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Saturday, July 3, 2010



For the last five weeks I’ve been spending forty hours a week in a 13′ x 10′ white-walled room in downtown Chicago – what would otherwise be known as my “studio”. The set up is not unlike my “studio” (aka: crap corner) at home, but there are advantages to having a working space that is separate from your living space. A studio allows me to work on many things simultaneously, and really focus — living spaces have distractions like cats, refrigerators, the internet, housework. It’s made to be used so there’s no guilt for stapling into the wall, or dripping paint. And! It’s really nice to make some work that doesn’t have cat hair embedded into it! Really! I have to lint roll everything that leaves this house.

Since this is a class, there is the added stressors of teachers, critiques, other students, other students obnoxious music, being downtown by 9am, and all the awfulness that involves being downtown (see: Blackhawks Parade). But all curmudgeonry aside, I have been doing a lot of work. A lot of good work, I think. The impending reality of leaving the safe comfort of school has really given me a lot to think about – a terrific cocktail of anxiety, insecurity of self-doubt – which I’ve somehow used to motivate myself to work hard. Challenging myself and working outside my comfort zone, and working thoughtfully and following through. There’s a long way to go before I have a functional, diverse portfolio, art school has been more of a labyrinth than I expected, and my confusion shows. Crunch time, if you will. I think I’ve been sucked into my sketchbook for a little too long, and it’s time to step back a little bit. I’ll show some soon! I promise.

In the meantime, I will be happy to abandon this studio for the natural light and open windows in my house. And the fridge and the cats and the coffeemaker and a balcony to smoke on. Not necessarily in that order.

ADDENDUM: Actually, this studio photo is pretty embarrassing. I am not an organized person, as evidenced by my totally chaotic set up of inks, baby jars and watercolor palettes (coffee cups, rags, trash, and one lonely dead cicada). I suppose if my home workspace is a crap corner, this studio is my very own beautiful kingdom of crap. I also suppose I mean that in the best way possible. Over and out.

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Old and new.

Saturday, June 5, 2010




I carry my moleskine almost everywhere I go — it’s my calandar, it’s my reference book, it’s my crossword-puzzle-holder, it’s my playground,it’s my portfolio, it’s my storybook, it’s my notebook, it’s my refuge, it’s my science lab, it’s my hospital, it’s my diary. I’m not sure what I did before my discovery of these sketchbooks, and I can never see myself without one. They’re beyond just sketchbooks to me, they’re complete extensions of myself, where I can be un-selfconcious and immediate and unreserved. Some magic happens in these books that I never quite expected — and as I unwrapped the fourth moleskine I’ve ever owned, the transformation that these books go through becomes strikingly obvious. The white edges of the pages collect finger grease, city grime, or purse detritus – the book swells and the covers bend to accommodate. The front has been carved into, the back was used as a gouache palette once. Compared with the pristine new book, the one I’m shelving truly does look worse for wear. It has acquired a lot of miles in this past year and I’m proud it shows.





I can’t help but get sentimental! These books are invaluable to me, both as tools, and as objects. Since many people ask, here’s the lowdown: I use the 5.5″ x 8.5″ sketchbook, which I always remember has the lavander label at the art store. The 100 pages are somewhere between cardstock and bristol board – they’re super smooth and hold up well to pen/pencil/erasing/ink/gouache/collage-work, but it doesn’t absorb water media very well. I have accidentally bought the notebook moleskine which has standard paper weight (with more pages), which is great for quick pen or pencil sketches, but doesn’t hold up to much else. So, whatever to suit your needs. Moleskine’s line has expanded so much, I’m pretty sure there’s one for everything. Go wild!

In other news, I “graduated” college, which meant walking across the stage to receive an empty diploma holder with 6 credits to complete become graduated on paper. So, my last classes this summer are two sessions of “advanced” painting – which gives me my own studio space, my very own 10′ x 13′ room to trash. At first I was overwhelmed by having four white walls to sit inside all day but I’ve been slowly filling the walls with crap to stare at. I can sit and stew in my maniac neurotic tendencies without worrying about cleaning brushes or putting away buckets of gesso. Spending 40 hours a week in an art cubicle makes some weird things happen, and maybe something good.

My garden is out of control and taking over the back deck. I planted seeds earlier in the season thinking that nothing would grow, and little did I know…super powered basil and tomatoes! And carrots and beets and bell peppers and watermelon!

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“Sensing imminent danger.”

