Studio Journal - Grandmother Says

On Thursday I accompanied Emily to the beach to see her Grandma. There is nothing like AC, home cooking, and tough love.

Since I'm taking Thesis this year and know that I generally want to focus on spaces, I decided to take pictures in her house as a means of exploring my idea.

Already, I am realizing something about my idea. I am not just feeding my obsession with furniture and nice lighting I am exploring the most intimate of places--the home.

This is a home that I have been to many times. It has been a part of my childhood and is well imprinted in my memory. Which is making me think of the difference between my photographs in people I know vs. people I don't know. However, in a sense the act of photographing a person's home is almost a way of getting to know them--through their things. (I can't help but think of Fight Club "The things you own end up owning you.")

Now I have something to think about. Maybe getting back into things won't be so bad after all.

It was right in front of me all along.

I am freaking out.

I don't understand when I became so conflicted about every aspect of my life and I have spent the past hour trying to convince myself that it may not necessarily be a bad thing.

I have gone as far as to say: Do I even want to do this anymore?

As well as: Why am I doing this?

Somehow I have forgotten what I love about art. However, I feel that it is partially the result of my lackadaisical attitude about everything in my life. The whole summer and maybe even before that I have been struggling with the idea of my life, the people I know, the things that I am doing. I have a waning interest in everyone and everything, and I really don't know what to look forward to anymore.

Amongst the disparity of this all let me explain why this may not necessarily be a bad thing.

I am scared shitless. I have no idea what to expect and to be honest I am afraid that I just won't be able to handle things, but having nothing to look forward to opens the window of opportunity to just go with things. To delve head first into the unknown and see what will happen. I need to "makeover" my life not just as an artist. This will be painful, but in a different way.

Now, I just have to believe that I am right.

Trees Part 2

It's been quite a few months. I've been on hiatus, but now I'm beginning to come back to life.

My last post was part of a study I did on trees for my final painting project. I figured I would reintroduce myself to life by showing what I came up with. Each painting is 3ft x 4ft and involved a lot of trial and error. With each one I learned something new about how to paint trees and wanted to follow different color schemes.

Since then, I've started a few more trees and have expanded on my original ideas. I am more or less creating a forest in my room and I couldn't be happier about it. There's always a new way to look a trees and I am discovering new ways to represent them all the time.

Trees

I went to Maine the first weekend of April and took a lot of photos doing studies of trees for my painting final. These were some of my favorites and I now wake up to the top two every morning.

It's Paper Time Again

I am taking a class where the ultimate goal is to write an 8 to 10 page research paper by the end of the semester and the first rough draft is due tomorrow. I don't mind writing research papers, but it has been a while since I've had to write one and I'm having difficulty organizing my thoughts without being repetitive and overly flowery. I read this article a while ago (I don't even remember where now) about how some people think that the bad economy will generate some sort of "artistic Renaissance" and weed out all the overly commercial art. The theory is that if there aren't as many patrons for artists, they will start focusing on what they want to do and their own ideas, as opposed to making things for other people. I found it very interesting because if you think about it, this is not the first time that this has happened in the history of art One of the first examples that comes to mind (mainly because of Italian Cinema last semester) is Neorealism in Italian Cinema. It appeared after the WWII and introduced the style of filming on location and often using non professional actors. It captured life in a war torn country and its devastation.

I've been researching lately and I feel my topic is going even further than the development of a new artistic movement. There are quite a few news articles about how the economic crisis is hitting the art world pretty hard and the unemployment rate of artists "is twice that of other professional groups," according to Agnes Gund the President Emerita and Chairman of the International Council of MoMA. Lots of articles talk about how during the Depression the WPA generated created a lot of jobs for artists and they are wondering why something like that cannot be instituted today. More or less it has broadened my focus to different aspects of the situation and I'm actually enjoying doing the research since it is an extremely current and relevant issue, especially as an art student.

I know exactly what I want to talk about, but I'm having a hard time finishing the ideas I have because there isn't really aren't any conclusions to come to except that we will have to wait and see what happens. Nonetheless, it should be interesting enough to write.

From Rome Open City (Rome Citta Aperta) by Roberto Rossellini

My Life as an Old Woman

I've been in all sorts of strange moods lately. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. I haven't really had any moods until yesterday when the only thing on my mind finally wasn't pain. But first thing is first, my back is a hot mess. Last Tuesday I couldn't take the pain anymore, so I broke down and decided to go to the ER. Nothing came up on the x-rays, so they told me to see an Orthopedic, shot me with a pain killer, gave me a prescription for pain killers, and sent me on my merry way. I decided I wouldn't go back to school until I saw the doctor and had an MRI--Wednesday was a snow day and Thursday I couldn't get any appointments (as usual). Friday was finally the day I had an MRI and it seemed that each day my mobility was decreasing even with the aid of a muscle relaxant and pain killer cocktail.

Fast forward to Sunday. I could barely walk. Standing was no longer my comfort position and trying to lie down was like problem solving. I literally spent five minutes trying to bend over and get something out of my backpack, when finally I went into Chelsea's room, woke her up, and asked her to get my backpack for me. I was expecting to make my way back to classes Monday, but around 10:00PM I went to stand up and I had the worse spasm ever. I started bawling my eyes out in pain and called my mom (the only plausible solution at the time) and she picked me up from New Brunswick. Since then, I have been camping out on the couch with the dogs, because I couldn't handle the extra flight of stairs and to be honest the rest has been helping. Yesterday I started sitting down for longer than 5 minutes at a time and getting up from lying down is much easier. However, there's still pain, I'm slow, and I have to remember to stand up from my seated position often.

And my MRI results were in yesterday. I have bulging discs, which are causing the pain in my legs and my solutions are physical therapy, or an epidural in my spine. I am opting for the PT before anything crazy. I was so afraid that I might need surgery because if this is what bulging discs feel like, I can't imagine the pain an actual slipped disc might cause.

In a sense, I deserve this. My back has been hurting me since before I left Italy and when I came home, but still I pushed myself and I have been pushing myself ever since and ignoring the pain, because generally it eventually goes away. Now, I have to live like a recovering injured person--no working out for now, no climbing, no lifting, and lots of rest. So I am probably also going to stop working nights at the rock wall, because after a day of classes, I'm going to need to vegetate and I'm going to have to make time for PT.

Now that I finally have a moment to myself to think and to rest and more importantly time that isn't occupied by the searing image of pain, I absolutely hate it. The reason I was so busy in the first place was to divert my attention away from anything feelings or thoughts that might be trapped in my head and now it seems like they're all coming at me full force.

I suppose this is my queue to start over and do things right.
But I can't help asking: when will things start looking up?

I'm a Sucker for Windows

I love nice lighting and big windows, which was basically an attribute that all of Europe had. I decided to start compiling a series of photographs based on different windows. These are a few that I liked. The top two are the Guinness factory and the bottom two are from the Baptistery and the Camposanto Monumentale (Cemetery).