Loki's Lounge

Finally, I've completed these comics. I've never had a project hang so long over my head and continually fill my planner. In general, I'm very pleased with the results, but also look forward to making improvements for our next project.

Finished!

It's such a relief to have these sculptures finished and photographed (more to come later). I just hope that they make it to Chicago without breaking!

Speaking of which, happy Spring Break everyone.

"Assassins" photo shoot

The Oddest Paradox

I've realized something about my classes. For the first time in my academic career, I love them all. But that's not necessarily a good thing. Now before all my fellow students throw up at this cheesy revelation, hear me out.

While I'm only taking 13 credits, they are all Advanced Studio Classes that have a few long-term projects rather than daily assignments. And since I have more freedom to create my own assignments, the projects are consequently all interesting and revelant to my creative aspirations. I'm faced with juggling several on-going personal projects and I want to devote more time to each of them than I have available. And then, of course, there are the high standards I place on myself. And then, of course, there's everything outside of my academic life too.

Life was so much simpler in Mali.

Tomorrow I am supposed to turn in sketches for my Narrative Art class but I haven't even cut the bristol board. This is not to say that I haven't been working on the Fairy Tale/Myth assignment...I've just done extensive background research. I am currently finishing up four hours of studying on my couch, surrounded by thick books on global mythology with post-it notes sticking out of the pages. So while I don't have any sketches to turn in, I do have a solid concept, setting, and extensive list of characters:

I'd like to introduce: Anansi, Texcatlipoca, the Monkey King, Renart the Fox, Hermes, Coyote, Raven, Kokopelli, Loki, Tikoloshe and Maui.

These are all various "Trickster" figures from cultures all across the globe (and time) and I'd like to imagine a situation where they all meet and interact. I'm thinking something like a bar scene, where each character comes in after a long, hard day of mischevious work...complaining about ungrateful humans over a beer, swapping and one-uping heroic stories, and possibly engaging in the inevitable bar-room brawl. There are so many great personality traits I can create based on their legends and back stories. And parallels too. Hermes invented the lyre and Kokopelli plays the flute... in a bar setting, I can easily spin this so that they're providing the background music. Tikoloshe and Kokopelli are, um... well-endowed we shall say and would naturally be the ones to hit on all the female patrons. Loki got in trouble with the Norse gods for his gossiping and I think he'd make a good bartender.

So you see, it's all there...just not there on paper. Due date, Thursday, February 22. It'll be done.

Oh, and the best part is that the traditional depictions of these characters are absolutely gorgeous and I want to presevere the styes as much as possible:

Monday's Photo Shoot

Rapid Fire Blogging

I've got twenty minutes until my shift starts and a list of things to do longer than my evening will allow. But since I've been neglecting this blog for the past couple of days, I thought this would be one thing I would cross off my list (which is such a great feeling, isn't it?). So updates in my life...

Organicism:
Finished another sculpture this weekend. Tedious new technique that I figured out but I love falling into it's rhythms and motions. Would like to explore this further.



Assassins:
Finished the poster but just got a quasi-serious e-mail saying the nose of my assassin profile was too "ethnic," whatever that means. Time to work the photoshop magic. Will start the web design this week as well as a photo shoot this weekend.


Narrative Art:
Will upload my personality strip cartoons later. Currently researching fairy tales and myths from around the world. There are so many to choose from that I may do some sort of Dada exercise where I collage multiple stories together. We'll see how coherent that becomes but it's interesting to note all the parallels between these stories (for instance, most cultures have some sort of trickster figure: the coyote in the American SW, the rat in Polynesia, and the guinea pig in Peru).

Photography:
Have to re-light a "space" (as opposed to an "object" from our first assignment) and wanted to work with the Exhibit Museum of Natural History but don't feel like I have enough time to coordinate the logistics. So idea #2 is to photograph the stacks of the grad library...

Installation Art: currently in-between projects and I'm enjoying this well-deserved breather

Graphic Design: we're listening to the Brandenburg Concerto's and will be creating ways to document them visually. Obviously, I'm very very excited for this project.

