shark meat

My how the weeks are flying by. Seems as if I just blogged yesterday. Hard to believe Thanksgiving is next week and after that just a couple weeks of classes remain. I handed in my aesthetics paper yesterday and breathed a wee sigh of relief but it was, sadly, short-lived. I have a final, much longer paper due in less than two weeks. I haven't decided what I'm going to write about yet. Initially I thought, since I devoted several weeks of my life to this stuff, I'd continue with aeshetics, but then I realized that that would be crazy. Don't get me wrong, aesthetics is loads of fun, but it might be interesting to switch gears and dig deep into something else.

So the funkdom has lifted slightly. It's typically a good funk, very fertile, productive ground, just a little shaky. It's been a crazy couple of months so I'm bound to have my ups and downs. At the end of the day, I'm usually still diggin' it all.

To recap my week...three second year students presented a collaborative art experience on Monday evening and I have to say, I was impressed (read about "second year slackers" below). Imagine a room with astro turf covering the floor, a live webcast of the California coastline projected on one wall, "Jaws" playing in a much smaller projection in the corner of the room, near the floor, upside down, a couple of lounge chairs, and a champagne fountain in the center of the room on a decorative accent table. Pink champagne filled the fountain and we barbecued skewers of shark meat. I didn't actually eat any shark, but I did have some bubbly and just generally enjoyed the whole experience. Though not as disturbingly surreal or class-conscious, it kinda reminded me of a Bunuel film, eating shark and drinking what looked a little like frothy ocean water tainted with blood while watching Jaws and real surfers bobbing up and down in the ocean. Other students read all sorts of other stuff into it, which I got, but honestly, I enjoyed that I didn't have to work so hard to "get it."

In the end, the second year slackers proved me wrong, and honestly, I'm more than happy to "eat my words" as they say. My efforts in the studio, on the other hand, have been mixed lately. I keep starting projects and then almost immediately feeling stalled. But I had a really productive critique today and that's the last one until my review board on December 20th. So I've got a little over a month to hash it all out and try to make some sense of what I've been doing over the past ten weeks. This is what one corner of my studio looked like today.

I'm also hoping tomorrow's day-trip to New York and the approximately fifteen galleries we're scheduled to visit (fifteen! in six hours!) will inspire me. I'm ridiculously excited but I can't quite grasp the fact that I'm going to New York and coming back in one day. It's a long day - a four hour bus ride there and back - but it's possible. Wild...I'll be sure to take pictures and tell y'all about it when I return.

But before that...Neal and I are down to the last two episodes of the first season of "House." Not sure I mentioned it in my pop culture recap but it's my official show of the moment...there was Buffy, of course, Sex and the City and then Six Feet Under...now I have House. We typically watch two, three, sometimes even four episodes in a row, so it's been a pretty intense viewing experience and I'm totally on the edge of my seat to see how it all ends. It pretty much all boils down to Cameron and House. I don't know, I'm fascinated by their relationship but I fear someone will get hurt...

Otherwise, things are getting busy at work, gearing up for my first holiday season in retail. Should get interesting...