http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766
this is for all of you! enjoy . . .

Penland aka Tell me to shut up whenever I annoy you with too many posts

I was writing this to Adel only, but it got to be a way long facebook message and thought you might like to hear too. I am spending two weeks taking a pattern drafting/clothing design class at Penland School of Crafts.

This place is freaking amazing. My best comparison is Lutheran Summer Music for artists. You make art as much as you want and just break for eating delicious food and yoga. This is the life.

The yoga teacher is great and my between shoulder blade muscles are finally sore for the first time ever, which is exactly what I need to have functioning arms again!

It is BEAUTIFUL here and the teachers are great. You can see the clouds coming over the mountains every morning at meals. The people are really interesting too. My only minor complaints would be that it has been raining virtually all the time and I can't sleep well since my bed is hard. But other than that it's paradise!

I will have to force myself outside my comfort zone to ask about the core student programs (opportunity to work here for 2 years) since I am still a little intimidated by the whole art school thing and get the feeling that perhaps you have to be more advanced in your work than I am. However, coming here could be a great inspiration to make things once I get home. I"m querying everyone about how them make a living and stand it. A lot of people seem to teach.

Oh, the other best part is that this is the first time I have touched a computer in 4 days. How sad that is probably a record.

Also, by the way the clothing class is way cool. We have put in the boring work making our own personal patterns and now we learned the concepts to move those lines to different places in order to design whatever shapes we want! They also have beautiful dress forms so we will learn draping too. Can't wait.

Hope this is finding you well.

Sorry, forgot the whole point of the last one...

So, my fingers typed the Concordia Publishing House address of their own accord and clicked on Employment opportunities. They are hiring for basically exactly what I did during my internship. I groaned when I read this. I mean, what WERE my fingers thinking? I'm sort of wondering if it is a sign that I should do this, but then again maybe not. 

As most of you know I was absolutely nuts while trying to make the banner and do internship at the same time. So I have been saying that Graphic Design work is the AntiChrist of actually making your own artwork and that  I should really get a boring job so I can be creative and concentrate on a portfolio. 

However, here are the pros/cons: 

+VERY close to my house, takes about 7 minutes to get there, in fact the proximity to CPH is why we bought this house (my Dad worked there at the time, in fact I would probably have his old desk, but I would avoid most of those stresses since I know the people I would work with and would not be a salary employee)

+Benefits and being able to take my very expensive nexium so my stomach won't hurt from the hand medicine

+Full time money

+Actual professional experience in graphic design at an actual company

+Keeping practicing with my Spanish and graphic deisgn

+I may be counting chickens, but I have reason to believe they would hire me since they seemed very sad to see me go two years ago

-My hands hurt horribly last time I worked all day on a computer. So bad I had trouble doing normal things when I went home and was usually too exhausted to do much artwork-wise.

-I could get sucked into business-world vortex and forget all about anything I actually want to do in life

-The building is hideous and gray

-Corporate culture makes me want to throw up

-The work is somewhat repetitive and dull. Mostly black and white book layout with the occasional cover design to dump in. 

It's enough to make me want to call the library back about working there! 

I will know more after I go to Penland School of Crafts next week to take the Custom Wearables class there. I would love to get one of their fellowships and go there in January with Adel : ) We'll see. 

How impolite is it to tell someone that you might leave in January? Any thoughts?

The real world

I am officially obsessed with vistaprint.com 

Since I printed Christi's invitations there (which turned out beautifully) I get all their promo e-mails. So I made business cards for "almost free." (I think right this instant they'll give you 250 free and with glossy paper, so you just have to pay shipping and upload fees if you want do design your own.) They turned out "good enough." I would go for glossy the next time.

The newspaper had a good suggestion that people looking for jobs should print business cards with their info and a mini-resume on the back since it's a lot nicer than scrawling your info on a napkin and then they can remember more easily what it is that you do. So this is my attempt. I'm fairly happy with them. It's hard to tell here since they include the bleed marks, but the front is basically like the back just with a white background. 

I was inspired by this artist whose work I saw at the Art Institute BFA show. 

Let me know what you think!

Painting preferences...

So, my chiropractor informed me that I should avoid kneeling if I want to stop putting my back out of alignment... but my favorite way to paint is to spread out a tarp on the floor, lay a canvas on it and to kneel over it, painting. In light of Adel showing off her cool painting wall... I was wondering how the rest of you painted. I should probably start using my easel properly... :) ...now I have it low to the ground so, again, I am kneeling when I paint. Any suggestions?

some more pictures...

this is the orange dripped one from earlier with a new addition :)
my 'studio' space...aka the hallway in my dinky little 'house' :)