One ingredient of one of my current projects–a series of large paintings of objets d’arts Americana. This is the left boot of a pair that belonged to my great-great grandmother. I’ve completed principal photography of my source objects and plan to begin work on these in mid-December during my Yule break.
This semester has been so exhausting, what with working full-time, taking two challenging art practicum courses (and maintaining As in them), and in my “spare” time, working to collect, flesh out, plan or start work on all these ideas that keep presenting themselves to me. But helping me to keep pushing forward through long days at my unsatisfying day job and general bone-tiredness from 16-hour days of work and school towards my long holiday break (when I plan to shut myself in my studio and work like the dickens to finish as much work as possible), is the undeniable fact that I’m having frequent mini successes that point towards a positive future in art–and I’ll take ‘em!
Successes So Far
I have received my first commission! I have been requested to do a portrait for a woman in Orange County, and I have my first meeting with her today to talk about what she wants and take my source photos.
The head of the Art Dept. is interested in taking me on as a student for the Special Projects in Art course next semester and possibly arranging a small exhibition for me in May or June! This will give me three hours a week of one-on-one instruction and guidance from a highly active and respected artist. I am super excited about the prospect of being able to explore a couple of big ideas I’ve had and produce a mass of finished, cohesive works.
My art professor wants to have a lunch meeting with me after the holidays to discuss my non-profit art business idea, including possible funding sources.
I attended a guest lecture by a ceramic artist on Thursday night at my school and in talking about student work he’d seen in the studio, he specifically mentioned liking my “Happy Hair” print–and he didn’t know it belonged to me. Awesome!
I entered work in two juried contests. I know I submitted good work, but I’m pretty comfortable with accepting that I probably won’t win either one. Mostly I’m just excited to be finishing work and learning the ropes of submitting it.
Lots of good news, finished projects, exciting prospects, new beginnings and tingly ideas to talk about. A complete update coming tomorrow!
Tomorrow, I should be able to run my final prints. Drypoint might just be my favorite printmaking method.
This is what I’m currently working on: a dry point etching of my “Chucks” photo. It’s not finished, but I wanted to run a test print to see how it looked. Back to scratching!
My matrix in progress, Oct. 28, 2009.
A test print of my in-progress dry point etch, Oct. 28, 2009
