Art School, Week 13

Hi All,

I published this yesterday, but forgot to put the link here. Sorry about that.

https://medium.com/@jrpstonecarver/art-school-week-13-3485971afc77

I strongly suggest you email me (or use this contact page) and ask me to add you to my email announcement list about future posts, or use an RSS reader and connect it to my feed on Medium, which I am told it supports. I say that because I will stop updating this blog one of these days, and if you're one who wants to keep reading what I am writing, those are the obvious ways to keep in contact.

Thank you!

Art School, Week 12

Here's the link: https://medium.com/@jrpstonecarver/art-school-week-12-8fa23c001c7d

Art School Week 11

My test of another blogging platform continues. The post about Art School Week 11 can be found over here:

https://medium.com/@jrpstonecarver/art-school-week-11-4d08c3d087ac

If the move to Medium sticks I'll stop posting things here, but for now it seems reasonable to keep cross linking.

Thanks.

New Post in a new place

Hi All,

I know this might be a surprise, but I am looking into moving this blog off of blogger. As part of that effort I've put the next Art School post up on Medium. Here's a link:

Art School, Week 9

Please let me know what you think about that platform. Blogger seems to be less than fully supported these days, and definitely has comment problems. I figured trying something new was a good idea.

If it works out, I'll move things over there permanently. If not, I'll keep looking.

Please let me know what you think!

Week 7 of art school

It's hard to believe that I've through seven weeks of the first semester already.

I am already starting to plan my classes for the spring semester. Registration starts pretty soon, and I need to be ready.

In any case, here is what happened last week:

In ceramics, I decided that my project was too plain, so I added a vertical stripe to each piece. This was done with black slip applied over white slip. I hope it looks good after firing, but who knows. This is the pieces all disassembled and continuing to dry in preparation for bisque firing next week:

Nothing is perfect in this work. Things are all slightly askew, in particular, and there is some surface roughness that I am less than entirely happy with. But overall I have hope they will turn out well once they are glazed. The plan remains to glaze them all with a turquoise glaze over the white (and now black) slip. There is also a chance I will instead use different colours on some of the sections, but I am not all that thrilled with the other colour choices available to us in this project. There are seven glazes we can choose from, but two react badly with black slip (making a mess in the kiln and possibly damaging nearby pieces in the process) and one is the same clear we used last time. That leaves just four new glazes that will work in my case. Oh, and we're not allowed to overlap the glazes either, to avoid drips & runs in the firing process.

Art history - AKA Visual Culture I - was another lecture that will be included in the mid-term, which is next week. That will be my first college test in over three decades. The instructor tells me not to worry about it - she says I will do just fine - but no one does these things calmly. I will be fine, I know, but it does add stress.

Painting class this week was another round of life painting, at which I continue to stink - and a very amusing homework assignment. First, though, the best painting from the in class life painting session:

I told you it was pretty bad. That's on paper, as the canvas painting was even worse.

The painting homework this week is to paint something from a song. Any song. It could be what the song makes you see or feel, or it could be a narrative of the song itself. I've got several relatively obscure things running around in my head as a result, and I am not at all sure which I will choose. Or I might get crazy and do more than one. Dunno. Results of that effort will appear here next week assuming they don't stink too.

Design studio gave us a new project: we're building a model of a pavilion for a garden here in Vancouver, based on something to do with insects: their movement, life cycle, etc. We are not, however, supposed to have the pavilion be a giant insect. I've been toying with fireflies, but I am not happy with the things I have come up with so far. As a result, this weekend has me pondering this assignment again. We get a couple of hours in class to work on it this coming week, but it's due at the end of class, so I need this resolved and worked out. Also, he gave us back our grades on the wire model/movement work, and I got another A. Seems like things are going well in that class for me.

Finally we had drawing class yesterday, and we turned in our assignment from last week. That was a triptych in which we setup a still life and did some interesting things we positive vs. negative space. We were working on manila paper with charcoal and chalk or white pastel (or Conté). Here's what I turned in:

And here's what the still life setup for it looked like:

There are some interesting distortions in in, but I am reasonably happy with the results. Apparently the instructor was as well. A perfect score and a request that she be allowed to keep it for a while (along with several others) to put up on display somewhere. The drawing homework for this week is an interior drawing of a house in one point perspective, with something wacky added to it. I have ideas, but I am more worried about other homework due sooner, so it will wait a while.

