Spring

You may think I'm crazy to even think this...but spring is upon us or at least it has tricked my allergies into thinking so. Friday morning I walked to school, so I could take photos along the way. I maybe spent an hour and a half outside, but by the time I got inside it all hit me. My head was all stuffy feeling, my right eye would water, and my nose was all congested, really my whole head felt congested. It turned my photo day into a suffer but deal with it day. ugh. It would have been a perfect day if that hadn't of happened. It was beautiful for once outside and a great temperature around 55-60 degrees. We were outside taking pictures all morning, ate lunch, and then went swinging in the park. We developed some film, where i learned that my shutter on my camera is for some reason messing up. The teacher couldn't get it to do mess up then so she couldn't figure out how to fix it. I just have to record the shutterspeed and aperture I use for each photo on the next roll of film to see if there is a certain point where it messes up. I'm definitely going to have to buy lots more film for this class because of this issue. It screws up about half my photos each roll. Very aggravating. Oh so back to the day. After photo class me and em went home and chilled a bit. I tried to take a nap but just couldn't manage one. So around 8 we got ready and went to the school, they were taking us to play lazertag. Lazertag was amazingly fun and after 10 minutes in the building and running around I didn't feel any of the allergy symptoms. Maybe it was due to adrenaline? As soon as we went outside though, bam there they were. I took some nyquil that night in hopes of knocking it out but the next morning I still couldn't breathe correctly and felt stuffy again. I ate some toast and tried to sleep a bit more but on my back with my head raised. I accidently slept till 2:30 in the afternoon. oops! That was the worst thing I could have done since I have so much homework to get done this weekend. That day was pretty much lost cause not only did I wake up late but I still felt tired, groggy, stuffy, and unable to breathe the rest of the day. Today i still feel like someone shoved pollen up my nose but I am going to try to make the best of the day today, seeing as I have to write a 5page paper, study for a test that's tomorrow, drawing homework, and 3 rolls of photographs to take along with photo sketchbook to finish.

Women will never be free...a mindless rant by an insignificant that shouldn't be read unless you just have nothing better to do.

Doc's lectures are highly enjoyable to me no matter how crazy out there they lead. Today's was about women. Specifically how society views them and how society used to view them back in the days of Paul. Yes, I am talking about paul form the bible. We had to read 1 Corinthinians for writing class. Believe it or not the bible is very sexist, as are most christian views and pretty much the whole damn worlds view. I've been saying this from the beginning and I am glad someone else sees this too. The issue is that no matter how hard women try they will never truly be free. By free I don't mean that they are able to hold the same jobs and positions as men and able to do anything that men can do bullshit. We all already know this is true and that women should be able to do the same things as men. But women should be truly free. By free I am talking about women being seen as human. yeah yeah you think they already are seen this way. Women are seen as objects, property, vessels, people to be owned and fantasized about. Women are slaves and always will be. No matter race,age, or sexualality females will always be seen as such, just females. Women are mysterious objects that should be owned or quieted, even in today's society. Think about it. Why do we marry? The instant answer you will say is 'love'. bull. If the couple were truly in love a marriage wouldn't be necassary. Marriage occurs because men feel they need to own the woman , and the woman has been taught from birth that she should look forward to the moment the man gets on one knee and places a ring on her finger to symbolize to all other males that this girl is taken 'owned'. Men don't understand women because they are not the same, therefore he feels he should own one just as a hunter feels the need to hunt the most dangerous animal, the one he doesn't know how to kill yet. okay so now i just compared a man to a hunter and a woman to the prey...hmm maybe this is a good comparison.

back to religion...

