When Dreams Feel Like Vague Memories

I have eight planets, with one cover, and two more to follow once all the planets are done.
Mercury is still up in the air for I have mixed feelings about what to do for him.

Venus is not yet even outlined in sharpie for I feel she is still missing something and I don't know what.

Earth was revamped and without anyone's saying I fully carved her out, add just a few small things and she will be ready for printing.

 Mars has been done, has been run through the press for a blind embossing and will be printed next.

Jupiter has come a long way, but his planet is just too...flat (as how Professor Hill said). Something must be done to give it a little bit more of a complex...something to make it jump out more, but I fear I may be too late.

Saturn has been designed, outlined and now has begun to be carved. His rings will be thickened slightly for a more fuller feel but other than that.

Uranus is the most recent design but I am holding off on carving him cause I'm not sure if he's too close to the cover pose, if so I will backtrack and tried to think of something else, but I do like him.

Neptune is in limbo like Venus. I kind of like it, but I don't think it's strong enough to be outlined, plus I'm struggling with the horse's ears.

Pluto was the first to be designed only for his original to be scrapped. He has the planet and two smaller sections to be carved out before he is ready to be printed.

 Sol and Luna will come next. After doing all of these I thought it would only be right to have Sol and Luna apart of the bunch considering they are the two key planets on the cover. And if no one as already guessed, this batch of animals will become a book. Otterbein's copy center has the ability to bind books, but I'm beginning to wonder on possibly taking this further and binding it myself, but adding a few things in between. But I want to discuss this with Professor Hill before I go too far and possibly burn out the flame that is, as of the moment, flickering with the wind as I try to relax from the overwhelming emotional spill I had yesterday. That took a lot out of me that I feel asleep at eight last night and woke up to my noon alarm. Lack of sleep to me with an emotional spill can cause a lot of exhaustion on the mind of a senior.
My ceramics project had to be scrapped and then revamped with the possibly fear of maybe having to scrap the revamp due to my hasty ways of wanting things to move in my way. I think I have decided to take 20-minute intervals of building and five minutes of just wondering to calm my mind down. But one thing as been successfully built.
The mouse of the piece

And what better way to let the air out but by the butthole? Lols, yes, it's actual hole to let the air out when it's being fired is actually the butt hole. I didn't want it to be the eyes or the nose and I thought it would be more discreet once it's been placed on the final piece. But who knows exactly if the main piece of this project will actually be what I want it to be. I'm building way too fast for it to compensate for what I want it to do and clay is quite fragile if you try to bend it too quickly. I think coil building it would be better, but thus, this os a slab creation (so I might add another mouse and then just coil the main form cause I'm getting slightly irritated with have to slab this massive piece into the form I want it to become).

When Worlds Collide

In the beginning, there was a younger girl who went to school. She tried many extracurricular activities during her young years of life until at the age of eight she found one and stuck with it. For years she danced in the style the Irish had created. She kept up with it and even started to try some more things even though the dance was her second life. Soon she learned that she had a strong love towards animals and things shifted to partake in both, until one day she found herself mounted on a horse on her way to competing. But then problems arose, these three activities, school, dance, and riding, all clashed and ended up overlapping. In an attempt to keep a hold of all three, she talked to four separate people, two teachers, and two instructors. But none were very lenient. Until one day only recent, she found herself cut from one of these extracurricular activities and yet the world still collided.
Yep. So dance went from Tuesday/Thursday later in the day for me to Tuesday/Wednesday overlapping class time. With a class that gets out a 5.15 and dance starting at 5.30 and with a class that gets out at 6.45 and dance starting at 6.15. To make it harder, horseback riding for beginners was 6-8 and I had the same class that ended at 6.45 and was not allowed to miss any of the classes for thirty minutes went to saddling up and mounted. So obviously irritation is kind of seeping from everywhere at the moment. With no permission to leave earlier than 6.30 on Mondays, I had no way of being able to ride and I'm not allowed to leave until 6 on Wednesdays, I am seriously cutting it close on both Tuesday and Wednesday for dance. I really wish I had a time turner right now. I wouldn't have to panic AT ALL.
So I feel like I have A LOT more time on my hands because things are cut even closer than they were before. I know a lot of this could go towards practice, but not be a theater or dance major I don't have access to the dance studios.

