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2007-05-20 @ 4:55 p.m. |
I�m just sitting here, pretty much in a vegetative state after our two day Art Conference up at the University. Its not that I did anything overtly physical. Its just that between getting up earlier than usual, having to be alert for two 9 hour days in a row (being on disability, that doesn�t happen very often) and my sciatic nerve deciding to be a total bitch, I am just taking it slow today. But it was mostly fun time. Our event wasn�t quite as successful as last year, as in our attendance dropped by almost 50%, but I think everyone who came had a good time, learned some new things, ate lots of free donuts and bagels and....and... And if that wasn�t worth the price of admission, I don�t know what is. Heh! (that�s an ironic �heh� by the way). Anyhoo, I guess I should start at the beginning. Have I mentioned yet how obnoxious Charlemagne is, even early in the morning? Okay, good. Because he like totally is. Wow....(me clutching my forehead like I have a migraine). We have made up since the little hosting snafu a week or so ago. I really think Charlemagne likes to argue just for the sake of arguing. I mean I do understand where he is coming from. He feels that people don�t take him seriously, because of his �obnoxious personality� (his words), but he really does need to chill out, if something he suggests doesn�t happens. Ideas get rejected all the time. I had an idea that was met with much excitement and enthusiasm at our meeting. Did it happen at the event? No. Did I stomp around for two days saying, �Damn, nobody takes me seriously and this whole thing is a failure because they rejected my idea.� No. Because I am able to move on. It was still chaotic the first morning though. I got there at 8 a.m. (oh my god! 8 a.m. People are actually up at that time? Really?) We had food. We had drinks. We had ice. Just not a lot of people. We also had these orange shirts we had to wear. I had inadvertently told our printmaker guy I wanted an extra-large because you know how some tee-shirts are. Women�s tee-shirts. So he hands me my bright orange men�s STAFF tee-shirt and I put it on. Holy shit, I could have fit a homeless family of 12 in there with me. It was huge. True, I�ve been losing weight recently, but it was massive and hung almost down to my knees. I felt kinda asexual in it. The fun presenter, at least to me, didn�t appear until the afternoon. It was this little eccentric male art teacher with a black beret (oh, how cliche! Oh wait, I wear a black beret too). He had a very famous silent black and white German film projecting up on a white sheet and had a film historian talking about the film�s background and how the sets were painted to look like there were crooked and shadowy. He then turned on some German opera music which he gleefully told us was about a plumber (I think) who kills himself when he�s rejected by a prostitute. Yay! And then we had our model who was the intern from our art class who dressed like a sleazy Cabaret girl complete with torn fish nets, black mid-calf boots and a black top hat a�la Marlena Dietrich. I walked her from the bathroom to the staging area and the poor girl was very nervous, since she had on the shortest of shorts and looked like a 1920�s hooker, but she did a great job and really got into it. The class, in the meantime, was doing some kind of printmaking where you smear ink onto a piece of glass, draw an image onto it with whatever you have, press a piece of paper onto it and then get a reverse image print. I did four prints and only the fourth one was decent. Afterwards the teacher critiqued a bunch of them up on the wall. I know this is status quo in a real university art class, but I had never done this before and I was nervous, because I�m pretty sensitive to criticism. But after, I guess, skipping over some he didn�t like, he did say he liked the texture on mine and it was very �woodcutty looking� which I think is a good thing. Unfortunately my scanner is still not working, so I�m not able to show the image which actually looked more like a skeleton from the Day of the Dead in Mexico than a slutty Cabaret Girl, but bygones. Anyways, after the first day, my sciatic nerve was in so much pain, that I just took some mega-pain pills and went to bed early. Saturday had even less people unfortunately. I did get to go to the keynote speaker however, since I wasn�t really needed to man the check-in area. The keynote speaker was one of Charlemagne�s art professors and she just showed all her work which was really bizarre. She says she has really bad insomnia, so she paints lots of nightmarish frothing sheep jumping over the head of medical technicians with masks on. She also had a lot of paintings of nightmarish frothing German Shepherds....trying to bite medical technicians with masks on. Are we seeing a theme here? They were really well done, just weird and kinda depressing in a �something you�d see off the Hallway to Hell� kind of way. And then it was time for my modeling debut. I had seen the Professional Artist Guy at the preceding lecture and we smiled at each other. �D� and I are always sneaking glances at each other in my Wednesday night class, but alas, he is spoken for and therefore, permanently off-limits. I was very nervous about modeling though. I am extremely shy and to suddenly be getting helped up on a staging area with a big, huge spotlight shining down on me with 20-25 people gazing up, was really nerve-wracking. Professional Artist Guy is also kind of shy and I think he was nervous about talking in front of a group of people. He stumbled a little, but once he started drawing, he got more comfortable, since he does that for a living. A few people in the room also started drawing. Gulp. Suddenly I realized I was getting the model�s point of view for the first time....you know....Looking down and seeing what people are drawing and going....WTF?? Okay, that was only one person who was making me look like Picasso�s worst nightmare. Also being a little bored after a while going, �la, la, la�. And also getting a stiff neck from sitting sideways and turning my head forward. Ouch! I love modeling though! Actually, I loved these modeling session in particular (I did two of them in a row with �D�), because the Professional Artist Guy was saying �She has those beautiful blue eyes� and �She has a wonderful line to her lips�, �Her lips are a deep, rich red�, �Her skin is luminous� And bits and pieces of all the crappy things my mom has said to me over the years about being funny looking or having a big nose or being fat, just sort of melted away. It was great!  And it was funny...while we were being artist and model, �D� and I were totally connecting and looking at each other, but then afterwards, we just went back to being two shy people nervously glancing at each other. He did say he will give me one of the prints he drew. He just needed to clean his finger prints off it. Oh, and I forgot. I did take off the massive orange tee-shirt for my pose. I had worn a reddish somewhat low cut (bleet, bleet....cleavage alert!! They�re small, but they�re bold!) sundress and got a few compliments on it. The rest of the day was pretty average. I assisted this older lady artist. She was nice and I learned a few new tricks, but when I drew something in her class, she took it and said the perspective was completely wrong and drew right over the top of everything I had drawn. Whoa! It wasn�t my best effort, but still. Ouch! I also saw the Professional Artist Guy again in another class for facial emotions. It was being taught by a local artist who draws for Mad Magazine. He had about 5-6 pictures of people with various expressions, you could choose to draw from and when I walked by Professional Artist Guy we had both picked a picture of Dick Cheney looking all pissed and angry. Great minds think alike, I guess. Older Entries |
Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty |
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