We read Paul 1 Corinthians. Paul refers to women as either being virgins or harlots(prostitutes). They can only be one or the other and either way they are sinful. Everyone knows women are cursed, correct. If you don't know what I'm talking about...remember that story of adam and eve and eve 'makes' adam take the apple? well although man won't suffer from adam's transgression, woman will suffer for eve's. A woman has about a 28 day cycle, some women's differs. This cycle is the curse women have been given because of eve.No need for me to continue everyone knows what curse i am speaking of now. This is in the bible, I'm not making it up. I really don't understand why women continue to be religious after just hearing this story. Already the religious world is unfair to them. Paul continues this unfairness. Paul views women as unrighteous cows. Even their skin is sinful to touch and they should be covered at all times, especially within the holy buildings. Women should bear as many children as possible, such as a cow, because women are only seen as vessels who continue the bloodlines. The only way to end this sexism would be to either a) kill all men disabling the ability to continue patriarchy or b) start the whole world over and adam and eve must grab the apple together.

i may continue this rant later but as of now it is just depressing and i am done.

Week 3

Hmm...what happened this past week...

Classes weren't too exciting except photography class Friday. We were given an assignment to complete, which involved using our first roll of black&white film and then developing that roll of film. Just so you know, developing negatives is not a walk in the park. First one has to take a can opener, scissors, metal spool object(for rolling film), the film roll, and a metal light tight canister with lid into a completely dark room. When I say dark I mean absolute darkeness where one can't even see a hand in front of their face. While in this darkness one must use the can opener to open the film roll, take the film out without unwinding the roll accidently, cut a straight line 1inch from the tip of the film, attach the film to the metal spool, then proceed to roll the film onto the spool carefully without ripping, tearing, breaking, or touching the actual film while unrolling it from the original film roll. Once the roll gets to the end one must cut off the tape on the end of the film. After all of that the metal spool is placed in the canister and then sealed with the lid before one can turn on the lights or leave the room with the film. When all the dark room stuff is over one has to put several chemicals interchangibly in the cantainer while continously agitating(shaking) the container. This lasts for up to 45min. Drying takes 20-30 min. In the end it is all worth it though because magically pictures appear on the strip of film. This coming Friday we will be using the developed negatives to develope actual photographs on our light sensitive photopaper. I'm pretty excited about it :)

After class on Friday me and Emma packed the van and headed out to Pleasant View for the weekend to see my family. We had a great time and a nice break while we were there. Swimming on Saturday and Shopping on Sunday. We also saw the movie "Dear John" with mom. The movie was excellent. Thanks mom for the great weekend!

Monday classes were cancelled due to snow so me and em were able to take our time getting back Memphis. About halfway back the weather was ridiculous. It started to snow, rain, sleat rain, then snow, back to sleat rain, heavy snow, etc. The roads started to get icy and traffic had to slow way way down. Like we were going 40-50mph on a freeway where one usually goes 70-80mph. So as you can guess it took a little longer to get back than usual, but not too bad. It only set us back about 45min. Once we finally made it to the apartment and retrieved all of our things from the van we settled down in our pajamas in the living room, played on our laptops, made some dinner, and watched "Life Unexpected" on the television.

Week 2

Hmm... how to start. First I guess I should mention that I dropped Printmaking. Not because I don't want to learn printmaking but because I care about my own health. The teacher I had was horrible for several reasons. A)there was a language barrier between me and her. B)she critisized everything I did without giving me advice on how to make it to her liking. C)only a masakist would take that class. So now that I have dropped the class my load is a bit lighter in a way but then overloaded in others. Since I did drop a class I can focus on my other classes a little more. It turns out that I am way behind in my writing class and I didn't notice this before because I was focused on printmaking. I am also a bit behind in drawing class too. No worries though because I have today and tomorrow to try to catch up as best I can. We are reading and writing a paper on Aristotle by Tuesday in my writing class so wish me luck on that. ha. I hate aristotle and could really care less what he thinks about rhetorics.

Oh so friday we didn't get to go to trolley night because the whole city pretty much closed down due to an ice storm. Photography was sadly cancelled because of the storm also. But me and Emma did go out into the ice covered world to take pictures and enjoy the white snow/ice.

