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
