Raven Dip Dic

Assignment: Make a painting about one of these stanzas:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

---

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

---

I picked IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one

and made this dip dic:

Arturo Herrera

Assignment: Select an artist from Art21 and present his life and work to the class.

So I looked through all the artists' work and after doing those collages I picked Arturo Hererra:

He collages together images from Disney films, coloring books, his own abstract paintings and drawings, etc. They look like this:



This is a felt wall hanging:
I found out that what he tries to do is take an innocent image we recognize and are so attached to and contaminate it the way you see here.

Assignment: Channel your artist. Make a piece about yourself.

At this point I had just finished a collage for my drawing class and was excited to make some based off Herrera's work. I rechecked out the library book of his work I had taken out and looked through it over and over.

While I was home for thanksgiving I went up into my attic and took down a box of children's books I used to love. I picked out some favorite illustrations and scanned them to collage with some print outs of my paintings and other elements. Here's what I came up with:

Object Project

The assignment: Choose an object and change the way we see it.

My choice: A hand sized clay tea pot/ girl's head I made when I was ten.

Re-presented it as such:

My teacher Valeska misread this image as a collage:

...that gave me an idea for object project round two:

and round three:

Paintings in Naples

Two Thousand Ten

The Pinders
After leaving Purchase, I chose to take time off before deciding where I wanted to go to school. To stay supported and inspired, I called my dad's first cousin's family in Harrisburg, PA. The Pinders are dedicated to serving the community through the episcopal church and have a son Rhys and a daughter Kristina, adopted from Russia. I managed to keep above my post Purchase funk by becoming temporarily apart of and helping the family. I volunteered as an art teacher's assistant for the church school. Churchill and Sally encouraged me to find a job and establish my own independence while staying with them. Sally suggested doing portraits at Hershey Park because it's close to the area. I looked online, made a phone call, and before i knew it I was going through some training classes to learn the technique of the portraits.

Oma
My mom and I intended to stay a week in Naples, Florida in March during my mom's spring break to visit my grandmother. I left Pennsylvania a lot more stable than I arrived. I finally made the decision to go to the Maryland Institute College of Art and felt confident with my choice. I had my accepted application from the previous year reopened and managed to get in my scholarship applications just before we left for Florida. The beach was exactly what I needed to pull out from under the weather (there were actually several feet of snow and ten snow days in Baltimore this year). My grandmother (Oma) is the ninety five year old mother of five (my mom is the youngest), grandmother of say twenty five (I'm the youngest), and great grandmother of about a dozen (the oldest is three years older than me). While her ninety year old sister lived ten minutes away at a fancy retirement home called Moorings Park, Oma lived in the same house she's always rented six months of the year alone. Everyone encouraged her to live at Moorings with her sister but she continued to make excuses about money, which clearly was not the issue. A retirement home was too regimental for Oma, she preferred her independence. Oma living alone concerned my mother. What if she fell? We discussed assisted living, the possibility of a roommate, etc. To me these options sounded expensive and impersonal. Once we left, Oma would be alone until she went back to Pittsburgh at the beginning of May. As the week sadly came closer to an end, we noticed Oma's knee, which she had surgery on thirty years ago, had swelled up. We took her to the hospital and the nurse detected a fever. The doctor had to remove the fluid and she stayed for three nights. As we were checking out, the doctor said Oma could not live alone and must either find somebody or go to a nursing home. She looked shocked and upset. "Hey, Oma, why don't I just stay with you?" I offered. "Besides, I'm currently out of school and have the time. I'll stay with you until you go back to Pittsburgh. I can drive you where you need go, check your blood pressure, and help you remember where, what and who. Most of all I can just keep you company." I'm impatient, and she did not look ready to give me an answer right away. I said, "interview Thursday at five?" She laughed and said "first lets see how well you drive."
And so I stayed. My mom flew back to Baltimore and shipped me some more clothes and art supplies. My uncle called to check in on Oma as he usually does. I answered the phone and happily told him I'd be staying with her. I wasn't too concerned that he didn't seem to share my excitement until my mom told me he was worried this wasn't a good idea. I would get bored, tired of old ladies and sick of Oma and her somewhat judgemental comments. My mom was more worried I wasn't mature enough for this responsibility. I immediately got defensive and took all of this into consideration. Oma took me shopping for items to keep me busy: new running shoes, painting materials and books. I gathered the courage to knock on the neighbor's door and ask for his WiFi password, which he graciously offered. Taking care of Oma was easier yet more exhausting than I predicted. Checking her blood pressure and pills was no big deal, but constantly reminding her and keeping her updated with what was going on with our schedule kept me busy. She dwelled on her calendar, which consisted mostly of dinner dates with her sister at Moorings Park and upcoming doctor and dentist apointments.
After a few weeks and more than a month left I realized that my mom and uncle were right. If I wanted to last in an environment dedicated to old people, I had to find someone closer to my age to spend time with. So, on the beach one day, I met Matt.

Not Yet Posted

1. "Caution"
2009, 60" x 36," oil
My final painting for Carver.
2. "Carl"
2009, 24" x 22," acrylic
3. "Simple Forms"
2009, 8" x 7" x 13.5," plaster cast
done for sculpture 1 at SUNY Purchase

Fall, SUNY Purchase

I started my freshman year at SUNY Purchase College in White Plains, New York. I left two weeks shy of the first semester's end. Here is the work I produced during this time.