I'd say that ended the week, but as dinner was ending I was starting to feel a sore throat come on, and it only got worse over night. I appear to have a cold. Not fun.

I did go out and buy an A/V receiver to replace the dead one, so we can once again drive real speakers when watching TV. I haven't completely set it up yet, but we used it last night and it sounded pretty good. Just a cheap Yamaha in this case - last year's model, even - but it will do the job.

In other news, the weather in Vancouver has continued cool and rainy. We keep hearing fairly apocalyptic weather predictions on the CBC radio in the morning: huge storms that will produce 22-50 mm of rain. You do the math, but it's nothing compared to what we experienced in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

And speaking of those, there was a pretty large fire something like seven miles from our old home last week. Called the Bear Fire, it's in really rugged terrain, and in a very odd area where there are a lot of transients and a fair amount of illegal activity. I was in there a few times when I was a member of the VFD, and it's the place where I was famously told by a local that we should not leave the fire engines unattended overnight or they would be stripped clean. Very weird. Anyway, it's currently listed at 391 acres and 50%  contained. CalFire seems to be getting a handle on it. I have stopped worrying about it. I think they finally got a little rain down there as well, which is good.

That ends this week's update, I think. With luck this cold will pass quickly, I'll get painting & design done this weekend, and the art history test will go well. Time will tell.

Yet more updates... apparently I have no life!

A few more things have come up since yesterday, so here we go.

First, the pile of accumulated hail is still present, now more than 48 hours after it fell:

Temperatures are in the 7-9 degrees (Celsius) range, so it's cool, but well above freezing. Apparently it was a lot of hail.

Next, I went to school today - despite it being a Saturday, and covered my slab project in white slip. The photo isn't great - they were on the top of the drying rack, well hidden, but you can see them here, sort of:

Those will be white once they are bisque fired. Then I will cover them with a turquoise glaze, I think, which should make them quite pretty. Tentative title is "E.M and J.B. Early Efforts". Someone will work it out. Email me when you think you have it.

After that work was done, I decided I had a few minutes to spare while there, and one of the perks of being an art student is you get a locker which you are allowed to paint. A few weeks ago I covered mine in gesso, to hide the old homage to The X-Files (which was nice, but a bit stale, to be honest). So, today, I turned it into this:

It really stands out now. You can't miss it. And I rather like it. I might need to do another layer over it at some point, but possibly not. Also, for the record, the texture on the front predates me, and I left it there. I kind of like it, actually.

On my way out the door to go home, I noted this:

That's a display cabinet in the central arts courtyard area in which the various art instructors hang shows of the work their students are producing. Down in the lower left, that's my most recent project from design studio. The other works in there are really good, though. Much better than mine, in my opinion. Top right is a sea snake or eel. Middle left is jelly fish. Middle right is a rabbit. Bottom right - unlabeled - is a jumping frog. I think they are all more expressive than mine, but each has its strengths.

And finally, from this morning's dog walk, I have several photos for your consideration:

Each of those shows a bunch of torn up grass. The question for you is, what is doing that? What is ripping up large areas of grass like that?

Before I tell you, I should mention that this started a few weeks ago. The torn up spots started appearing - at random - all over the area we live in. Sometimes they were under trees, sometimes they were out in the open, well away from everything. For several weeks we didn't see what was causing them, and we wondered. Squirrels digging up old nuts, perhaps? Skunks or raccoons digging for grubs?

Anne finally saw the answer, and I saw it as well a couple of weeks later. I was rather surprised, really.

Crows. Yes, crows.

The local crows have can openers where their beaks should be, and we've seen them pulling the grass back to get at something - we're not sure what - beneath. There is a lot of sod in the area, and perhaps that makes it easier to pull it back, even years after it was installed. Or maybe not. Maybe they are just that strong and that determined. Either way, it's crows, and they are prying open people's yards to get at some sort of food. It's quite impressive, in a certain destructive way.

Those are the updates for today. Hope they were fun!

This Week In Review: Drawing

Drawing class... drawing class... It's been a while since I included any photos from that class. OK. I guess I can fix that now.

