Verotchka

"Avowing her love, Vera was entrancingly fair; her words were noble and impassioned. But Ogneff felt not the pleasure or vital joy which he himself yearned for, but only sympathy with Vera, and a pain that a fellow-creature should suffer so for his sake. Heaven only knows why it was so! But whether the cause was book-learned reason, or merely that impregnable objectivity which forbids some men to live as men, the ecstasy and passion of Vera seemed to him affected and unreal."   Verotchka, by Anton Chekhov.

Shining with LED Brilliance

Here is part of a poem by Elizabeth Bishop:

Have you tried playing with your ring?
Sometimes that calms them down, I find.
(Bright objects hypnotize the mind.)
Get his attention on anything –
anything will do - there, try your ring.

And here is a poster of it:

Drawings From Today

I ran out of nice drawing paper so I did some pastel on cardboard, like Toulouse Lautrec.

Literally Actually, a short story

Literally Actually Part One

The Frywalker School of Creative Semiotics is the premier art school in America dedicated to the creation of signs and symbols, intellectual ephemera and ergodic communication. At least that’s what their recruiters at National Portfolio Day told me, half in chalkboard scribbles and half in whispered speech. I was riveted by their use of communication as performance, and created a portfolio for admission to their school. 

My portfolio was a weathered wooden crate filled with hay, small burlap sacks of barley, and four hundred sketches of nude men and women. Some were oil pastel on flakes of packing cardboard, others gestural squiggles on graphing paper. All were under two inches in height. Some I strung together in garlands. Others I folded like accordions. My admissions essay was hidden at the bottom of the crate. Part of the essay was written in Demogplyphics; human gesture as written word. I included a key on how to read my demogplyphs in case any of the admissions officers didn’t understand right away.

My acceptance letter was a small hand written note congratulating me on my outstanding portfolio and essay, and at the bottom it read, “You made it.”

I began my studies in the fall. My classes included ‘intro to semiotics: the use of body language’, ‘design 1: fundamentals of line’, ‘art history: theoretical art and aesthetic futures,’ and lastly, ‘figure drawing’.

Figure drawing class was challenging. Not only was the model clothed the entire semester, but my whole class was required to wear loincloths or simple undergarments. Many of us went nude. We were to familiarize ourselves with the model through being keenly aware of our own bodies, all our ugliness, beauty, symmetry and asymmetry. Occasionally the model would lecture and we would take notes on the sheepskin we used to draw on. My final project was carving tribal death masks for all my peers to wear during the final critique. The class was not so much figure drawing as gaining deep awareness of the human form through drawing and empathy.

After receiving our grades, our drawings were burned in a pyre.