yo affleck was da bomb...

It's been a couple of weeks (nearly) since I last blogged and I'd have to say the highlight of those last two weeks was definitely the rash of illness and general misfortune. It started more than two weeks ago, actually, when I slipped in one of the Tufts bathrooms (running late to my art history class although, ironically, I wasn't literally running at that moment), twisted my right ankle and fell - hard - on my left knee. I still have an ugly bruise on my knee and some tenderness in my ankle. My ankle swelled but I could walk, so I might have sprained it but it's unlikely anything got broken. I've resumed all normal activities, except for yoga. I still can't sit cross-legged on the floor, but I can do tae-bo just fine. Odd.

The following week I had a cold relapse. Nothing major, especially in light of the stomach bug that crippled me this week. I was pretty much dead to the world all day Tuesday and most of Wednesday, managed to make it to work on Thursday, and by Friday was feeling pretty nearly fine. My appetite's mostly back (I'm not sure if that's a good thing) but I still have a little queasiness at the sight of sugar, probably due to the Cadbury's cream egg I had the night before I got sick. Not a good idea after a late-ish dinner of Indian food from Trader Joe's. Needless to say, it'll be a good long while before I have Indian food and hopefully never before I have another cream egg. What is that goo in the middle, anyway?

Being sick this week set me behind but, with one day of the long weekend still to go, I'm starting to feel back on track. I missed out on a full day of screenprinting on Tuesday and a half and half day of art history writing and painting on Wednesday. Not good the week before final critiques, and about two weeks before my review board. Here is a group of paintings I'm frantically working to finish within the next two weeks:


And another view:


And my obsessive-compulsive-tending work area:


What can I say, I'm a tidy painter.

Anyway, after spending the last few days (aside from an evening shift of work in the middle) in the studio, it's mostly my 10 to 15 page art history paper, due the same day as my review board, that I'm worried about. I'm sure it'll be fine - I mean, I'm writing about Sophie Calle's Suite Venetienne and Jean Baudrillard's accompanying essay...how hard can it be?

Also making it difficult to stay focused these last few weeks of the semester is intense spring fever. Wearing jackets and keeping the windows closed for about six months straight will do that to you, I guess. The trees are finally starting to blossom, which is probably hell for allergy-sufferers but quite lovely. I took some pictures around the studio building today, before Neal and I had our Easter dinner at nearby Qdoba.

This is looking up St. Alphonsus street...you can see some budding trees in the background (the Mission Hill building where grad studios are located is on the left):


And this is looking down the hill, in the opposite direction, toward Huntington Avenue, in the direction of the Museum and the main Museum School building. Note the Mission Hill Church on the right and Neal on the left...he's not always there, but the church usually is.


And here's the parking lot, which is usually quite full. Note the heavily tagged rock wall in the background. Out of view is a patch of graffiti that reads: "Yo Affleck was da bomb in Phantoms." Here's someone else's picture of it, which completes the wall.


Some other stuff happened in between all that...listed to Laura Mulvey read from her latest attack on visual pleasure and classic cinema, went to the opening of the latest round of MFA thesis exhibits (overall, quite impressed...I'll try to remember to write more about it before the next show opens in early May), hung out with some of Neal's super friendly and super smart peers, attended a colloquium about Latin American art, and enjoyed a casual presentation by Boston painter Steve Locke.

Happy Easter and, uh, don't worry if you don't hear from me in the next couple of weeks...