Weeks ago we did some work with drawings where we were deliberately flattening them out, to avoid showing depth. Here are those. (I think I shared one of these before but it got redrawn, so there are two versions of it now.)

Those were based on this still life:

Then we did some contour drawings, blind and non-blind. I have this plant that I worked from:

And from it I produced these:

A blind contour (above) and multiple contour drawings (below).

The assignment after that was the ginger root cross contour diptych.

Properly arranged - which seems to be hard to do in this software - and with better color adjustment, and with better photographic alignment, and those would line up left to right. But I don't like them. I failed to show the depth and curve in various areas. Oh well. I knew it before I turned it in, so lesson learned.

For the most recent assignment, though, it turns out I really need to work on my literalism.  Sigh.

Most recently we were create a radially symmetric drawing of kitchen utensils in chalk or white pastel on black paper. I did that, and produced something so rigid and tight that it's actually boring. And thus I get my first non-perfect grade in drawing class... 17/20. Here's the drawing and the source material:

Boring, eh? Yup. I could have done anything... but my weird brain locked in on the word "symmetric" and I did that, to the exclusion of anything else. Ugh.

Today we were doing more playing with negative space in class. Here's one I did there:

And here is the implement of torture that we sit on in drawing class:

That thing is called a drawing horse, or pony, and appears to date from about the time of the inquisition. Feh. I can imagine much better without much trouble at all. Maybe I'll have to work on that in design class.

Anyway, this week we're doing a triptych of a still life, again playing with negative space in various ways. Maybe I'll have pictures of that next in next week's update.

This Week In Review: Design

Design class finally sees some actual grades.

The first project consisted of several parts, done over several weeks. It was nice, because most of the work was done in or after class itself, so there wasn't a lot of homework. Given the load from other courses, that's been a good thing.

The first two bits of work were to create particular drawings of this object:

We ignored the base, but otherwise it was all to be drawn. First, as an orthographic:

And then again as a paraline:

I apologize for the lousy quality of those pictures. I did what I could to improve them.

Next we began some sketching to create a concept of an idea of our own, one that we built from cardboard and hot glue. The materials caused some limitations on what was possible, of course, but that's part of the process. Once the sketching process was done and we'd figured out our object, we then created paraline drawings of it (front and back, if needed), and then went off to build it.

Sadly, I don't yet have pictures of my sketches or paraline drawings of the object, but I have some of the object itself:

That thing is about 9" in all the large dimensions, and the assembly process drove me a bit mad, but not nearly as mad as it drove some of my classmates. You'd think that cardboard and hot glue would not pose that big a challenge to someone of my advancing years, but they did. The seams and corners could be a lot better.

Still, with the creation of that object, we finished the first assignment, and I have A's on every portion of it. Apparently experience does matter, and I have plenty of that.

We've already completed the next assignment as well. It was more nebulous: we were to use wire, a small base of MDF, and perhaps some paper to show how an animal moves, without actually showing the animal itself. Also we were to include an 11" x 17" idea sheet, and do a short presentation about what we created to the class.

Honestly that assignment description was vague enough to cause me some consternation, so I worked at mine and completed it early. I didn't trust that my concept would work. Here it is, without other context:

In case it's not obvious - and it's not - that's the movement of a landing bird. The rings show the orientation of the body as it lands as well as hinting at speed, and the centre (short) wire appears when the legs come down. Here's the idea sheet I put together:

And I did my presentation as well (something I am a lot more comfortable with than most of the kids in the class), and it's all done. No clue what the grade will be, but I suspect I did well despite my initial discomfort at the nebulous description. The grade will appear eventually and I'll see if I am right about that.

We're now getting ready to start the next assignment, which is to create a design for an entomology pavilion (very loosely defined) for a local place called Van Dusen Gardens. All we've been told so far is that we'll be building in cardboard again, that the pavilion might cover a 20' x 20' area (give or take), and that it needs to have some sort of insect related them. This week we're to collect some insect related images off the web that will help inspire our design.

And that's where design class sits. I am pretty happy in this class so far. It covers ground that I am familiar with and works in three dimensions. Essentially it plays to my strengths, unlike painting, and even drawing to a degree. Ceramics is good, too, but I can see there is a lot of technical stuff to learn that I haven't yet been exposed to.

