school

It's been a while and i feel like i have nothing interesting to write about. I'm still loving Chicago but spend most of my time working on school stuff.

I'm in class Thursday nights 6-9p and then all day Friday 12-6p. By the end of this marathon 2 day class schedule I'm usually totally beat. I work from home (the job where i get paid) Monday 9a-12p and Tuesday 9a-2p. I spend the rest of my time in the studios, reading and writing the weekly paper due every Thursday for class.

My big project now is the final for my studio class. We're learning (or re-learning/practicing in my case) letter press, paper making and book binding which must be combined in a final project due at the end of the semester. We spend all semester working on this one piece. The pressure is on and it'd better be good.

I've been steadily working away, but am still in the synthesis stage, not quite sure which way i'm heading materially or conceptually. I have too many ideas that i need to narrow down to create a cohesive and visually appealing final project. I know basically what i want to do, but am still working out how exactly I should get it done. It's been slow and frustrating.

My distance from the work has slowed down my creative process. I go to school, work on stuff, get tired, come home and then think about the artistic decisions I've made. I've spent a lot of my time thinking about my work away from it's physical presence. It's difficult to contemplate a work and make subsequent decisions without using it as direct reference. First I've realized I should probably be spending more time in the studio. (I already go in for 3-4 hours at least daily) I've also decided I should bring my digital camera with me to take images to reference while i'm trying to think about the work at home. Although ideally i would be looking at my piece in person, hopefully images can help remedy this issue.

who knows. That was my little rant for the day. I have been getting out of the house a little bit too but school takes up most of my time and I haven't done anything majorly exciting in the last few weeks. I got a lot of my fun out of the way while living in SF and now I'm ready to focus so that feels good.

I would like to take a little midwestern weekend road trip maybe sometime soon. And in two weeks Chad and I will be back in San Francisco for halloween! I'm still working on my costume for that... but I'll write more about that in another post.