Art School Week 8: The Time Is Flying By

Another "week in review" post. I wonder if the format of these is getting stale. Still, I don't think I have enough to break things up into per-class posts this time around. I'll do my best to keep it interesting but there are no promises.

First off, ceramics:

We bisque fired our slab built projects, and though I have seen mine, but I didn't get photos of it yet. I am pleased with the slip application, at least. The white is opaque - not showing the terracotta through it - and the black stripe looks good too. The wonky angles still bug me, but I am certain if I was making more things like this I would get better at it. Two clay projects do not an expert make.

We also started throwing on the wheel. We're using 1.5 to 2 pounds of a white clay. I think I tried it 4 or 5 times last Tuesday and had reasonable success for someone who has never done it. Getting the clay centred is a pain. And there are many other ways to mess up a simple cylinder. Today (Sunday) I went in and did some more practising. I tried several times and had a few disasters, two that didn't fail but were not great, and one that was barely "meh". Or that's how I recall it anyway. Here's a picture of the one the best one, cut open so I can examine wall thickness:

Not too bad, really. Still a long way to go, but I am willing to put in the effort. Also note that we are not yet saving anything. It's throw a cylinder, then recycle the clay and try again. There will be more practising on Tuesday, I believe, and we're going to glaze our slab projects so they are ready to fire at some point soon.

Then came art history on Wednesday, in which we took the mid term exam. I don't have results from that yet, nor a grade on my paper. The instructor has a huge stack of stuff to grade, so perhaps I will get it back this week.

Painting - also on Wednesday - saw us doing life painting again. I think I did a bit better this time around. Some of the stuff I produced was awful, but some was ok(ish). Here's the best of the day:

That's not terrible, even if her nose is way too big. Next week we start in on some long term painting project that takes us to the end of the semester. No clue what it involves yet. Also, for those who are really interested, a question I posed to Giselle Lawson turned into a very interesting discussion over on Facebook about painting and how to evaluate the quality of such. Quite enlightening. If you know Giselle, check out her posts there to find it.

Also on the painting class, I give you pictures of the Buffalo Lounge, which is a central open area in the middle of all the fine and performing arts classrooms. This week the painting instructor has a huge selection of paintings up from his various classes. I am astounded to admit that there are four from me in there. Two definitely should not be there, one of which I have never published a picture of because it is so bad. My intent was to gesso over it but the instructor grabbed it from my storage space without telling me. Maybe it's intended as an example to others: don't do this. I dunno. But it's on the wall, and I am not pointing it out. Anyway, here are some shots of the exhibit overall:

At least one of those is a bit blurry. Sorry. Didn't note that when I took the picture yesterday.

Thursday's design class had us all working on our "bug based" pavilion models. After all of class plus a bit of time after, and four more hours today, I'm done. Here's what the table I was working at today looked like:

Quite a mess, and what can't be pictured is my phone playing a constant stream of songs by the Dresden Dolls to keep me moving. Here's a picture of the stuff I've made for the assignment before it gets turned in:

The presentation for this will be fun, actually. I might have mentioned before that I was planning to do something relating to fireflies for this assignment, but in the end I gave up on that idea. Everything I was thinking was too complicated or didn't work at all. The new concept is wings. The idea is that the pavilion is a set of large sculptures (four shown above) that detail the differences between the many kinds of insect wings, giving the garden a chance to explain the evolution of insect wings, and show their differences in great detail. I also added an entrance marker (the thing in the front, centre) and some people for scale. (Yes, these are really big, as proposed.) Of course this is just a project, and the local gardens won't build anything for anyone, but it's kind of fun. Next we we get to present these things to the class as if we're presenting to the garden staff. Should be entertaining.

And finally there was drawing class on Friday, were we turned in an interior drawing in 1 point perspective. Here's mine:

I didn't get a perfect score on it because my line quality sucks. We were told to finish it with a sharpie, and I did that. But sharpie and ruler is a lousy combination, so I used it freehand, and the resulting lines have some wiggle because I couldn't bear down on them without turning things into a huge blort of ink. Still, an OK grade, and life goes on. Next we we're doing in interior 2 point perspective and I have some pens now that will work with a ruler, so that should be better. I hope. The ocean map on the floor is the "something weird" we were supposed to add to the drawing. And yes, this is a bit of the interior of the house we are renting. It's not as big as that image would suggest, though. We were instructed to leave out the furniture if it didn't line up with the same vanishing point, and you can't see the mountain of boxes behind the viewpoint from which that image was drawn.

In addition to all of that, I took a big English test on Saturday, which kept me busy for several hours. It is part of proving to the Canadian Government that I am fluent in English. It was pretty funny, really, and a huge waste of time in a number of ways, but it had to get done.