Oh, and the instructor for this class is starting to put together a special projects design class in the Summer that will include working with the city (Vancouver) to get students to work on trying to find real solutions to problems they have but lack the manpower to work on. That might be interesting to do, and I will be looking for more details on it.

This Week In Review: Painting

Of all my classes, painting is in an odd way the most frustrating and yet the most fun.

Part of both of those feelings comes from the instructor, who is really nice, and clearly knows his stuff, and yet lets us work without a whole lot of guidance. Some - perhaps many - of us have no idea how we're doing in the class overall, and (sadly) grades still matter.

But honestly, some of the issue is that painting is an experiential thing - much as stone carving is, and I know that intimately - and you have to get it "into your fingers." That is, you have to do it. And do it. And do it. And do it. And do it again and again, until you start to understand it at a visceral level.

So far, I do not understand it, and I am regularly frustrated by the complete disconnect between my eyes & brain, and by another disconnect between my brain and my hand. Nothing works the way I want it to. Nothing.

I'm hesitant to even share my work here because I am so unhappy with most of it. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, here are some things that haven't yet made it to the blog:

This was an assignment we started in class and finished at home. The goal was to work from both images (taken from magazines) and from objects in real life. I struggled with it.

The guy in the bow tie is taken from an image. Specifically from a photo of a collage that looks a fair bit like what I painted. I'm OK with him. But there were also some real objects painted on this that really were awful, and got obliterated; one by the background and another by her. She's not all that great either, alas. I dug up another image as source material at home but really screwed up the hair. So badly, in fact, that I think I will rework this one, perhaps this weekend. It could be so much better than it is.

Next, we did life painting 1.5 weeks ago, and I was pretty much awful. We did some quick, gestural paintings, and this is the best I got:

That's not horrible, but not exactly stellar either. But then we went onto a canvas, and I was really struggling. Here's what came out, but if you laugh please keep it to yourself:

I was experimenting with both brush technique and color mixing on the canvas. I am simply not a good enough painter to pull the mess off, but I tried. I don't think the instructor was all that impressed either.

The latest homework was a copy project. We were given a photocopy of a painting (monochrome) and told to grid it out and enlarge it onto a canvas, section by section. There was a lack of clarity, however, and at least a couple of us interpreted that as meaning that each section could be painted in colours completely unrelated to the sections around it. I did that, and the resulting dog vomit of colors is actually kind of interesting. Here's the photocopy I worked from:

I think you can click on that to get a larger view. The painting is pretty complex, really, and we have no clue what the original colours are. You can see my grid marks on it as well. The reproduction I created looks like this:

Essentially 16 mini paintings, all with totally different color schemes. It sort of works, and sort of doesn't. Bits of what I did are really awful, and some is OK.

But what was I really copying? Well, it turns out the original is by Jules De Balincourt. Here's a link to his website and the original work, and here's a screen capture of it:

Kind of an interesting project, actually. Many hours of work to create that copy, and then we learn that the instructor didn't really mean for us to use different color schemes on each grid section. Oh well. Mostly, though, he wanted us to learn new kinds of brushwork and worry about tone & value, not the specifics of color. I did play with those things, actually, and the thing I produced isn't actually terrible, though it is close.

The most recent class started with a lecture and slides about some paintings and a bit of painting history, then it devolved in to something weirder - more personal about the instructor and his own work. Then we were told to paint anything we wanted.

I don't have photos of that yet. I went abstract, with really thick paint, and even some work with a palette knife instead of a brush. Once again I think the instructor was unimpressed.

I have this fundamental problem with painting: I have no clue how to tell what is a good painting and what isn't. There are clearly paintings in the world - in museums and galleries - that look like they were painted by a child, and yet they are highly regarded. Some of my readers have more education in this stuff than I do, and perhaps you can email me and explain how you think paintings are (or should) be evaluated. All I know right now is that I pretty much hate what I produce, and my understanding of what is and isn't good is threatened by the idea that paintings are judged substantially by what the art world is doing at the time they are created. How on earth does that make a painting good or not? Can there be any objective determination of whether a painting - or any other art object - is actually "good"? I am struggling with this, particularly in painting, where my own work is not up the few standards I know how to evaluate it with.

