Week Nineteen January 25, 2008

Art Centre - Week Nineteen - January 21-25, 2008

The last week of semester one of year one – and only two days of classes.

Monday – Printmaking

Worked using my two screens: the first screen is one of PeepEye on a cushion as drawn by me and one of PeepEye by a cushion, modified from a photo by me; the second has the obverse and reverse star as used on my medal in sculpting class. Last week I did a t-shirt and two bandanas with the sta rs and a mini back pack with cat on cushion. I’ve already given that to a friend as a gift.

This week I put stars on two sets of placemats and on two sets of napkins to go with the mats. I screened cat on a cushion with cat by a cushion for two prints. Did another mini back pack with cat on a cushion and experimented with cards using the cats.

Tuesday - Painting. I completed the oil painting of the woman from Barbados counting out lychees to sell in small plastic bags. She is wearing a bright red dress with a white dotted pattern and a straw sun hat, the band tied with a floral scarf. She sits using a packing box as the support for her tray and on the wall nearby, an old oval coca-cola sign has the same red as her dress. We stacked our previous two paintings where the teacher can find and evaluate them. The wet painting went on the rack. Looking at the previous two paintings, I can see a lot more promise in my third canvas.

Tuesday - Sculpting and Printmaking Studios. I handed over my medal and the ten dollars for the bronze. I was disappointed that other than looking briefly at both sides and questioning that I’d shined all but a small part of it after the patina, that was that. The teacher didn’t want to keep our medals and he handed it back. I had hoped to hear more of an evaluation somehow. There has been none on the carving either. He’s got that, the display board for the medal and the handout from the presentation as the artifacts to decide the mark.

In the printmaking studio I continued my printing.of cats and stars and now have only the scarves and the cards left to do. I have two plates to etch over the break.

Wednesday - Thursday – taking time off. I did go for art supplies, cards for printing and a variety of canvas boards. One is the requisite 16X20 for when we go back to class. The other three are smaller and more in proportion to photo sizes so I don’t have to skew the ratio. I plan to do some painting on my own now. I have two sculptures on the back porch that need work – one in plaster, one in soapstone. Now that I’ll not be teaching, I will have more time to do spin-off projects outside of class. Since my collage and assemblage evening class was canceled I’ve been thinking about what I can do on my own in that medium.

Thursday afternoon I went to the 2-hour lunch session with colleagues at OISEUT – these are the sessions I had to miss all fall term because it came at the same time as my sculpting class. That is what gave me the idea of writing this blog however, so anyone in that group could read about my art school experience. At this meeting, I was asked to tell about my time away from the group. Of course I told of my fall classes at the institute – how well they went and how pleased I was with the results. Then I spoke about art school – how difficult it can be to take off my teacher’s hat and play only the role of the student.

I took along prints from my lino block edition of the tin angel. Each member of the group chose one to keep and I gave the remaining three to three friends who work in Academic Computing at OISE. At the Thursday Group, I passed around my medal and talked about the lost wax method and all of the steps involved. Then we moved on to hear about other members of the group who had been away for a while and what was going on in their lives. Of the seven of us attending on Thursday four are taking a painting class in Mimeco so talking about art school was of particular interest to them.

Friday – A former student from the Art Centre suggested that all of the students meet at 9pm at Paupers, a pub located just north of the school. I managed to go over around 9:30 and found three of my classmates there among others from other classes. Unfortunately, the space was quite confining and each group was in a booth, not really interacting with others in other booths. At one point, two of my group went out to have a cigarette on the patio and the one who stayed and I were joined by two people. I knew one of the as he assists with teaching in the computer lab and his friend is not an art student. When the two smokers returned, the third member of our group went home and I was not far behind her. There was a constant pounding on the piano and the pounder was also singing loudly – you had to yell to be heard. Not my idea of a good time. So next time – a place where we can also talk together – please.