Amusingly, while waiting to register to take the test, I found this:

By way of explanation, I took the test in Richmond, which has a huge Chinese population. There are all kinds of businesses in town that have no English on their signs at all, just Chinese characters. The test was given in a set of rooms that belongs to a tutoring/teaching business that caters to parents wanting to get their kids into elite colleges. It's in an odd mall in town, full of Chinese only businesses, including several tutoring schools. (I wonder if the trinket shop and the book shop I saw on the 6th floor are really legit, or instead are fronts for something else. I can't imagine a lot of customers take the elevator to that floor to buy Chinese trinkets. But I digress.)

Anyway, I took that photo while pacing around. I found it funny to see the obviously stock photo of the white student - too old to be a high school student, but maybe a late college student? - on an ad covered in Chinese. As you can see, the only non-English on there are 2 URLs and the string "VIP" in the middle of something in Chinese. I tried to translate it with my phone, but I didn't have the Chinese translation dictionary installed and didn't want to download it over the air. I did check out the QR code, though, and found it was a link to a Chinese chat app's entry in the Google Play store. Maybe if I had the app installed it would have taken me to something deeper, but I didn't, so that's what came up.

I admit to being amused by little things, but that ad did make me chuckle. And I need it they didn't start registering us until 30 minutes after the appointed time.

All of the above - class & test - was accomplished after being flat-on-my-back sick last Monday. Not fun, and I am still recovering from the cold. Mostly now all I have is a sporadically runny nose and occasional cough. Energy levels are creeping back up towards normal.

Finally, I've had requests for more dog photos, and there are those in California who might wonder what the weather is like up here vs. down there.  On the latter, it's pretty cool. I think we were down to 2° C this morning. It's sunny right now, but rains regularly - perhaps every three or four days. The locals all tell me that a time will come when it rains for a month, but so far I have my doubts. There was a prediction of mixed precipitation that would include snow for a couple of days from now, but that's dropped back to just rain, last I checked. So nothing like California weather, and it makes me very happy.

Oh, and it's Fall, so the trees are turning colours and dropping their leaves. Back at our old place in CA that happened in about August. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but the buckeyes did that, and the maple started then. The fruit trees waited a bit longer. Nothing else changed, though. The oaks & redwoods keep their leaves all year round, so Fall doesn't mean much, at least not visually.

As for dog pictures, I don't have anything new this month, but I'll try to get some next time around, assuming I remember. Being at school so much I don't take a lot of pictures of them. But maybe Anne will have some.

Amusing photos

Here are a few pictures I've collected. I find them amusing.

This is the line at the Tim Horton's at Langara College early in the morning, around 8 am. This isn't even a "real" Tim Horton's, since they don't sell any hot food, just coffee related beverages and pastries clearly baked in some other location. It is pretty much always jammed, and what you can't see is the cattle pen inside the cafeteria there on the right where the line continues.

While I am happy to support Tim Horton's, I can't bring myself to stand in that line, so I skip coffee in the mornings at school.

Also, for the curious, there is a Starbucks in another building. It, too, has a line, but it is a fair bit more expensive and it's line is generally a bit shorter.

And, oddly, there is a Subway on campus too, but despite signage saying they sell breakfast sandwiches, they don't open until 10 am. What is the point of that? When I want eggs and bread in the morning, I'll want it well before then, thank you.

Next up:

That's a display in the 'A' building on campus at something before 8 am. I find it interesting that we're touting our "green thinking" and "energy management" by leaving a giant computer monitor on all night. I'm not sure if the lights in the display case are on all night too, but it's a good bet that monitor never gets turned off. Someone didn't get the memo.

And then:

That's a sign in a drugstore, somewhere in California. Somehow all three of those things seem related to me.

And finally:

That's a barricade put up by Santa Cruz County sometime in the winter of 2015/16, after a tree had fallen across our road and then been cleared. They dumped the big chunks into the ditch and put up that barricade to keep cars from hitting them. And then they forgot about it. For a year.

As the winter (and rainy season) of 2016/17 was approaching and nothing had been done about that mess, some local wag put up the sign reading "When Hell Freezes Over!!" and left it that way. I honestly have no clue who did that, and I laughed about it for a while. Then I emailed a copy of that photo to the county and suggested nicely that they might clean up last year's mess before there was a new mess this year. And, amazingly, they did so. But I still appreciate the sense of humor of whoever put up that sign.

An ad I wrote for our local freecycle list

Apparently my muse bit me this afternoon while I was composing an ad for our local freecycle mailing list. Someone has already responded telling me they really liked it. That's nice, and it causes me to overcome my usual reticence and share it here. Maybe you'll enjoy the ad too, but unless you live close to me, don't bother asking for the material, and if you are that close, why aren't you on the list already? (Seriously... email me and ask how to join it.)

OFFER: melamine boards (it's a long shot, I know...)