But art has picked up and things are now moving more quickly. I have begun my new set of animal prints on photography by taking photos of people from around the world, many students of Otterbein. I have a girl from Iran, a girl from South Africa and a girl from Brazil. I have a guy from South Korea, a girl, I think from China, a girl that is from somewhere in Africa, and a girl from Australia lined up. I also have a friend who has a Germany exchange student at the moment and hope to get their photo taken and I keep going back and forth of asking my dance teacher from England if he would come in. I know I'm pretty Irish, but I don't think I would cut it, unlike my father who is four percent short of being full. I wish I had my brother-in-law's mom for Japan or one of his grandparents and I wish I knew where the person from Canada that was at Otterbein went. The nice thing about all of this is that there are so many endangered species that I can have people from repeating countries, but each gets their own animal. I normally let them pick from the endagnered list from World Wildlife Fund because....err well I talk about that later on when time gets closer to...yeah. Cliffhanger, sorry dudes.

I have begun to contemplant about my final artist statement and I know it is going to talk about animals and the passion I have for them. It probably also is going to talk about how we treat these animals within their environment and such. This makes me think of the painting that goes from heaven down to hell and includes the level of species as well. You know one of these, but with the animals shoved into it as the dominate species.

In high school, my history teacher showed us the image and our homework assignment that night was to design our own levels. I didn't include heaven and hell, I don't really remember why...it may have been because I had just started working on my creed for the coming of age at church and I wasn't quite sure how those two fit in just yet, if they did at all, but I remember very clearly that instead of humans on top and trees and plants on the bottom, I flipped it. Humans on the bottom, then animals, and then trees and plants and the what nots. I know the Earth can sustain human life all the way up to 10 billion in population, but that's with cutting down more trees and trying to find area to plant food but also keep the animals we eat alive. That's humans, that is not animals or plants or anything. We have our mind so set on trying to keep up the human race that we sometimes forget that the plants and animals that are all around us started off the same way we did, evolution. This is probably way too scientific for an artist statement but for me, it is very very true. Plus I would like to keep my artist statement short and frankly not have to use the word I in it at all. I know it's about me, but sometimes I feel like that sayin I within an artist statement just makes it way too self-centered on yourself and not on the artwork. There are those days where I really would like to just have my artist statement as:

'Like my dad says, the hell with it.' or 'Might as well.'

Never needing to answer the question, why, and say just cause I can. Heehee. I do hate it when people ask you how or why you did it and it does end up with a shrug cause there are sometimes it just kind of happens...I know my recent series is because of my recent add-on of the fascination of space (blame star trek for that and I think the world of hipster and that bringing up) but still I really don't know how the idea really formed beside listening to a song that had an album cover of a dear head. They kind of just shoved together after that.

So now it's just chugging along. I changed my Earth and before I got the yes or no from people I carved it out so that I wouldn't doubt myself. Plus I think the new pose makes her stronger and has placed Venus as the weakest planet now.

I have a final pose for Pluto and, with some hope that I can still keep it the crazy look, one for Saturn (cause Saturn in Greek Mythology is Cronos and he is known to be a little crazy and he did eat his children sooo....). So know I'm just down to Uranus, Mercury, and Neptune. I learned that Uranus is known to be the god of the Universe, so that kind of sucks cause my dear head ended up being that but with a little help from my friend Lyndsey she helped me pick out an animal that would more represent the sky that he is in his Roman form. So just a pose idea and we're clear. Mercury is still kind of up in the air. I want to do something along the lines of him laughing, but how to you make a rooster laugh? Posiden is going to have a horse head, but the pose is at a stand still manly because I took his pose and gave it to Earth (sort of). So who knows. I don't surely don't until further along when I'm done with all the others and really have to start working on the last three.