Okay, that's it for now. Barista time!

18 more hours until the weekend!

It's amazing how far the body and mind can push itself when necessary. Unfortunately, I've gone a little too far and have started to get sick...worked until midnight at Sweetwaters yesterday, prepared a 20-min presentation at Fleetwood Diner until 3am (first time there and yes I got the hippie hash), woke up at 7am, class and meetings until 6pm, currently finishing two major projects for tomorrow. It's a shame that I enjoy all my homework...otherwise it'd be easier to just say no and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Funny how I used to think I was good at time management. What's happened?

It was inevitable...

I've reached that point in the semester where I am so overloaded with work that I can only focus on what is due in the next 24 hours. And even then, I'm not getting everything done so there's this sense of slowly falling further and further behind. How do we make time without sacrificing the important necessities like sleep and relationships?

Organicism

Well it appears that I've been MIA for the past couple of days and that would be because I've been working on pieces for an exhibition at Columbia College in Chicago. This will probably consume my life for the next couple of weeks so apologies to everyone whom I neglect to stay in contact with. As my professors recently said...you need to live and breath art, bleed art, sweat art, and poop art, everyday.

I'm so passionate about this show because it's finally the perfect venue for my natural sculptures (circa Summer 2005, North Cascades). A friend of a friend came across said website (www.umich.edu/~mtliang) and in organizing the exhibition, asked me to create some new works. He even used a previous work for the exhibition poster:


Nothing makes you feel like a valid and professional artist like seeing your work on a poster.

After many many weeks of brainstorming and sketching, I finally went out to buy/harvest my supplies this weekend. And after several hours in my room (chunks of time that are frankly, quite hard to come by as a full-time student), I produced two new pieces. I'd like to create as many as I can, but would be satisfied with six or seven.



The idea for this series is the Urban Garden; given the challenge of using natural material in the dead of winter in an urban setting, this seemed appropriate. I'm trying to see what new forms I can create, permanent plants forms that don't need any watering or care (especially since I have nothing close to a green thumb). They are held in square blocks of plaster to reinforce the urban/concrete landscape that they are to be exhibited in as well as contrast the organic flowing forms of the sculptures.

My current issue is whether or not to keep the black plastic pot. Unfortunately, the plaster isn't too strong and upon removal of the plastic mold, corners often break off. So the black plastic provides a smoother finish and visual contrast to the white plaster (especially if they're presented against a white background), but it just doesn't have the same physical weight as the plaster block. Any thoughts or suggestions? Oh, and I'm using photographs of these for my All Student Exhibition piece (very structured documentation...black and white, white seamless background, shallow depth of field, etc, etc. Something scientific...)




And if you're still interested, here's the Organicism write-up:
ORGANICISM
Nature Functioning Nontraditionally

With the urban scape rapidly expanding up and outward into the natural environment, organic form and material is being overcome. Calls to action for environmental welfare are abundant and often in the name of preserving nature for its functionality as a system. While the natural environment is unquestionably very important and while the decline of its state is, as it should be, a chief concern, it is essential to not forget that nature fills the dual-role of both form and function.

The concept embodied in the work showcased as Organicism is the celebration of all that naturally occurring for the sake of aesthetic and personal experience. Instead of artists making proclamations of distress, each is examining who they are in relation to how they experience organic form and material. Organicism will provide a multi-sensory account of these complex relationships with nature; relationships that have gone beyond the bounds of understanding nature in terms of it existing merely to function.

The term organicism comes from a scientific philosophy that suggests that the whole cannot be defined by the sum of its parts; that the system is important above its components. In this context, Organicism manifests the exact opposite. Metaphorically, Organicism: Nature Functioning Nontraditionally is an exploration not of why leaves on a tree or why trees in a forest are organized they way that they are, but is instead that of how the intricacies of an individual leaf can be just as appealing to the senses as the entire forest.

Organicism: Nature Functioning Nontraditionally is curated by Columbia College student Tannar Veatch, an art and design major with concentrations in the fine and media arts.