Back in the dark ages - before the invention of electricity and running water - when we bought our home, the previous owner installed a set of closet shelves and rods in the master bedroom closet. Despite my telling him not to do it, he did it anyway, and it was really not the right thing, and I wish he hadn't done it, but he did, and we lived with it for over 2 decades*.  (That's about as long as that run-on sentence, I think.)

A few weeks back we finally got around to taking that old closet system apart and installing something we liked better.  Yay us!  Yay for the annual Elfa sale!

Sadly the old system didn't go quietly into that cold night, or something. Plastic bits broke, metal bits bent, some screws that held shelves together were rusted or corroded into the melamine in odd ways. And, being an aggressive recycler, everything plastic or metal has already been hauled away to help the Gray Bears feed people in need. (I'll bet that donation bought them all of 5% of a banana, or something.)

What I am left with is a bunch of pieces of melamine.  You know the stuff: particle board, covered in white plastic.  Occasionally ground up by unscrupulous business people in far away countries and included in pet food and baby formula to make it look like there is more protein in there than there really is.**

How much melamine you ask?  I'm glad you did. This much:

and:

The small pieces are 16" by about 23", give or take.  The large ones are 42" by 16", again, give or take.

As you can see, some are drilled with holes for shelf pins.  I think all of the longer pieces are like that on one side. Some of the smaller pieces are also drilled, but some were the shelves, and those are hole free.

This is pretty thin melamine - maybe half an inch or a bit less - so take that into account if you are interested.

To be honest, I have no idea if anyone will want this stuff. I hope so, but if not I will haul it off to the dump one of these days, which I kind of hate to do.  But it cannot be recycled by any craft that we, here, possess. It must be taken into Mordor and cast into the very fires of Mt. Doom, where it was forged. I, must do this***, unless one of you has something you can do with it that is more ecologically sound than stuffing it into the landfill.

I must stress that it is not suitable for use as closet shelving again... all of the bits that made it work that way are gone and at least one piece is dinged up on an edge where a screw was firmly stuck in the particle board while disassembly was attempted.  You'll want to use this for some other project.

So... if interested, feel free to let me know.  Somehow I doubt I'll get any takers, but I can hope.

I am on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Road, and will deliver to reasonably close locations if desired.  Most anyone that would respond to this email is closer than the landfill anyway, so it's a win.

--jeffp

* Don't ask why electricity and running water weren't invented just 2 decades ago. I'm making this up.

** Yes, I know, those unscrupulous businessmen only grind up the plastic bits and not the particle board****. But you'd think the latter would add fiber, right, so it would be good too? And anyway... didn't you read the first footnote? I am making all of this up.

*** If you represent the Tolkien estate, please don't sue me. Also, if you work for or with Peter Jackson or the companies that created the Lord of the Rings movies, please don't sue me either.

**** Yes, I know, they actually use the liquid version in pet and baby food, before it's been applied to the particle board at all. So sue me.  Unless you're associated with the Tolkien estate, Peter Jackson, or related parties. See footnote immediately above.

*****  My there are a lot of footnotes here.

I Was Going To Write About...

Yesterday, for the umpteenth time, I thought about writing up a blog post thanks to what I'd been doing.

It was to be titled "90 MPH Dog Poo" and discuss what happens when you take a string trimmer into a not quite completely cleaned up (despite your best efforts) dog run.

But I changed my mind.

You can all thank me now.

Have a nice day!

Hmmm...

What is that big shiny thing above my head?  The one against the blue background?  And why didn't I get soaking wet while walking the dogs?

Something very strange is going on...

High Class Dinners and Cutlery

Yes, that's me. And that's my lovely wife on the left side of the picture. We were at a gathering of good friends who all live nearby. This happened just the other day, and (despite the photographic evidence) we hope to be invited back.

And what, you may ask, is wrong with my nose?

The first response is that the photographer (who will remain nameless, to protect the guilty) is using only an iPhone, and as we all know those don't contain the best quality cameras on the planet. That makes it a bit hard to tell.

But despite that, the full size image just barely reveals that I am doing something few have tried. I've suspended a fork from my nose.

No, really, a fork. Not a spoon. And I did it without glues or adhesives, and without injuring myself in any way. The tines of the fork are distinctly visible on the outside of my honker.

In truth, this photo tells you less about my amazing cutlery suspension abilities than it does about the kinds of people I hang out with.

In any event, we had a wonderful dinner, and we celebrated getting together a bunch of good friends who couldn't - for one reason or another - see each other over the holidays.

May you enjoy such silliness with people you love many times in your life.

Introducing Danno, the Artist

In addition to my own art, I am now the publicity vehicle for the art one of our dogs creates. I'm sure this will be a big thing in the future, and that Danno's work will long overshadow my own. Oh well. When the universe hands you an opportunity like this, you don't just pass it by.

Please review Danno's Art Page and tell me what you think.