hear: What, with all your success, it's still a grind of pressures?? Here is an image from his new book from his slideshow, He creates his images in many many many thin layers of watercolour on watercolour paper. it sounds like a very time consuming process:

previous painting

Hello! I'll be super busy the next 2 weeks, so this is going to be a quick post! This is my painting from painting crit around 3 weeks ago (There is a painting sitting behind it, so it might be a little confusing). I don't like it so much, but I think I'm interested in the subject matter - the banal moments of everyday folk. Maybe. Don't know. My teacher suggested it could be time for a return to American regionalism/ social realism. I was inspired by the painter from that era Ben Schon. I don't even know if I like this painting, it's okay.



But I love my children's book illustration class! Sorry, no images from there! Only one more week until we show our work to some editors. Wow! Sooooo much to do between now and that time!!!

Brown Library - hey I want those books back!

Last night I went to Brown's Rockefeller library for the first time because I needed some images of Newfoundland, so I ended up in the section of Canadian history on level 3. It was fascinating! It was sad! There were about 20 or so books on the history of BC, and many of them were from the 1890s. They were so old, when I opened them up, red dust from the jacket was left on my pants as they were disintegrating.


And most of these books haven't been checked out since the 1960s! I guess they got most of their history books on Canada in the 19th century and haven't felt the need to add much to their collection.

There was this beautiful book on the Rocky Mountains, with photos from the 1890s of the mountains and this one of the Banff Springs Hotel: If you open them to enlarge them, you can see the dust on my pants from the books disintegrating.



I seriously felt the urge to steal these books, to bring them to Canada, to repatriate them to the proper archives where somebody would give a damn about them, because obviously if they haven't been checked out in close to 50 years, they're not being used much. It made me wonder what other books about histories were languishing in other Ivy League schools, and who knows where else? It would be a cool project to somehow copy these books so that their information could be in Canadian archives.

The book on the history of BC told of how the First Nations could not cope with contact with a superior civilization (the whites) and intellect, and so they just turned to alcohol and started to die out! This book needs to be in BC archives!

I found this book on Newfoundland written in (if I can remember correctly) the 1930s by Joey Smallwood. The caption under these fish is "a good day's work".


The Canadian history section:

what I see when I walk home - it's usually at night

Okay, before I leave I wanted to show what it looks like when I walk around here, so I can remember too! I usually walk home around anywhere from 10pm to 2am. Today in the Brown Herald I heard there was a mugging at gunpoint near where I live at 1:31am a few nights ago! So it's not all american flags and pillars around here, it's serious business. I love the exercise of walking home, but that freaks me out!

I have to walk through the Brown campus on my way home, and this is my favourite part, it feels so cozy to me, and classic Ivy League campus:



And then I walk another 15 minutes past the Brown campus. I like to walk down Power St. (the street I live on) because it has a lot of houses I feel I can run to in case of emergency, as opposed to dorms, or campus buildings that I can't get into or large brick-fenced lots full of empty blackness. These are some of the houses along Power:




This is the house on the corner on my block. It is somewhat spooky, and felt much spookier when no one was living in it a while back. For some reason, all houses of this style feel spooky to me:



And that's it, a bit of a walk through my neighbourhood (at around 10pm last night).

aahhh, thanksgiving

Okay, even though I was a non-believer of this thanksgiving, I was giving thanks for having no classes for the past week and a bit! I was thankful because even though I was a non-believer, somehow the holidays just seemed to sweep over me, too, and I got all into holiday-mode! So what did I do? Marathon coffee sessions with myself and my sketchbook, I went for a walk with Shannon from Nova Scotia, and I partook in RISD's free turkey dinner for all of us who were left behind and didn't get to go home for thanksgiving.


It was so warm, we ate outside and I only wore a shirt! I ate two pieces of pie, and then they said, please, take some food home, we have too much! So I took home enough helpings for two dinners for myself later, plus much more for my roommate (he works at JCPenny, and says, after taxes, he makes about $6 per hour!), but I did eat one of his pieces of pie - so that made three pieces in total that day for me. And my pants are tight now! But I was pms-ing so I have since excused myself - but not totally.

And before the school shut down on Wednesday, I spent a few hours in the library's little video viewing room. They have these comfy bean bag chairs (actually, not too comfy on the neck) and I smuggled some food into that room and THOROUGHLY enjoyed myself watching Manhatten by Wood Allen and Blood Simple by the Coen Brothers (Fargo fame - they have a new movie, great reviews, can't wait!).



While I was watching the movies I fell asleep for about an hour or so, after a long week of late nights in the painting studio.

Because I have no tv or dvd player at home, and no computer at home, any time I can watch moving pictures is thoroughly enjoyable! This is the first time I've allowed myself to watch some movies at the library here, even though I do it practically every lunch time when I'm at ECI, watch bits of movies while I eat my lunch.

