If I could save time in a bottle...

Then I'd really have something.

The real question here is why am I making a blog entry instead of getting on the five tons of work I need to do?

Right. Guess I'll meander off and find something else to keep me away from my studies. Something a little less obvious. An episode of Torchwood while pretending to read perhaps? Sounds good.

We now pause for station identification...

I am alive. At least, for the moment. Finals are over on December 7th. Ask again once my hangover clears on the 9th.

Sunday

I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth! I've been in the darkroom. IF the scanner isn't having a suck fit, I might show off a few prints soon.

The Third of May

It's now officially my twenty-ninth birthday and I'm here to make a guilty little confession. I'm desperately working to get my final design project finished and I've intentionally replayed the same episode of Project Runway countless times for no other reason than to hear Tim Gunn say "Make it work."

So what funny little things do you do when you find yourself running face first into the brick wall of a deadline?

http://scarletknits.etsy.com

The Finish Line

Here's the last major project of the semester. After this all we have left is a small paper project and we are outta there! This one was done with a 12"x12"x12" foam core. Housing insulation foam at that. Anyway, it was carved then sanded and sealed. An additive texture of paper mache was then applied, followed by a coat of gesso and several coats of paint.



http://scarletknits.etsy.com

Who was I today?

I was a scared little chickenshit running around campus. "Why?" you ask. Well, besides the fact that I can think of at least six people off the top of my head who would be my straight up pick for looking at the news and thinking "hey, that's not a half bad idea", there's the loony that packed up and came to south Louisiana today. "If you think that was bad, then you haven't seen anything yet." he wrote in a note that alluded to the Virginia Tech massacre. Not the kind of shit I needed to hear about today. I didn't want to go to campus to begin with, then when I dropped the kids off I almost turned around to pick them back up and go home. Then that shit breaks.

I need a beer.

Technorati tags: children, class, college, evil, shootings, Virginia Tech

Scary Day on Campus

If you've been living under a rock, you haven't heard that there are 33 dead at Virginia Tech today, 29 wounded.

I'm not sure what to think of that other than to wonder if the next time CNN reports on a school shooting, will it be my school? My kids go to my school, the campus daycare, so that really scares the hell out of me. One day, will I flip on the news after class and see that my campus is under attack? Will I have to curse out some perimeter guarding cop as I try to get my children? What would happen to me if I had to endure that kind of stress? That's the kind of thing that changes you, even if everything is okay in the end.

Who will you be after today?

Turned-In Thursday

Spring 07
Design
Positive/Negative Space Study
70% Positive - 30% Negative
14"x9"x9"
1-ply chipboard, acrylic paint

<insert expletive here>

Remember that hideously long and rambling post a few days ago "The Almighty Registration"? Well, it was all for a big fat NOTHING. <insert expletive here>

Registration began last week and, of course, my registration "appointment" (the time frame during which the system will allow a particular student to schedule classes) was not until today. Naturally, the classes I need to take are full at the times I need to take them to make my carefully fussed over and meticulously planned schedule work. <insert multiple expletives here>

So, I made due with what was there and here's how it shapes up for now (note to DH: bookmark this post so that you don't lose my schedule and wonder what days I have class! =P ):

Monday, Wednesday, Friday
 8:00 -  9:50am VIAR 235 Art and the Computer
11:00 - 11:50am LATN 101 Elementary Latin

Tuesday and Thursday
 8:00 -  9:15am VIAR 323 Art since 1945
 9:30 - 12:15pm VIAR 260 Introduction to Sculpture

I'm really starting to think that the university conspires to make non-trads the last students to schedule. Yes, I'm that paranoid and that fed up with the whole thing. What a <insert expletive here>!

Sawdust Gets Into Uncomfortable Places

So here's a strange shape:



I warned you. Anyway, why is it here you ask? Because it will be cut out of wood in various versions of scale then assembled together in various rotational orientations to produce a three dimensional sculpture. Mostly, though, I just needed it somewhere more or less universally accessible so that I can get to it during class.

The Almighty Registration

Warning: what follows is generally a bunch of incoherent rambling while I talk to myself and try to figure out how to make class time, mommy time, wifey time and daycare hours all work together. Feel free to ignore it and move on to the next post.

So here we are again, in the squiggly anticipation time between the tease of advising and actual registration. This is yet another semester where I find myself facing the conflict between what I need to take and what makes for a schedule that works here in the realm of reality.

Here's the short list for the fall: one final science elective (in this case Geology 105: Geology and Man, also known as "rocks for jocks"), Art and the Computer, Drawing III, and Art Since 1945. That's assuming that I take Introduction to Sculpture over the summer.

The thing about any schedule is that my youngest son is still nursing so I need to be available to him, my older two children prefer to breakfast at the daycare on campus (which requires dropping them off by 8:00am) and I have a proven track record of routinely skipping any class that does not immediately follow another. (Once I'm on campus, I'm on campus and need to get it done or I'll leave between and never make it back. I know, I'm horrible.)

So, given those factors consider: Introduction to Sculpture (time intensive and not really something I can work on at home) has one section available in the summer, Monday through Thursday from 12:45pm to 3:30pm. First of all, a three hour studio is not my idea of a rockin' good time. At least, not when the persistent rumor in the department is that the professor lectures for the duration of the class time and leaves you to accomplish the assignments in your own hours. We're not talking a small feat here. We're talking about three sculptures, the finished assembly of which tends to be as large as you are (assuming you're almost six feet tall and one hundred fifty pounds), and are made of various materials including but not limited to: wood, plaster, metal, and chicken wire.

An alternative for the summer would be to take Introduction to Painting, another time intensive studio that also needs to be done in the studio itself. It carries a much better time slot of 8:00am to 10:10am Monday through Friday. Besides, two hours in class and having that class time to actually work sounds much more appealing to me. The drawback is that I would then be forced to sacrifice Drawing III for Sculpture come the fall.

Speaking of the fall, Geology and Art and the Computer play nicely with me by lining up very neatly Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00am to 9:50am and 10:00am to 11:50am, respectively. Art Since 1945 does an excellent job of falling right into the preferred time slot of 8:00am to 9:15am Tuesday and Thursday, but then we encounter a SNAFU when it comes to scheduling Drawing III, the only offering that fits with my other classes is 11:00am to 1:45pm. That gap would kill me. Not enough to get off campus and get any thing done, but too much to just sit around Fletcher with my thumbs up my ass. Sculpture swoops in to the rescue with a 9:30am to 11:45am offering.

Seems like an easy proposition, right? Painting in the summer, Sculpture in the fall since, if you're not a painting or sculpture major, the two are interchangeable. The miserable little bit of that is that I really need to get around to Drawing III and IV before I get so far out of practice that I have no hope of actually completing either of those courses with a grade worth reporting. As it is, it's been so long since I took Drawing II that I'm having problems with my orthographic drawings in Design this semester. It's not a problem grade-wise since the drawings aren't graded, but it is a massive problem when you get into the nuts and bolts of planning some of these three dimensional pieces, especially the wood projects.

Oh well, what's a girl to do? Guess I'll put the kids to bed, have an imaginary glass of wine (sometimes I wish I hadn't decided to breastfeed), and head off to the wood shop for another late night at Fletcher Hall. That place really needs a coffee shop in it.