Spring quarter update

Here are some lame-quality Photo Booth shots of my characters to give you an idea & mega-impress you later when the nicely lit final is done…

This here’s Tilly. She’s a ladybug, a little girl ladybug who is enthusiastic about everything. As soon as she has antennae with bows on them, she will excitedly tug on them when she is filled with glee. Perhaps chew on ‘em too. We’ll see what I can do.

This is Gramma. She doesn’t have a mouth yet, but when she does she’ll be frowning. She can’t remember her recipe for her famous Bug Tea, and Tilly is excited to have it on a glorious summer’s day. Not letting her Gramma give up just because she can’t remember ingredients, Tilly takes her outside for the first time in a long time to ask the other bugs if they can help remember the contents of Bug Tea.

here are some details

In other news, Gen O opened for a band we love, Nana Grizol, last weekend! We had a wonderful time playing one of our best shows and meeting Nana.

Here are some photos by Christopher Hench:

Singin’ lads! Jak & Devin

Duncan drumming merrily

back to school…

But the break has been fun and productive.

General O had a show at Tantra…

and played to a big ol’ crowd!

The Brigade participated in the Savannah Market Bazaar, Nate selling Obscure Animal Compendiums, Katie selling darling crocheted bunnies, and Andrew and I selling buttons.

advertising final

This was a piece for the Oatland Island Wildlife Reserve in Savannah–the tag line is “get this close.”

Standing alone:

And with the framework…at the moment. I’m in the lab toying with it about to head out and look at it again in the morning. The jar doesn’t really fit the framework so I added the scalloped border…I’m not sure if it’s entirely working…

Just in time for International Women’s Day

Hell yeah! Director Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to take home an Oscar for Best Picture for the breathlessly intense The Hurt Locker. If you haven’t, you need to see this movie. I was lucky enough to see it at the Savannah Film Festival a few months after its national release–so I got to see it on a big screen, and for free. The fact that I saw Michael Cera’s “Youth In Revolt” promptly afterwards curtailed the feeling in your gut that this film will give you. But you need to see it.

Any female film student will tell you it’s not easy, that you have to work extra-hard to prove yourself among the boy’s club of moviemaking. But that’s changing, despite rumors that Bigelow’s ex-husband, James Cameron, ghost-wrote the action scenes. To quote a review discussing why “Hurt Locker” was a deserving winner, around the Golden Globes:

“Here’s the thing, though: Kathryn Bigelow got me to feel a much greater amount of tension and involvement with scenes of a guy moving some wires around in a box. And I saw it in two dimensions. I mean, I can’t even imagine what would have happened if I saw The Hurt Locker in IMAX – or, God forbid, in IMAX 3-D, if they had ever made it in that format. I probably would have passed out.”

Nail on the head. Incredible movie, wonderful achievement.

Now back to being killed softly by finals.

3/1/10

Poster for the reopening of the American Museum of Natural History’s dinosaur exhibit, my second completed diorama. Lighting & photography aid by Nate Marsh.

Poet Lucille Clifton is dead

So the summer of celebrity death has passed, but February has turned out to be even worse, with true, impacting artists who always created something increasing original and against the grain. J.D. Salinger, designer Alexander McQueen, and, as of Saturday, poet Lucille Clifton. Mourned by the writing community but not gaining headlines as the author of “Catcher in the Rye” has, Clifton had a profound impact on women and the craft of poetry. Never shy, always embracing her femininity, Clifton took the issue of body image and turned it into something literature hadn’t quite seen before with “Homage to my Hips,” an unapologetic ode now found in many literature textbooks & poetry anthologies: 

Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips. 
they need space to 
move around in. 
they don’t fit into little 
petty places. these hips 
are free hips. 
they don’t like to be held back. 
these hips have never been enslaved, 
they go where they want to go 
they do what they want to do. 
these hips are mighty hips. 
these hips are magic hips. 
i have known them 
to put a spell on a man and 
spin him like a top!

It is fun (especially when she reads it- http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15599) it’s refreshing, no restraints of capitalization, and the daring of using an exclamation point, a poet’s most withheld character. It’s a cheer, you can hear her saying it all in your head and there’s so much pride and total lack of giving a damn what anybody thinks…I love it, and I hope her death spurs a look back at her work that will plant this poem in many high school textbooks (or at least have someone hand it to you the day you start puberty as a girl, hah).

As I was rereading her work online, I found this poem I’d never read before, it’s really quite lovely and I thought I’d post it. 

blessing the boats

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

FINALLY THANK GOD

I made it out alive. I also demolished a box of Earl Grey in like four days. Printing first thing in the morning, so not totally done…but practically. WHEW

This is my first experiment with three-dimensional collage. This could be a new thing and I’m getting excited. 3D illustration in general…I’m brainstorming for the next project…probably going to try this again but with more drawings incorporated…we shall see. 

At any rate, this is an ad for Hotels.com. L-R (ish? And clockwise? I have no idea/haven’t been speaking proper English for the majority of the day) – French Alps, The Black Forest, Germany (or the forest of your choosing perhaps not distinctly The Black Forest, but I really wanted to experiment with those bark strip trees), NYC, Egypt, Russia. 

THANK GOD FOR MICHAEL ORMISTON who helped me light this thing and photograph it. Seriously we had like 10 desk lamps in the kitchen held up by gaff tape, T-squares and board game boxes…but we (he) did it! 

& the lid: 

In other news, we had a GREAT show last night with a WONDERFUL turnout and dancing front row and it was magical and a total blast. 

Also I am reading this for class

 

It’s been awhile since I’ve read Cormac McCarthy. And I zoned out as I was eating dinner & reading…there’s really nothing like zoning out through his bare-boned style just to be jerked back into reality by some kid trying to rip out a random guy’s eyeball. It’s like he knows your mind is drifting. This book is intense.

-

To bed. I think the only thing that’s kept me awake this long is how cold it is

I am making collage dioramas. I have been making said dioramas for a week now and clutching a bottle of glue and woke up feeling like I have arthritis this morning so I am taking a day’s break. 

I am reading this for Fiction III. I’d never read Proust ’til now, and it’s great and also makes me feel so fancy–life is less shabby when you’re toting haughty  literature. Now if I have to bike and only have a Wal-mart bag in which to store my telephone and keys, I throw in Proust. Instant class. …ish.

Zee posted the large-format photo she took of me surrounded by my music-making devices.  You can’t see the guitar cases, large magnus organ, and marimba & glock at my feet. She’s so talented. 

Diorama pics up as soon as they are finished, which will be before monday. Going in for Fiction III crit now, and we have a show on Friday, all ages, and it’s quite exciting. 

Also, here is a wonderful old photo I found. 

IT’S A SINGLEEEEEEE

Gaga + Beyonce duet = most fun song in the universe that B and I spend too much of our lives dancing around wailing to. But now we can do it downtown AND THERE WILL BE A RAD VIDEO SOON AAAAAAAAHHHH 

BLEEGH and WordPress won’t let me upload the song on here. Here’s a fan video 

Perhaps it is silly that this merited its own post. Whatever. I’ve been writing since 7:45 this morning and put this on to dance around madly and it the best catharsis ever.