7 Weeks In!

I have been buried under a mass load of things to do-----to be expected, huh? Lets see, in the last 2 1/2 weeks I have been to LA on a school trip, read a couple of books (that weren't required, but recommended---found the time, don't know how), had my first official critique, locked my car keys and locker key in my locker at midnight and went into hysterics (blame the sleep deprivation), and gained a little clarity in the work I am doing.

LA: The first year MFA's spent 2 full days checking out galleries in Culver City (Blum and Poe), the Gagosian gallery in Beverly Hills, the MOCA, UCLA's Hammer Museum, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, CLUI, FarmLab, and the studios of Jim Shaw and Marnie Weber (who were both unbelievably interesting!). We stayed in the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown, a bit fancy for grad student standards, but I wasn't complaining!

My work right now is going pretty well. A couple of weeks ago I was advised to complete a Cosmology on myself. This exercise is basically a huge brainstorming session that is all about my universe. It was going to bring some clarity and organization to my thoughts, since I had too many ideas and couldn't boil it down to some clear and concise points. Not knowing where it would go, I ended up on the phone with my mom, interviewing her on her life story, info on her mother, father, grandparents, you name it! What was interesting, I began to see a lot of common words and themes. Haunted, Fear, Death, Illness, Trauma, Rationing, Memories, Pain. Essentially what I gathered from all of this, was that my family members (extended) were deeply affected by WWII, specifically how it played out in London (Blitz). It seemed that most of them suffered from Post Traumatic Stress from dealing with war. This led me to research Freud's theories of trauma and object relation. I also started reading some essays on memory and how it is affected by traumatic events. I really believe that these painful memories are woven deeply into the fabric of my family and remnants of this could be detected even in my own childhood.

I have started looking at images from the London Blitz and making drawings of them on the computer. I have begun to make paintings from these. I am still trying to figure out how exactly I am to combine my pattern cut photographs into these new paintings.

My In-Progress painting. This is 4'x5'.

My cut photo installation piece. (Apologies for crappy lighting!)