The Week In Review: Ceramics

The past week saw a lot of stuff going on in several classes, and there may be some images, so I am breaking things up into posts about each class this time around, just to keep things smaller. Skip whatever is uninteresting.

First off, Ceramics:

Last week I created a second slab built project (from an assignment called "Neo-Geo", as previously mentioned.) Sadly I don't have photos of that new build yet, but it's a version of the previous "rocket to Mars" thing, but this time in a square cross section (as opposed to the triangular one), so it's a bit larger overall, but not really taller.

As I write this, it's drying a bit, and this weekend - perhaps tomorrow morning - I will go into school again and cover much of it with white slip. With this project we have multiple glaze choices, and I plan on a turquoise glaze that looks better over white slip than over the terracotta red clay. At least in large measure that is my plan.

The reason for going in over the weekend is that I know we're doing the critique session on our coil built pots on Tuesday morning, and that will take much of the session, leaving not that much time to do any real work. Thus, I am trying to get ahead of the curve.

And speaking of my coil built pot, it's been both bisque and glaze fired, and here is a quick peek at the final results:

As you can see, some of the terracotta shows through the white. That - along with several other things - are not what I had originally anticipated for this piece, but then again this is the first thing I have actually fired in a very - very! - long time. (Since grade school, I think.)

I haven't brought the work home yet. Those photos were taken just after I helped unload the kiln, in fact. I'll try to get better photos once I get the work home.

Overall I am reasonably happy with it. Things changed from the original plan, but it's a fine result for my first cut at this. And I have learned a few things that I will work at with the Neo-Geo assignment, though I don't swear I will be able to improve everything. Hand built is still hand built.

The next post should be about Art History, but there was no class this week, and I've already mentioned my paper was submitted, so instead it will be about painting.

Another week at school

Just a quick update about school this week.

In ceramics, we're planning our next project, and the first one goes into the kiln this coming Tuesday (tomorrow) I think. I spent hours building a couple of cardboard maquettes of possible next projects. We're doing slab building (as opposed to coil building) and I am going to try pushing the edges a bit harder this time. We'll see how that goes.

In art history, I've written my first college paper in well over 30 years. The first draft is due on Wednesday, and final version a week later. It's short and simple, but kind of fun. I might share it later, once I've done more editing passes at it, and seen what the instructor thinks.

In painting, we continue to paint. Last week we were told to "paint anything" but use a limited palate of mixed colors. I had no clue what to paint, so I went around the house and gathered some interesting objects, put them on a table, and viola... Still Life in the House of Jeff:

If you're really curious, here's a photo of the still life setup:

In there we have:

• A light up Flamingo (Thanks to Gretchen for that!)
• A bunch of bananas
• A bottle of scotch (Talisker Storm, for those who care)
• A Ryobi leaf blower
• A dead Harmon Kardon A/V amplifer and remote (and yes, I am researching replacements for it... grumble)

My life is weird. Note that I didn't worry about the junk in the background at all. Just made it disappear. Poof.

We have homework this week too, and I have to finish that painting today. That one is a mash-up of things found in images and real life. I'm about half done with mine and really dislike it. Still, it's a thing, and there is possibly some interesting learning going on with this one that I might talk about later, if it sticks.

In design, we started sketching a random "thing" that we then built out of cardboard and hot glue. The point here - I think - was not the cardboard and hot glue, but to get these kids to think about sketches and drawings as a vehicle for showing what something will actually look like when it is made. I've done that before - a fair bit, actually - so for me it was just play time. Some of these folks, though, had clearly never thought about these issues in any significant way. One of these days I'll have pictures of stuff I've turned in from this class. Someday.

And finally, drawing class was canceled. The instructor was sick, and her email said she would send out the drawing homework on Saturday, but it's now Monday morning and I still have nothing on that. No clue when that will show up, or how much time I'll have to do that homework. Time will tell. And also no idea how my ginger root cross contour drawing will be graded either. Again, time will tell.

No other school news. I continue to have fun, which is great, but more importantly the ceramics maquette really started some interesting thought processes. I have ideas for new art I want to create when I have time, in stone and metal and clay. Some pieces are just in one of those media, while others are a mixture of two or even all three. No clue when I'll have time to work on them, but it's good to have new, really different ideas to work with.

