The style may change, but picking out school supplies is as important to me now as it was in fourth grade - choosing the newest themed trapper keeper with its shiny plastic padding and Velcro closure. In fact, knowing what design means to me now it might even matter more. To me, the notebook I pull out says as much about my taste as the shoes I wear or color I paint my house. Call me crazy, but at least I know I'm in good company up here. I stumbled upon this guy, and a few others on a recent trip to John Derian just of the Bowery.

Oz

I've started my final project in Studio for the semester and it involves the Wizard of Oz in no small way. Right now I can't get over the beautiful illustrations in the original L. Frank Baum series. I chose this studio after the professor did a presentation on what it entailed, which included this quote :

“I was the only child in the audience that always wondered why Dorothy ever wanted to go back to Kansas. Why would she want to go back to Kansas, in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me, when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys and gay lions. I never understood it.”
- John Waters, 2001

... and I was instantly sold :)

Process

Sometimes I'm so sick of being in my building at RISD I could scream. I could run down six flights of stairs out onto Weybosset Street and never look back. We spend a lot of hours there. A lot. Under flourescent lights, on painfully uncomfortable stools, hunched over computers, with no fresh air. Sometimes its too much.

But sometimes, even during finals, I see something that is so incredible I remember to thank my lucky stars I'm there. Sometimes its a classmate helping me when we all could be using every precious moment to help ourselves. Sometimes its seeing the work of an undergrad, one bay over, infinitely more talented than I. And sometimes its something like this poster.

Seem silly ? It's for two reasons really. For one, I love the validity it's giving Foundation (read freshman) student's work. "triennial exhibition ?" I'm pretty sure I had nothing close to this for anything I took as a freshman. And announced on this awesome poster. And you know what ? They deserve it. Sometimes I come in at 7 am, and the only other worker bees in the studio are undergrads. When I read in the alumni magazine about the incredible things graduates are doing I can see why--they weren't just pushed and worked, they were also celebrated and revered. Their work is given importance.

But my second point before I digress too much... Is the graphics of this poster. I love it. I love that cheap greyish paper on a roll, that every art student in America has used, peeling off a critique wall, that every art student in America has pinned up on. I am standing in this room so easily. The textures and smells are so familiar.

And it is all, after all, process, right ? Whether a foundation student half way through year one, or Zaha Hadid choosing her next commission. We're all in Process.

So guess what ? By the time you read this I won't be in the States. Im with RISD folks, in Northern India. New surroundings, new (old) medium (photography), new language, new professors, new class. The beginning of another process that will lead me to my next.

I am hoping to post from there. But if you don't hear from me for a couple weeks, its because Im meandering around a religious pilgrimage town -- snapping photos, writing, and soaking up as much of this new place as possible.

A friend from RISD told me to watch this Ted Talk a while back. It's only now that the dust has settled from my first semester that I've had a chance to.
I agree with every word. Watch it, I think it will resonate with you too. x

Katrina Furniture Project

This weekend I am going to a friend's wedding on the coast here. In her honor, I thought I'd share this incredible company talked about in my studio yesterday -- The Katrina Furniture Project. This group uses the endless sea of debris that covered New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to make furniture such as the church pew above. Not only do they teach locals to make it, but their proceeds go to the disaster relief. I love the look of this pew, and even more I love the simple yet ingenius concept and practicality behind it.

Hope you all have a wonderful fall weekend ;).

My Apologies.

I said to excuse me for a week, and I've been gone two. Turns out a weekend here doesn't mean play time, it means work time. I am one hundred percent consumed by my studio, and it leaves very little time for much else. On the days I get home in time to get a reasonable nights sleep, this feels much more tolerable than the days I get home near dawn.

This is part of what I look out onto all day, every day. Not a very exciting sight, but when the light is just right, I do like it a lot. Like here for instance. Lucky me gets to see every stage of light cast here, so I know what's the most intriguing .

My first two weeks were spent analyzing the qualities of trash we picked up around Providence and then drafting it (here we have a plan section of decaying wood, a cardboard insert for boxes of apples with the bubble shape that cradles them, grapes + stems, a cement brick, a mushroom container, and a decaying Sam Adams six pack holder).

The second week I also spent time thinking about how grape stems could bifurcate and grow if I were making rules and systems... And then I drew a huge drawing of how this would grow to create a large porous, small porous, large delineated, and small delineated space with a set of rule diagrams to explain.

The third week we researched 6 buildings of historical precedent, drew their plans and sections, explored diagrams that could explain their layouts, and ordering systems, and made " parti models" of an important ordering system. It had been a while since I'd seen a librarian stamp the back of a book :). These buildings were awesome.
And this week we've been measuring and drafting a building here in Providence in Groups. There is a lot of thought about the softness of your lead and what a line weight conveys on a drawing, and a quarter of an inch here, 3/8ths of an inch there.

Lots of exacto blades for lots of cutting.

And lots of analysis on what is going on in this building. What was originally built, what was changed, what is structural, what is weight bearing, what materials are used, what systems are in place, and what, looking at all of this, is of any interest to any of us.

Because of my rudeness, and the fact that I don't want to lose my precious few readers, Miss Jennifer Mills Platow will be taking over for the next two weeks. She is an artist of words, and an English teacher on the Lower East Side of New York City. She is my first guest blogger, and this is her first blogging experience. I know I'm excited to read what she has to say, and I will be back in August ;). xo