What I did while I was away

Besides college admissions and a senior project? I have three Advanced Placement classes. One of them, art. Art takes up seven hours of my life, per week (minimum). I have 20 or so possible pieces for my Portfolio. Here are three.

Dishes#1

French Horn#1 (I'm going to give it another go on a massive sheet of yellowed paper that I found in my art supply storage facility, and whip out the india ink.)

Autumnal Night (My teacher absolutely loves this piece for some reason.)

As for reading, I finished the Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett, which was very good. I recommend it to any mystery or noir film aficionado. I also finished two books that are part of a series that a family friend is writing. The Body Finder series. ....Read at your own risk. I finished Pride and Prejudice, Othello, and Dante's Inferno. I also re-read The Hobbit and Beowulf, and read Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad really is magnificent.

Stylin'

She pulled a late-night Jenny Lewis!

Sleep deprivation and India ink simply do not mix.

As well as I wish they would have, anyways.

(Outfit inspired by Jenny Lewis, taken from a photo used by Interview Magazine.)

Summer start now.

Could I have been born in a better place for feeding my greatest obsessions? Thank you, mes parents, for birthing me in Seattle! Because this year, we have more than just a few really great shows and festivals this summer (and exhibitions! Warhol/Cobain at the SAM!). I really do expect this years Capitol HIll Block Party to be the best one yet! Yes, oh yes. I am on of them. The Concert-goer, child of concert-goers, and of musicians. Of the music obsessed, who were once grunge rockers, earliest fans of Ozzy, bona-fide metalheads, midwestern punk kids, with their weird affinities for the soul, for shoegaze, for jazz music. And for really great singers, too, crooners, for Billie Holiday, for Bing Crosby, for Sarah Vann, for Ella Fitzgerald, and for, most of all and above all vocalists, Frank Sinatra.

The great thing about music is that I never know where it will take me next. Doesn't that just sound stupid as hell? But, really, when heavy metal meets grunge meets old pop standards, meets indie, meets The Smiths, meets the honky tonk hour on you local independent radio station --- hard to say that tomorrow you won't start listening to early David Bowie and, I don't know, world music. I started listening to Beirut... Balkan Brass Gypsy Music and Grunge rock are two very separate things.

For those of you who (somehow) do not know, the summer here is good for seeing loads of amazing musicians. Our Bumbershoot Festival really IS incredible, most years, and we in general see tons of great artists and musicians at Seattle Venues throughout the summer months. I am particularly excited for July. We get to have MGMT play for the 2010 Capitol Hill Block Party. That's east of downtown Seattle. Yes... on a hill. I would describe Capitol Hill as a very, very mellow version of something slightly resembling the scene in, maybe, San Francisco, but sized down, with way less of the fun stuff; with lots of weird little restaurants, some really great cafes, and a couple very smelly and sometimes very overpriced consignment opportunities. The block party I have been to, but do not exactly remember (I was taken when I was about 3 years old by my father).

July might be one very busy month for me if I'm going to Capitol HIll Block Party, San Francisco, getting a summer job to save for a graduation trip (France) and finishing a large portion of my AP Studio Art summer homework. There is much work to be done needless to say. And I am still undecided about my Senior Project. Art show?

Speaking of art... we received all our artwork back from the school art expo, at last! I sent in my French Horn Sketch to a community art show. It was really the only piece that was, by my standards, "finished". I took all my unfinished and "unfinished" pieces home on Friday.

You know what really gets me? Those green "honorable mention" ribbons stamped on some of the pieces in the Art Expo. My tree was one of these pieces. Let's see, Kendra receives first place ribbon. Brendan receives second place ribbon. And... *mystery place* ribbon for Amelia! I don't know who was on the panel of judges this year, but boy, do they know how to make an intensely hard-working art student feel second-rate.

Special thanks to Ms. King for being one person completely in love with this thing. I honestly wish I could appreciate this tree as much as you do (especially after all the work and weekdays that I had to put into it).

You can probably tell, this piece is very large. But this is about as big as I am, as is my self portrait.

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My eyes need... surgery.

Here is a painting I did at the beginning of a year. It is my favorite painting, but oddly enough, the subject, once a friend of mine, completely stopped talking to me this year.

(Acrylic paint) 

And this painting, unfinished, was the start of a song interpretation piece. "There is a Light, And It Never Goes Out" by The Smiths. That odd little white carrot-shaped man at the bottom will at some point be Patrick Morrissey. When I showed this to my Dad, he said "Of all the romantic imagery you could come up with, you got...what, a light bulb and the guy who sings the song? Jesus." That made me feel really great. That's probably the reason I left this alone for such a long time. It is getting there....

And my last unfinished piece of the Amelia Unfinished Collection. The Bicycle still life!

This year nearly killed me. Thank goodness summer is almost here. And only one, single, torturous week left! Hallelujah!

Art Post!

Well I thought this would be appropriate.

I want a yellow rain jacket. Used to have one when I was a kid.

Bare with me on the last post, I was totally tired and deranged and should not have written while I was so sleep deprived.

Yes well while my awful disgusting and very evil 5 megapixel camera refuses to give me any photos, let alone decent ones, of art I have finished over my winter vacation, and I can post pictures of my next subjects.

This will be an acrylic painting. When I finally get the materials I need, what I'll do is take my guitar pick and trace it, and cover the canvas with rows of the outlines of the pick, and then probably trace the outline of the guitar very very lightly, and paint inside the tracings of the picks. This piece is sort of inspired by one that I saw at the MOMA in August when my mother and I were visiting my Uncle on the east coast. I hope that it turns out. I might not start it this break, simply because I have so many other things (most all of my song interpretation pieces and studying for my honors history class) that I need to get done by Sunday evening.

This is the French Horn that I stole from the art room (well, not exactly, the sub said I could take it, but you know.) Isn't it beautiful? Even though it looks like somebody had batting practice with it? I don't know why it's so beat up. But I think it is completely and totally amazing. It will be a drawing. I really massive one, too. Done on some sort of yellowed or off-white paper. I am especially excited to finish this one. This is one of the good ones, so I'm going to take my time to make sure that it's perfect.

And now, I must go draw in the Octopus for my Octopus's Garden drawing. C'est tout!