So I'm writing this, waiting for my car to be fixed and keeping warm by carving on the chair as I tune into Star Trek. The stares you get as an artist.

But all I end up doing is either bleeding or dancing or giving an odd response back:

Gotta love that~

-Claire

Tripping Flat Footed

*Warning...political things will most likely be brought up within this text

Three weeks in and I know that the infamous senioritis has already kicked in. Thus, of course, I think it actually kicked in way before this semester started, and started back in November. As I had to shift into high gear that last few weeks prepping for my portfolio to be turned in and with only four of the ten pieces needed to be finalized and the scramble of trying to find and create the other six with as much spare time that I could muster. It was those days of either: Wake up, class, eat, art, eat, art, sleep, repeat or Wake up, class, eat, art, dance, eat, art, sleep, repeat with little to no time in between to really do anything else. It was not the first time to experience over production drowning (as what I call when you have more than one creative class at once) and receiving no sympathy what-so-ever from the teachers that had me during those time periods. I know it isn't something to expect and something that I should no complain about, but I do hate it when teachers think they are the only class that you have and apparently don't have an outside life and there is also that famous post that sometimes makes it way around in the interwebs of, "Why Didn't You Study?"

It was during that time period that I really wanted to use this to actually put forth to my teachers but cross out the study and replace it with "Next time your teacher asks you why you didn't art, say this:" and just stay silent as they read it slowly. I know I would get laughed at or shunned or whatever a teacher would do when they received this but trust me when I say I would try and get away with this as much as possible.

But let us back peddle a little and begin by answering, why is this blog started up again? Many of you already know that this is my last semester as an undergraduate. Scary, exciting, and filled to the brim with the worry of the infinite amount of things that could happen during and after all of this is over. In one of my four classes, there is a requirement to create a journal or blog in which we are supposed to help us create an artist statement for our senior show. There is another class where you're supposed to journal anyway about practically anything, so I decided to combined the two, er...killing to birds with one stone, really, and kind of do both. Though for the artist statement I am quite stumped and am not surprised at all. I'm stilling working on art and probably won't know what to say until all pieces have been decided upon. If there is a due date before that I might just kind of throw something together and give it to my teacher (Sorry Janice!) until I actually know what's going in.

I could use or go off of what I said for my portfolio that I created for last semester cause many (and most of the pieces in it) may end up being in my show. Which can be found here. I am probably not the only person that thinks it's weird when you hear your own voice recorded and then played back to you and I can't help but wonder how many people think it's me speaking versus someone else speaking and not my own voice. A study for another day. But this doesn't quite work now for the many creations I have made just at the start of this semester.

Well....pushing further back to week one of school.

St. Louis=driving to school=half-way mark=super cold=new car can't handle cold=causes some things to freeze=car won't start. Yeah, my car didn't start on the Sunday we were supposed to arrive for my last semester of college. Blame the could, my dad and I irritated that the battery the hotel had didn't work and were worried that our car was screwed up and we had just bought it only a few weeks before. We got it to work the next day, that Monday that classes started, and arrived late on that Monday, where I dropped my father off at the hotel next to the airport and learned that a penny was stuck in the cigar lighter. (I do wonder if I really do have bad luck with cars sometimes). Cause Ringo was bought with some problems we were not told about until afterward when we learned of these things, and there ends up being a penny in the cigar lighter that we weren't told about. I had no skill at getting it out.

Only to learn that that Tuesday that my car was supposed to have a normal five-month cheek up and when we took it into CarMax in St. Louis they didn't bother on doing that even though the dashboard was saying Service! 12/2016? I've got mixed feelings about CarMax now... 😑

So that kind of screwed up my brain on having to start functioning again and getting the gears going until I had my wonderfully first mental breakdown on that Wednesday cause I couldn't think of drop s*** on what to do for my advanced printmaking class. Seriously I was irritated as....Yeah. Eventually, I broke that art block and I have a whole new series happening right now so, yay no art block (for now).