School Update

Hello All. I've been quite busy over the last week, but I'm caught up, for the moment. (It's Saturday morning now, and the homework for next week stretches out before me, alas.) Also, I fear my entire ceramics class is a week behind (which is the instructor's problem, not mine, at least until she changes the schedule and it bites us all, hard) and I know there are some killer assignments coming in the not too distant future. There's a short paper in Art History as well, and the painting instructor just added a new homework assignment that wasn't on the syllabus, so things are... complex.

But let's review, in course order:

In Ceramics (Tuesday mornings), I have a coil built pot ready to be covered in some combination of white & black slip:

It's nearly 12 inches tall, and while I'd planned on a smoother texture and originally intended a smooth (not fluted) top, I am happy with it. I have no idea if it will survive the kiln or not, of course.

In Art History (Wednesday mornings) I have two possible topics for the paper I have to write. One is this sculpture in Richmond:

It's a lovely stainless steel water droplet, or so says the artist. The other is a famous Monet I saw last weekend at the Vancouver Art Gallery. But with my interest in sculpture I prefer to write a formal description of the sculpture for the paper.

That said the paper comes in two parts, and the formal description is the easy part. The rest involves putting the artwork in context, somehow. The artist is Chinese and this is one of two sculptures installed in the west by him in 2009. They also appear to be the only things he's installed in the west so far, and he's young enough that I can't find anything written about him in particular except the documentation that goes with the Vancouver Bienalle 2009 - 2011. I will be talking with the instructor shortly about the task at hand, and see what she has to suggest. [Addendum: I talked with my instructor, and I have lots of options for how to write about the work for part two. She was even interested in the fact that I'd done research already and come up empty handed, and I could simply write that up. So I think I'll use the sculpture as the subject of my paper, and see how it goes.]

Painting class (Wednesday afternoons) seems to be going well. I am a bit hesitant to include photos of my work here, but what the heck. Overall we paint one or more quick things in class, and we have homework assignments as well. The first homework was a monochrome interior. Here's mine:

There are so many issues with that painting... argh.

Some of you probably know I do not consider myself a painter. In fact. two and a half years of painting classes some decades ago left me done with the medium. But at least one painting class is required by the program here at Langara, and there has been a lot of water under the bridge. It's a good idea that I try it again and keep an open mind.

Here's the other painting homework I am willing to share:

Yes, that is a self portrait, supposedly. We were told to paint them with just two or three colours and white, and I chose blue & yellow. It makes me look way too much like Steve Jobs, but whatever. We actually had to paint two self portraits. The other was to be something more fun, but I hate the results. I will gesso it over sooner rather than later, I think. We have turned in these paintings but I have no clue how things are being graded, so I might have an A for participation and effort, or I might have an F because I stink. I need to ask the instructor about that someday. Also, for the curious, we're painting with acrylics. Apparently there isn't enough ventilation in the painting room to let us use oils. Not sure how (or if) the advanced painting classes solve that. Maybe they only use acrylics too.

Design (Thursday mornings) is going well. I have nothing back with a grade yet but given my interactions with the instructor so far, I think all is fine. We've turned in two drawings: a set of orthogonal views of a particular object, and a paraline drawing of the same object. Now we're designing our own object that we will construct out of cardboard and hot glue (I think). I've got my design done, and we start construction next week.

And finally there is drawing on Friday mornings. In that class I have 2 assignments graded and have received perfect marks on both, though I honestly am not sure why. The first was a still life, and we had two versions of it. Here's the better (in my opinion) of the two:

Sorry about the lousy photo. Need to fix that. The second assignment was a series of contour drawings of a houseplant. I don't have that photographed yet, but my drawings of that weren't all that great either. And yet, as I say, I got a perfect score again. Today saw us start life drawing (with some excellent instruction on how to actually do that) and our next homework assignment is a diptych of a ginger root drawn in cross contour. That might allow for more visual interest than the fruit and cup still life above, though cross contour isn't a great thing for artistic expression, in my opinion, unless you're creating covers for science fiction novels.