This is me and em's footprints in snow rendition of Picasso's "The Scream"

Friday evening Emma decided that I should be the one to drive to walgreens so we could pick up some items. Just so you know I have never driven in ice or snow and I'm not really sure how dependable a 4cylinder mini van is in that type of terrain. First is took forever to scrape the 4 inch thick ice off of the van and em had a good laugh at me when I couldn't figure out how to get it off. See she is from the north so she knows what to do in this situation while I, who was raised in the south, does not. After that I drove very slow to walgreens and everything was fine. Now on the way back as I was turning to the left onto another street I felt my backend slide quite a bit. I calmly put very little pressure on my brake and turned with the motion to straighten my vehicle without letting it control me. Dad's advice came in handy in this moment. I love you dad. It really wasn't a big deal but it was scary in the moment. Emma said she wasn't worried at all. Yesterday we went on a "family" shopping trip to krogers. The Family includes me, Emma, Izamar, and Yao. Me and em shopped for 3-4 weeks for and will only have to buy more milk, bread, and maybe chicken before the next trip. It is amazing how much groceries come to for just two people. We spend more now that we are eating less frozen, healthier homemade meals. Today ice is melting like crazy. It is 25 degrees outside and the sun is shining the brightest it has in a week. Huge couch size ice sheets are falling off the Metz apartment building and the other buildings nearby. It is quite scary and I hope no one gets caught under one.

 Well I suppose I will get to work on this homework I need to get done. Peace.

New Beginnings

We are now in the new year of 2010, which means a new semester has started. I am now in my second semester of freshman year at Memphis College of Art. Last semester I did pretty well, received all B's and an A. I hope to do better this semester, but will be just as happy if I can manage the same as last semester.
I made it through my first week of classes without any physical damage, not so sure about mentally. It was a lot to take in and I already have a ton of homework due next week. Again I have 3 sketchbooks to keep up with. I don't particularly enjoy doing assigned sketchbooks, especially 3 at a time, but they do help significantly. Printmaking class is sure to be the death of me. My teacher is Puerto Rican so there is already a language barrier plus I know very little about the process. I've researched the process of etching but nothing explains better than experience so hopefully after one run through I will be able to improve my sketches to match the process. Other than that she just expects a lot from us, more than other teachers(which is already a ton). A couple of the older kids in the class have had printmaking before so they have been checking up on us freshmen and giving advice when we ask, which has been very nice of them and I love them for it. My drawing 2 class was pretty fun. We are doing charcoal erasure, this is the process of blackening a white paper with charcoal and then erasing the highlights to get the image instead of drawing the shades to get the image. I'm not great at it but I do enjoy it. Photography was awesome. We made photograms. I'm not so hot at explaining this process but basically you place objects on this special photo paper, shine a light for 3 seconds, and then develop the paper to get a black and white photogram. My writing 2 teacher seems pretty cool. He is from Ireland and had very different views on teaching writing than any of my other english teachers. Art History 1 feels like it is going to be much easier than Art History 2 was, so that is a good thing.

These are the photograms:

Friday night me, Emma, and Izamar went to bowling night with the MCA crew. We had fun but we were all so exhausted from the week that we were tired after one game and we still had an hour left to play. We made it through though. When we got home we told Yao this elaborate story that me and Izamar had made up for Emma initially. The story included Izamar defending Emma's honor and getting slapped by a boy for doing so. Yao totally believed the story, unlike Emma, and was ready to find this tall, skinny, left-handed Joshua to give him a piece of her mind. We did tell Yao that the story was fiction and we all had a good laugh about it.

Next week is Trolley Night! I love trolley night. It is the last friday of the month, all downtown trolleys are free for the night and they take you to all the art exhibitions and galleries open that night. It is a ton of fun and is a good way for us younger artists to network with gallery owners and other artists. Networking is a huge part of being an artist.
Well I better get back to my homework. I will check back in when I have time. Peace.