(Political rant begin) Then that next Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. day and we had no school! That still didn't help with my brain trying to figure out what was happening. And then Friday just....no. I wore full black, didn't watch TV and instead arted and watched The Hunger Games Series in the purpose to study for the future for just in case purposes, cause this country is screwed and I know we are on the brink of WWIII there is no doubt. Though I think as of now our so-called 'President' is burying his head into the boobs of the new Miss Universe as I write this. (End rant). This threw me into a frenzy of worry and fear, and I found myself in the gutter grove trying to climb about in the mud of it all through the weekend. I learned that Monday after my wonderful friend Donovan, that my dance teachers had sensed this the day before and had wondered what was up when they asked him. Sadly, the two of us haven't really seen each other much this semester for our dance days are now different than they were before.

But it was also that Monday was the day my head was like 'Oh...you started school.'

Three weeks, three weeks for my brain to learn that it was in school. I think if it had known that earlier I wouldn't have nicked my thumb like I did that first Friday back. Only one person saw the effects of this and was surprisingly calm about it as she helped me clean my thumb and bandaged it. A wonderful scar is now forming on my thumb, but at least I have a functional thumb. I didn't really feel any pain, and when I put pressure on it now I don't feel anything in that area, dead nerves?

So what art have I done as of now? Several actually!

Advanced printmaking?

Space!!!!!

We Have The Cover

You guys have no idea how proud I am of this

We Have Venus

A few things were fixed, but she's not my favorite

We Have Earth

Another one with a few things added on after.
I think Earth is the weakest one so far.

We Have Mars

He's probably the strongest planet so far.
He has been full carved out since this image.

 And the most recent, 

Jupiter

I like him too, but he's not as strong as Mars.

From Beginning Ceramics:

Who is from Spirited Away during the Boat Scene:

I have another class that has to do with art, and our past assignments include a full sheet of doodling and paper dolls. I have to laugh cause OMG I made this:

Wait I don't know what this is.......

Waiiiitttt whaaaaaattttttt??????? Claire got a new dress? Oh hell yeah I did!!!!!

When did this happen? I got fitted the week before, and then the night before I danced at Oireachtas Daithi showed up at the practice with the new dresses and I got to try it on to make sure it fit. I could seriously drool over the whole thing for weeks on end if I wanted to.....I peer at it sometimes when I need a booster of hope and inspiration. Can't you just see that joy in my face?????

It's a wonderful maroon color that fits my body perfectly, it's got cute little wings that can't be seen very well (kind of fits my fascination with wings and drawing them) and totally fits my personality as an artist and what I like to call myself, very Bohemian 😍 I thought my Book of Kells dress was spot on amazing, but this dress....oh drool this dress.

Back to art:

What have I gotten myself into? I don't know just yet, but I know that I have gotten myself into a nice wonderful mess of arting, yet again. Haha....😖

And not just arting. This is news for everyone besides my parental units...

The mayor of Westerville approached a teacher from the engineering department about students of the department creating and making trophies for awards in leadership to local places within Westerville. It was taken by the teacher and passed around to the engineering students as well as the art students so that five students from each department would pair up and create the five trophies for the leadership awards, I was quite interested and responded when I received the email from the engineering teacher. A week passed and I get an email saying this:

Claire,

I have not received any interest from other art students, but I do have 5 engineering students interested.  So here is my idea -

You will be the 'design supervisor' for all 5 projects, assisting each individual engineer with their overall design.  We want to make them all different, and the plan would be to use your expertise to help each engineering student make a great design.  Does this sound like it would work?

You hear that? Yes, that is me internally screaming. Design supervisor....

Design supervisor.

Oh, I could go on and on saying that. A wonderful pair of words....

Anyhoo, I took my chances and have gotten the ball rolling on three of the five. Woot woot to this and that!

So I have been able to pick myself up and found a stairway out of the gutter and hope to have a little bit of smooth sailing for now. I know that the sea will get rough but as of now, I'm pretty solid.

Well that was a decent ramble....

-Claire