This weekend I have the following homework to do:

• Ceramics: none. I am as caught up as I can be at this point.
• Art History: read chapter three of the book (on different media) and start writing the paper.
• Painting: paint "something from life" using three mixed colours, white, and a chromatic black. This assignment is to get us to mix three interesting colours from the selection of paints we were given, rather that the subject matter itself.
• Design: quickly recheck my object design so it is ready to turn in on Thursday.
• Drawing: ginger root diptych. I've bought the ginger root, at least.

And in addition to that I have a few things I have to do on Monday that have nothing to do with school. And local friends want to get together. And the A/V receiver we have just died a horrible death, so it needs replacing. And if there is time I should mow, again. And there is always laundry to do. And the dogs need regular walking. And and and. Yeah. No shortage of things to keep me busy.

Final notes:

• While writing this I forced Chrome to use a Canadian-English dictionary for spell check, rather than the US-English one. I need to get used to those spellings. For those following along from the states: sorry.
• The weather here is lovely: cool with occasional light rain. Very nice. The late summer heat is one thing about the bay area that I don't miss.
• I wish you all well. Feel free to email me with updates on your life. School has kept me off Facebook most days, so if there are interesting things going on with you that you've shared there, I've probably missed them. Again, my apologies.

Art School: Week 1

Today is the Saturday after my first week at art school. I've promised to share what I can about this experience, so here goes:

My schedule is fairly busy by modern college standards, I guess. Three courses is called a full load in a given semester. I am taking five, and started out thinking I would take six. I worried a bit about the load initially, but now I think I'll be OK.

As announced at the various orientations (which I am discovering lots of students didn't attend), each class gave us a detailed syllabus, listing just about all the dates you could want. There is one exception: final exam dates aren't yet set, so I don't know when my Art History final will be. None of my other classes have exams, just projects of various kinds due throughout the semester.

Overall the classes seem good, though just one session of each isn't a lot to go on. Overall the students I've talked with seem to think these instructors are good (I agree) and I think all of my studio instructors have taught (or currently teach) at Emily Carr University (or some other major school) in addition to teaching at Langara College. Emily Carr is a big art & design school, with some prestige, so if they're associated with Emily Carr in some way, they have recognition, if I understand the world properly.

My schedule has no classes on Monday, which is nice. It gives me an extra day each weekend to do homework, and I am already pretty sure I will need that.

Thoughts on individual classes:

• Ceramics: We have a substitute instructor here: Gailan Ngan. The usual instructor is off taking a class herself, so they've brought in Gailin. She's quite good, very nice, and interesting, with lots of relevant background. Her website is http://gailanngan.com/. Our first assignment is to create a coil built work of some kind. We're going to glaze the greenware, before it is fired. There are two other projects in this course: a work done in clay slabs, and a simple set of pots thrown on a wheel. And of course there is all kinds of other stuff to go along with all of that, the technical side of kiln loading, firing, glazing, etc. We haven't even started in on the first pot, though. That happens this coming Tuesday.
  
  
• Visual Culture I (Art History): This is a thematic overview of art, rather than one organized chronologically. The instructor is Dr. Ivana Horacek, who has taught at quite a number of schools, including UBC, and most recently at the University of Minnesota. So far I think she will be an excellent instructor, and I have hope of learning a lot in her class. I don't delude myself into thinking I will be the best student there, but I hope to do well, and her teaching style seems suited to me. I'll know more with additional class time, but it seems good.
  
  
• Painting: Taught be Steven Hubert (whose website I cannot be certain of; there are a few that might be his, but I am unable to confirm that given what I know, and they lack pictures of him, so... I can't give a link I know is right) who is an instructor at Langara, Emily Carr, Simon Fraser University (I think), and probably others. His approach is direct and to the point: paint a lot. He's got exercises for us, and is starting us off with a limited palette (monochromatic at first). We did some painting the first day, mostly to loosen up and get the idea, I think. Next week we start getting formal assignments to do during class and afterwards. All painting in this class is with acrylics, no oils or water colors. I'm OK with that. My oil experience is that they turn muddy brown when I look at them, and I know nothing about using water colors after about grade 3. Assuming I take more painting classes, I'm sure I'll learn more about those options. To be honest, this class probably worries more than any other, simply because my previous painting experiences gave me so much frustration. Time will tell how I react to the media, but this instructor seems like a good one to me, and I hope to enjoy it and learn a lot.
  
