Happy Hollerdays

I received the amazing gift of a CanoScan 5600F from my parents this season, so now I should be getting things documented in a much more timely fashion right from home! Stoked.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

F.T. Marinetti - 1909 "

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty; the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character.  Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all the opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?..

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice."

barely blue

Recent Self Poortraits.

In Pieces.

A 7x11" silk screen print made for a portfolio exchange between IUB printmaking BFA students plus ten guest artists.  

Tout, tout le temps.

Sorry, September.

I just wanted you to get a tiny taste of who I get to meet in real life this weekend.


My apologies for such negligence toward this blog. If, at this moment, I wrote a paragraph about what has happened since my last post, it would sound what is opposite of clear and concise. I tried.  So, I will give you a quick update in visual favorites of the best last few months ever.

Stay tuned for new things, dudes.

Honeymoon Magic, Male Strippers, etc.

Wedding Season    | wed-ing see-zuhn |

noun

• the time when a bunch of our friends start getting married and make us wonder where time went. 

In honor of wedding season, I give you the bingo game I made for my sister's bachelorette party.


Unfortunately, there were no *actual* male strippers involved. :[ Sorry, guys.

End phase 1.

My spring break consisted of pre-wedding planning and wrapping up the documentation process of all the large images from my time at MIAD. That was a huge project, and I am so so so grateful to my dad for helping me with that! Between spring break and the arrival of this amazing weather, I am struggling still to get back into the swing of class work. Hello, crunch time.. Everything is fine.

Self-Portrait Monotype.

Circa 2010, from a self-portrait series I did with Rina Yoon at MIAD.

'Absurdities in Life' Monoprints.

This is the second series I did in my screen printing class with Chris Dacre at IU. I cannot tell you how much I struggled with myself and my brain while drawing and printing these.  I have a relationship with drawing that varies from pure love, to embarrassment, to sarcasm.  That is probably a lot better than always being static, but take this as my disclaimer for the days I hate looking at these.

 

I will say that I have never had a critique quite like the one I had for these - where I was smiling and laughing the whole time.  I got so much positivity from that critique, contrasting my inward struggle with what I was physically doing.

Art is not just about the artist, but hugely about the viewer.  Sometimes I have a hard time understanding that until I share it.  Nevertheless, this project ended with a bunch of good conversations and even some references to South Park.

I'll take it!

The Best Chocolate Syrup of Your Life.

... for your never-ending chocolate craving.

3/4 cup cocoa
1 cup water
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla


Whisk together the water, salt, and cocoa powder in a small saucepan and heat over low to medium heat. Add sugar and stir to dissolve. Boil for three minutes and stir frequently. Be sure to watch the temperature - if it looks like it is about to boil over, it probably will boil over. (Totally not speaking from experience on that one..) Mix in the vanilla and let cool for 5 minutes. Pour into a clean glass jar and refrigerate.

This syrup will last for several months, and is the most delicious chocolate syrup ever. 1570902x better than Hershey's. You also did not hear from me that I am awfully biased against Hershey's cop-out chocolate products.

Ehem.


........



So. I have been slacking on getting my scans together, but I wanted to share what I have been working on as far as screen printing goes. My second project after the polar bear portrait was six monotypes about "Absurdities in Life." These revolved around my experiences in Bloomington so far.  At some points, I wanted to take back all the wonderful things I said about the place previously, but I won't.  I had a really silly time with the series, and it definitely shows with the final prints.

I am currently exploring poster art and am in the middle of an 8 layer print.

'Sexy molasses lady' is all I can say about that.

Better Chocolate Chip Cookies.

1/2 cup Earth Balance
3/4 cup cane sugar
1 Tbsp molasses
egg replacer equivalent of 1 egg (I used half a banana this time.)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional, but it's delicious)
1/2 - 3/4 cup chocolate chips


Preheat oven to 350° F. Beat Earth Balance and sugar until fluffy.  Add the molasses, banana (or other egg replacer) and vanilla extract. Mix well.

Sift together dry ingredients and add to wet ingredients. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 10-13 minutes and move to a cooling rack.


...


I was craving chocolate chip cookies this week like you wouldn't believe. And I didn't want to make that one recipe that never ever turns out the same for me again. I also didn't have ener-g egg replacer or flax seeds on hand that I found suggested in other recipes - thus the banana and my first(ish) own cookie recipe!

They good. Real good.




On a side note, I had an awfully silly week.  What was better about today? Putting sweet fenders on my bike (aka no more wet butt), getting my hands in some flour, actually finishing homework, drinking too much coffee, and finally listening to In the Face of War again.