A mental wanderlust, (if you will).

I guess you could say these past two weeks have been a nice reprieve. Alex and Kellen were in town. Alex was here for work (no surprise there) so Kellen and I spent a lot of time together just hanging out and goofing off. We all went out to Steelgarden and had a few drinks one night. Kellen and I met and played pool against a couple of guys we dubbed Ponytail, Bald Spot, Mr. T, and Romeo. And then I realized that was one of my first real "straight" bar experiences... and I was baffled by the thought that I was conversing with men who were actually interested in me as a female. Mind boggling.

But like I said, a nice distraction.

As a side note, I guess I should explain that I have a fascination with horoscopes and the zodiac star signs (Eastern and Western versions ). From the moment I really began looking into it I came to the realization that I am what you'd call a "textbook" Pisces. (Even more so if you want to get technical and say that I'm actually an Aquarius-Pisces cusp born in the year of the Snake but that's another topic entirely.) 

So a long time go I came across this description of a Pisces and found that I agreed with most of what it had to say-- hell it even put into words things that I would have never been able to describe myself. However, there was one part that threw me off because I just couldn't see how it related to me:

"Pisceans must not allow themselves to become detached from those around them, because they will become depressed, pessimistic and languid."

I have always considered myself a very private individual. And I've always craved solitude from time to time (more so than the average person)  but I've never realized until now just how accurate that description was.

(and now back to my original point...)

Being so thoroughly cut off from my friends and family for a significant amount of time has given me so many opportunities to get lost in my thoughts and I realize that I really have fallen into a melancholy of sorts. I’ve been teetering on the line of a healthy amount of alone time to think/reevaluate and the point in which you desperately need a distraction from your thoughts. I have started to write these things down as a sort of meditation/ way to organize but I wasn't too sure about uploading them to this blog. They are intensely personal and I wasn't too keen on others having the ability to access them. But after seeing Casey's blog about his similar experiences I think I'd like to try. Putting these out there may decrease this detachment that I apparently need to remedy.

So yeah, expect some of that in the near future.

Trying to organize.

These past few days I have been doing a lot of thinking. Thinking about what it is that I am doing with my work. Thinking about my sources. Thinking about points of intrigue. About processes. About where I want to go with it all. About this impending senior exhibition. There are a lot of thoughts, you see, and I think they are beginning to drive me slightly mad. It might also have something to do with the recent over abundance of time I've been spending alone. It's left me more time than ever to get lost in these thoughts. For better or for worse-- I still haven't been able to determine. Maybe creating this blog has been, in part, a way to alleviate some of these built up frustrations.

So I thought I'd write down a list of some of the things I consider sources of inspiration/ things of interest/ constants in current work. Maybe I'll find some connections. Maybe not.

Psychology

Dreams and their physical interpretations and representations

    both literal and metaphorical
Conscious vs Subconscious

Anxiety and its many forms

    nightmares, fears, bad memories

Contradictions
Site specific works

The relationship between man and nature

    similarities in form

Color relationships and implications

Childhood vs Adulthood

    intermingling the two

War, violence and desensitization

Human nature

    nature vs nurture? inherent good vs evil?

Lines and form

    especially in the natural world

The process of aging

    in both living things and inanimate structures

Current Preoccupations:

   Mayan glyphs

    Native American folklore

    Clockworks

Artists:
    Neo Rauch
    Wayne Thiebaud
    Schoony

I think I'll update this every now and then. See how it evolves. If it even does. I think it might.

Summer showers are so fickle...

It's true. I was in the papermaking studio today and decided to walk back over to Alum to heat up my lunch. The walk over was not bad. Sunny, albeit muggy. Typical summer day. The two minutes-- and I really mean two; a handful of seconds to walk in, one minute 30 seconds to heat food and another handful of seconds to walk back out-- that it took for me to walk out the front doors of Alum, it was raining. Not just any rain. It was that hard, thunder looming in the background, dark skies kind of rain. As suddenly as it had come, it left leaving sunny skies once again.

Fickle.

Someone once told me that I was fickle. I remember being offended. Indecisive, yes. I could attest to that but I never really thought of myself as fickle. The word always held a negative connotation in my mind.

But if the weather is considered fickle than it can't be all that bad. That sudden rain shower brought with it the refreshing smell that rain so often leaves behind. It subdued the humidity that was hanging in the air. It brought water for the plants. It gave me a moment to sit and think as I waited for it to pass. It had all the potential to be detrimental but in the end there were nothing but positive results.

So if fickle equates to a summer rain and a summer rain equates to all of those positive outcomes then I think I'm okay with being considered fickle.

It was just one persons opinion anyways.