So I was thankful for the holiday, because this week I've been getting some much-needed sleep!

Oh, also, the previous weekend, I went with 3 friends to Vermont, and I was soo tired, I didn't even take photos, except for this one in the rest stop on the interstate as we were leaving Vermont, it was only about 6pm and so dark!


And then, just before I was going to bring the rental car back to Budget - a flipping fender-bender! It was my fault, I was backing out across two lanes, and did not see the guy behind me and I crunched into him! Not too serious, but will probably ending up costing me serious cash!

the big shutdown - aka thanksgiving

The above is an image of some jewelry a fellow exchange student from Sweden made - Marta. She is so talented. She is in the department, Jewelry & Metalsmithing, something they don't offer at Emily Carr.

Anyhow, today is the day before thanksgiving here, and everything is shutting down for at least one day! The worst of which - my favourite coffee shop - the Coffee Exchange!
What the heck?!!

I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for Starbucks! I guess I'll be hunkering down there tomorrow. The school will be closed, and possibly the painting studios, so I'll just be working on my kids' book illustrations.

The Met, risd's main cafeteria is closed until Sunday! Yikes! It is the place where I get at least one meal per day, as I can get a full vegan/vegetarian meal for only $2.95! Sooo, I better scamper over to Whole Foods, and get me some provisions for the long day of closedness. Actually, I just read that the international house at risd will be having a thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings tomorrow, I am so there!

Most of the other exchange students went to New York City, but I wanted to save my trip until school was out, and make it a working week, as I will have in total 1.5 weeks without classes. I thought thanksgiving was not a big deal, but come to think of it, it's my first thanksgiving without my family - and yet, I feel like this isn't even my thanksgiving - I feel like I'm in an odd spot - I feel like a non-believer in a land of believers who is pissed that everything is just shutting down around me. Thanksgiving here is a Big Deal - everyone (for the most part, except some Californians and Idahoans) are going home, which always seemed funny to me observing this from Canada.

Happy Thanksgiving!

risd has pilates

One perk at risd is that it has a gym and exercise rooms under the main cafeteria. So I signed up for pilates classes, ten classes for only $50! There are about six of us exchange students in the class, and about 20 in total.We have class every Tuesday at 7pm for one hour.

I've never done pilates before, but I really like it! It takes a lot of concentration and control, which I like and it gets to the stomach muscles like nothing else I've done, and I always feel more relaxed and refreshed afterwards. Ideally I would like to do it at least three times per week, but this is a good start, the exercises seem to be getting easier, so I think I might be getting stronger in my stomach area. This is something I really wish they could offer at Emily Carr, but the cheap price is because it is subsidized by the students activity fees that are added to their tuition.

They also offer yoga (vinyasa and bikrams), kickboxing, butts and guts, and I think a couple others which I can't recall. I can't say how nice the gym is, because I've never stepped foot inside, but it seems to have a lot of machines (I'm not a big fan of machines)!

what to do with a crazy landlady

I just got off the phone with my landlady. I feel very upset about it. The first thing she said to me was, "take out the garbage, that place is a mess!" this is total b.s. We have no dirty dishes in the sink, my bed is made, the kitchen table is clear, and we clean the house once per week. Yes the garbage is full, but garbage day is tomorrow, what's it her business?

And then she also said, "You lied to me!" She has said this the past four times she has called. She says it because she says I never told her I was only staying for one semester. It is her word against mine, but I distinctly remember telling her. She said I lied because I crossed it out on the lease. I only crossed out something she had written previously on the lease because she re-uses the same lease and there's old writing on it. And then when I try to explain, she says, "I don't want to argue about it!"

She actually came into my room when I wasn't there and searched through my stuff to get a copy of the lease! I told her I don't like her doing this, she said, "Oh, I didn't search through your stuff, it was right on the top of the pile, and you had two leases, you lied to me, you said you gave me the other copy!" This is total b.s.!!! She was supposed to come pick up the lease and didn't come. Shit, I just thought that maybe she took my only copy of the lease, or maybe I did have two, I didn't keep track. I have a feeling she is doing this so that she won't have to give me the security deposit back. She totally spins my head around, I can't take it.

I told her, "I don't like your accusations, I am not a liar." And I said, "My roommate's girlfriend is there 6 nights a week, so I only want to pay 1/3 of utilities." She said, "I can't believe you're complaining, I can't help it if his girlfriend is there. You have the whole place to yourself, and you're complaining? I can't believe it!" I don't have the whole place to myself, I use my room the kitchen and the bathroom and that's it. There is a suite empty downstairs, and two empty bedrooms upstairs. I can't help it if her rooms are empty!!! And then, she actually had the nerve to end the phone call by saying, "take care".