  
• Design: This is an introductory Industrial Design class taught by Philip Robbins (yet another instructor who's taught in many places). Our first assignment involved drawing an orthographic projection of a simple object. Eventually we'll be creating ideas for things and figuring out how to draw or document them, and even some computer (CAD) work. Given my background I expect a lot of this to be pretty simple, but I have to work at it not to make stupid mistakes, and my technique will probably never be perfect. This is another class I think I'll enjoy, but I do wonder a bit about organization. I expect we'll be doing some group work, rather than all individual projects, and working in groups - despite being part of reality - is an odd thing in school. If everyone works hard and well, it can be fine. If not, things can go sideways in a hurry. In the real world you're always working in groups, but there isn't a grade coming, per se, and your manager should know what you've done and how much effort you put in. So even if a project tanks (and a lot do) it's not held against you personally unless you deserve it. That grade on a project in school is always kind of worrisome, and there may be nothing you can do about the level of effort on the part of another person in your group. We'll see how it goes, obviously, and I expect it won't be an issue, but I still worry about these things.
  
  
• Drawing: Taught by Sarita Baker, who has also taught at a bunch of schools, played in a band, and written music for a cartoon TV show. Her class is an introduction to drawing, and gets us going with exercises and assignments. I don't have a sense of how well I will do at this - I get uptight about my own work pretty easily - but it seems she isn't worried about such things, and will help us succeed. Again I was unable to find a website specifically hers, so I have no good link to share.

Thus far I have no pictures to share of anything I have done. We did some drawings in the first drawing class, but I recycled them all. We did a couple of quick paintings on paper in the painting class, and those are still in the classroom, but are definitely not worth sharing. The first homework in the design class is done and sitting in a drawer at school waiting to be turned in. And (as stated above) no clay has been worked yet. So don't expect pictures for another week or two, I think.

There. Now you are as up to date as I am on my first week of school. Now I need to publish this and get started on some ceramics homework.

PS: It's cool and rainy today. Totally overcast. Absolutely lovely weather for me. I am happy with it!

Back to school

Today is Labour (Labor) Day, in celebration of which I do not labo(u)r.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Tomorrow, I labo(u)r. Possibly a lot. Tomorrow, I begin a new chapter in life, and start to figure out what some of the decisions we made over the last six months really mean.

For the curious, I am taking five classes this semester:

• Ceramics Studio
• Design Studio
• Drawing Studio
• Painting Studio
• Visual Culture I

The first four are art classes. Each meets once a week for four hours, and I am told to expect four hours of homework from each per week (which will have to be done in the studio rooms themselves in most cases) except for ceramics, where I should expect eight hours of homework per week, all in the studio.

The last class is from the Art History department. I chose it as this sequence (Visual Culture I & II) looks more interesting to me than the traditional, chronological art history presentation, but I could be wrong. Additionally, the class has a new instructor, just hired into Langara College. It will - no doubt - involve extensive reading and writing papers, and thus add to the homework commitment.

It is my goal to post about art here, as well as other aspects of life. As I have previously mentioned, though, I don't yet know how much time I will have for anything other than course work, so time will tell. Please be patient as I adjust to the new schedule and get my life in order, again.

Thanks all!

An art related post. No, really!

Last weekend found me installing and unveiling a garden sculpture for Jenny Yamate. This piece has a great history. At the art show we did last Fall at Jenny's gym I had another pumice sculpture that sold to one of her clients. But before it left it was at the gym for some time and Jenny got attached to it.

Well, a bunch of her clients got together and commissioned another stone from me to go where the first one had been.

I had the raw materials already, and needed only the time. Going back to work made things slip, but the piece was done something like two months ago. In an interesting twist, this piece got it's name - Flexibility - before it was even complete. Usually I wait until it's done to name something, but this one clearly had a name right away.

Jenny wanted to have a party for the unveiling, so we did that last weekend. I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did too. Big thanks to everyone who helped make this possible, and to Jenny for being both patient and appreciative!

Here are a couple of pictures courtesy of Neil Wiley, Mountain Network News. That's me and Jenny in the first one.