once upon a time

I'm laying on the floor with my sister.  We're on our bellies, pencil crayons in our hands... colouring the pages of my Beauty and the Beast colouring book.  She's watching Matlock.  I hate this show, but I don't care because I'm spending time with my sister. I'm watching her colour the page, envious of her ability to stay inside the lines.  I try to copy her artistic approach.  

It's a Monday night.  My parents are at a meeting; so, my sister is watching me.  After we colour, she does my hair, paints my nails and puts makeup on me.  It's not actually makeup.  She has one of my storybooks on her lap and she uses her makeup brushes to "dip" into the colours displayed on the cover and then pretends to splash the paint onto my face.  I love the way the soft bristles dance against my face and I laugh as she tickles me with the brush.

My parents come home.  I'm anxious at this point because they promised to bring me home a surprise.  They always brought me home a surprise.  It's a surprise, but at the same time I know exactly what it is.  They burst through the door and I run up and hug them.  They hand me a brown paper bag.  I open it up and smile.  Cream Soda and Sour Cream and Onion chips.  The usual.  I love it.  It was such a treat.

***

I had an unbelievably rough day.  Murphy's law was definitely slapping me in the face today with the "everything that can go wrong, will" theory.  After class, I stopped by the store on the way home and bought Cream Soda and SC&O chips.  I don't think I've tasted either since before I was ten years old.  Nostalgia is bouncing against my lips.  All my favourite memories are coming back to me now, swamping out the bad day I just had.  

I think we all get overwhelmed every once in awhile, and sometimes not even venting to people will help.  No matter what, they never say exactly what you want them to say.  I think that we can only strive for relief within our selves. We can achieve this by resorting back to a moment in our lives when we were happiest... and reliving those memories, grasping onto those once-felt feelings.  If you grasp hard enough, you can pull them out into your current situation.  And eventually, those feelings you've grasped from your memories will dilute the stress that's trying so hard to weigh you down.

'Cause everyone's your friend in NYC

I signed up for my critique today.  It's at 2:40pm in the crit room in the Fine Arts building on November 2nd.  So, if you want to show up - feel free!

You may be asking what exactly a crit is.  Well, it's a term very familiar to the Fine Arts world.  It's a pretty big deal come fourth year.  In our first three years, we often "critique" eachothers' works to get us comfortable with offering feedback and talking about our own work.

So, each fourth year student signs up for a time slot.  Fine Arts classes are canceled because the faculty attends these critiques.  In the crit room, I will be exhibiting work that I've been working on independently so far.  People, students and staff, will be invited to look around at the artwork and then be seated.  I'll talk about my purpose and methods.  Questions will be asked.  That sort of thing.  If you find yourself bored at 2:40pm on November 2nd, please show up and take a gander at what I've been working on this year!  It's only an "in progress" crit so none of my work is actually complete.  But you'll get a good feel of where I'm going with it all.  I'd love some extra eyes to view and feel free to offer me your feedback.  I'd certainly appreciate how you feel about it!

It's going to be a busy week with preparing for the 2nd.  Here are the events I have to look forward to/stress over:

October 29th

Leave Sackville

Bus to Halifax

Flight to Newfoundland

October 29th-31st

Halloween festivities spent in St. John's

November 1st

Fly back to Halifax

Bus to Sackville

November 2nd

Critique

November 3rd

Bus to Cape Breton

November 4th

David Copperfield

November 7th

4TH YEAR FINE ARTS NEW YORK CITY TRIP !!!!! 

This trip is "mandatory" to graduate, however, we have to pay for it ourselves.  I'm not complaining about it.  I'm actually really excited;  It'd be much more expensive under any other circumstances like if I decided to go on my own.  I'm... just... broke.  I'm not quite excited about my lack of money.

Ahhhhh.... you can see I have a lot on my plate for the next few weeks.  I have to have everything ready for my critique before I go away to Newfoundland and I'm going to be pretty much nonstop until I get back from NYC.  

I'm so much closer to graduating and I absolutely cannot wait!  I've been thinking a lot about possible options for next year.  I'm almost certain I'm going to be moving to Halifax in May.  I'm more likely to find a summer job there than at home in the Cape.  I'm going to apply to NSCAD.  There are some graduate programs there that I was looking into.  I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with my degree and how exactly deep I want to dig into the fine arts world... but I'm going to use next year to find out.  Eventually, I think I want to get my bED to fall back on.  That way, I'll be able to teach if I wanted to.  But I'm definitely going to strive for something much bigger...