Oh man, I cannot take this much longer. It is people like this, and the accumulation of poor treatment, that is making me want to get the hell out of here. Small things like my painting studio neighbour not acknowledging me when I say hello, and other small rude behaviours by other people is turning me off!

These photos are from Halloween, but the eyes in the windows in the photo seem to represent my landlady well.


I guess I shouldn't complain too much, other people have been very kind, such as the instructors in my illustration class, and the students, too, in that class, a couple people in my painting class, and the british exchange students have been great to hang out with, but today, I'm sad/infuriated/frustrated/t.o.'d!

painting critiques - yikes!

Here is a photo of my painting class watching slides in the critique room. The slide is of Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted skull. My painting critique classes freak me out, to be honest, they're pretty harsh compared to what I've been used to.

Here is one of my latest paintings from our last critique. I did it over two days. It's supposed to be a painting that has no conclusion, that goes no where, that was my intention. Also, I wanted to incorporate drawn figures into the painting, and just fill them in. Some of the comments from the critique about my paintings were:


A student: "I wish you would take a stand on something, anything! You just take what's cool and put it in your painting."

My teacher said I should stop looking at contemporary art magazines and look at older paintings. She also said I am very detached from my images, and not to go to the Picture Library anymore, We are not image collectors! Um, what else, oh yeah, she said I was giving them "just enough". Other students came to my defense, "I disagree", said my studio neighbour, "it's a painting that has no conclusion" other people liked some of the elements of the painting, like how I sculpted the faces, and how I painted the shirt on the guy on the right. I was really confused, because as I was making the painting I really liked it, and so felt quite unconfident about my painting choices after this. Also, I was a little freaked out while doing my last three paintings because I had to do them in something like four days, after being sick, and after my first attempt at a painting did not work out. So, now I can see, that yes, I was doing, "just enough". But I do like how I painted the horse and the waterfall pictures in the painting. I seriously hate how I've painted the guy on the left, plus other things about it, too. Oh well, I'm here to learn.

In the last couple days, I've been thinking, "wtf - it's only paint on a canvas, I'm not going to be so serious." And I'm also taking more time to do my next three paintings - 1 per week - quite the pace! I've already painted over the painting I've shown above.

New York + Jenn Jackson + Brooklyn + off-broadway= last saturday

Last Saturday I took the risd bus on down to New York. It was for the day, but when you add in two 4 hour trips to get there and back, I was only left with 6 hours. So many plans had to be fit into 6 hours, and some were discarded! I was very hungry when I arrived, so I came across a little hole in the wall joint, and sat at the counter (that's all the seating there was) and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the New York banter between customers and the owner/cook, Johnny. "Hey John, how are you?" John: "Hey bro, what can I get for you," followed by fist-touch-hand-greetings. It was amazing to me to see how Johnny the cook put his whole body into making a sandwich, it was all happening right there in front of me, and I really appreciated my sandwich after I saw how much effort he put into it.


My first plan was to some theatre. So everyday I've been reading the New York times Arts sections and their reviews of plays. I came upon one that got excellent reviews, called "Speech and Debate". It is at a theatre that is a Broadway theatre I suppose, but downstairs is called the Roundabout Underground, and they are putting on plays by young playwrights, and the tickets are only $20. The playwright of Speech and Debate is only 26, and I learned that he went to Brown University, which is right beside RISD.

When I went to buy my ticket, I found out that the show was sold out for the rest of its run, unfortunately. But they said to come back 30 minutes before the show and there might be some cancellation tickets. So when I came back, they announced that there were only two cancellation tickets, but there were three people in front of me. Fortunately, the three were a group and they didn't want to split up, so I got the ticket, and same with the guy behind me (a dream boat of a man, really, whom I sat beside). The play was very funny, not completely moving or enlightening, which I love in a play, but very entertaining and well done. Here is the one photo I took, the stage is meant to look like a classroom. There was one very large dude in front of me who I always had to crane my neck to look around:



After the play, which was around 2 hours long, I was off to Brooklyn to see The Miss Jenn Jackson! It was sooo great to see her! It turns out that we are both having some tough times with some very critical teachers, and have both wanted to stop doing art all together, so it was great to connect and I felt like I wasn't so alone in this feeling.


As you can see, I was very excited, ha!


Unfortunately I had just over one hour to spend in Brooklyn with Jenn. We grabbed a pizza, went into some great shops and then went to a coffee shop. Brooklyn is amazing. I guess it's becoming known for being the place where all the hipsters live, and when I was looking around, everyone had the art school hipster look.


But it was all too short, and I had to get on the subway to head back downtown to catch the risd bus. I headed in the wrong direction and was 40 minutes late and everyone was waiting for me. Yikes! But at least I heard this duo in the subway, the guy had the most haunting of voices.