the blank canvas.

Just a melodramatic way of saying that I’m getting my wisdom teeth removed. 

No eating after midnight tonight, operation is at nine in the morning. I’ll get drugged up on pain meds and anesthesia and then I get pain killers for the next few days. Good part is this means movie marathons with Mama and unlimited chicken noodle soup and ice cream.

Three cheers for coming of age. Does this mean I’m “wise” yet?

A poem by Data about his cat, Spot:

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

Just watched an episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise comes into contact with an alien species that is androgynous. Commander Riker and one of the androgynous aliens talk about the differences in their races and over time the alien admits that “it” (for lack of a better word) actually has inclinations towards feminine behavior, which she hasn’t been able to admit to publicly. Riker asks why this is a problem and “she” explains that if her preference towards gender was discovered she would be ridiculed by the majority of her people, since gender differences were a past evolutionary stage for their species. She explains that she has mated with individuals of her species that have more male inclinations, but secretly. If they were to be discovered they would have to undergo therapy in order to eliminate their gender preferences since it is now considered “unnatural” and “perverted”.

Now, I don’t know about you but this whole scenario strongly hints at the concept of sexual freedom and the human right of determining sexual orientation. For a television show that was released in the 1980s, that’s not too bad. Star Trek had already made strong social commentary by displaying women and men as equals as well as including blacks and other races among their crew as a symbol of a future tolerant, inclusive society. Including the concept of homosexuality blatantly might have been too much for society 30 years ago, considering that shows like Modern Family only recently broke that barrier within the last few years; however, I think Star Trek gets a big kudos for their evident commentary on sexual freedom.

Bravo, Star Trek, bravo!

…and it was really great to see everyone. Drew and I went and spent three hours walking around to visit everyone.

There was no bitterness at it all being over. I’m glad to be done with high school, but it was great to visit. So neat to see what all the talented junior and senior artists are doing. Wonderful to talk with all of our favorite teachers. Although our time at SOA is past we’ve still got our spread out visual arts family. It was the perfect place to be and now there’s no sadness at it all being over…just smiles over sweet memories with beautiful people.

This whole experience over the last year at Winthrop has really reinforced my ambitions in the arts. And seeing those inspiring works today? I’m so energized by it. That added to my passion even more.

It’s funny because I find myself cursing drawings and color studies at three in the morning but keep coming back for more, like a cocaine addict. Art is my addiction. No matter how much hell the last piece put me through I keep wanting to create more. Maybe I’m exaggerating when I compare it to giving birth, especially since I never have before, but it sort of feels that way sometimes, with the pieces that matter at least. 

I recently just finished a four piece series for my Drawing II class and my series was very personal. The pieces focused around the concept of the distortion of memory through Alzheimer’s disease. See, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s and as her disease progresses my family loses more and more of her. We often try to image what things look like from her perspective: can she see us at all? Are we just shells of people she might’ve known?

I wanted to try to convey what might be going through her mind through drawings. Each of the four pieces took between 15 and 20 hours each. Pushing through each piece was difficult, the detail and effort (and at times the emotion) they took was exhausting. It was a painful labor of 70-ish hours, but the resulting creation is a series I am proud of. Those pieces are my newborn children, as a matter of speaking. But I am like that crazy octo-mom - I want more. I want to push new pieces into the world, bring to light other experiences, nuture more works into work of art. In this I’m an addict. I can’t create enough. No amount is good enough. I can’t wait to get my hands on some graphite and mylar tomorrow, I have an idea for a mini-series that I’m itching to start. 

Art is my drug, one I don’t mind admitting to. An addiction I’ll never go to meetings for or have interventions about. It might mean that I’ll have a crooked back and arthritis in my hands and pigments in my skin and plaster in my lungs, but as long as I get some worthwhile pieces out of it, that’s fine with me. 

The other half is nerdy talk and Data’s cuteness.