Saturday, May 8, 2010

If these pages seem a little all over the place, they are. I think my life-cluttery is translating into sketch-cluttery, all graphite smeared and directionless. Although the dreaded last page of this moleskine is quickly approaching, and while not nearly as intimidating as the first pristine page, I’d like to leave this one on a positive note.

One week, almost home free, but not yet.

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????

Tuesday, April 13, 2010



A quick color study for an oil painting — I think my soft spot for stuffy, over-posed self portraits may be showing. Or maybe it’s just an exercise in trying to conceive a poised, conceptually attractive version of myself in a world where I don’t slouch or mumble, where my hair does itself, and smoking actually helps my circulation….but I digress. This is for an assignment, after all. Speaking of academics, did you see this totally insane note my professor wrote me? Let’s take a closer look:




Don’t just dismiss this as sloppy writing, there is some real art to this!
The absolutely inexplicable use of underlines, the fact that he scribbled out the first “?” with another “?” and just added a bigger “?”, the P in the second “Part” is apparently a long P (after many corrections, it seems), the use of both Arabic and Roman numerals. This reads more like a sentence map written in the phonetic alphabet than plain English. Although, the more I look at it, the more endearing it becomes. Luckily it’s barely legible, and I know what he’s talking about so I can avoid any awkward confrontations about his terrible communication skills.

In other news, I am really feelin’ these slime molds. Beware, if you have an irrational fear of clusters!

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Striped Gnarlebeest begins casting ‘Berserk’.

Monday, March 29, 2010




Rediscovering my videogames was probably the worst (best) thing I’ve done in a while — I’ve been playing enough Final Fantasy XII (and, uh, Castlevania) to demote myself from ‘human being’ to ‘nerd videodrone’. It’s time to just accept the fact I love, love turning my brain off and zone out in a beautiful game like FFXII. It’s deep seated though, someone brought up Zelda: Ocarina of Time recently and I could barely contain myself and my opinions about the Water Temple…and Jabu Jabu’s Belly…and never getting the Triforce…

I am apparently very interested in making myself into terribly misshapen humpback beasts. I could use an cherry & coke Icee for sure though.

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Anticlimatic, to say the least.

Sunday, March 28, 2010




It’s over! Now back to normal life, like cleaning my house, and sleeping.
I’ve been worrying about this Undergraduate show for a month — I don’t have much experience hanging and framing paper work, and making a watercolor look professional and clean is kind of difficult and time consuming. The frame was built on the wrong measurements the first time around, and I thought for a good 24 hours before the deadline that I would need to put in a different piece, when I was finally confident with this one.

There is a lot of pressure. The undergraduate show has a huge attendance, plus putting out a piece that represents my work as a whole, and essentially is a visual representation of ‘what I learned in art school’. Honestly, I’ve got so much farther to go, I feel like I don’t know anything — I thought I wanted to do illustration. I think I still do, but I’ve spent 3 years being moved towards conceptual, and ‘fine art’ work. The line between fine art and illustration is complex, in practice and as a ‘career’, and I’m often finding myself defending my illustrative tendencies in the painting department.

I can’t say that this was received very well, and I understand why. It’s not huge, it’s not colorful, it’s not a spectacle, it’s underwhelming at best — when in a show with 200 other (conceptual) art students, this piece is hardly going to out-do anything. There’s something about the magnitude of the BFA show that makes everyone hypercritical, like ‘this is the last show of your life because no one will ever see your work ever again so make it count.’ Hopefully, which isn’t true. I know somewhere in the back of my mind that this doesn’t matter, that graduating art school isn’t the end of all opportunities, and we are all toddlers just barely learning to walk in this big bad hostile world of negativity and failure. It’s just a shame that all the work I put into this ended on such a sour note. Wrong thing, wrong place, wrong time. So it goes.

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Sloughing skin

Monday, March 22, 2010

Livejournal has treated me well for many years, but really, it was high time to put it to rest. Plus having an integrated blog on my domain has been long overdue, since I don’t need to create any more online aliases just to have a blogspot URL…’feralcatbox’ is absurd enough. And my website hasn’t been given the time it needs, among other things.

Since my Graduation From Art School is quickly approaching, it felt appropriate to start something fresh. Over the next few months I’m anticipating a lot of confusion, you know, entering the real world, being an adult and all that. I want to use this blog as a place to give myself a way to work through my ideas and processes, moleskine sketchbook pages – but you know, those are all good intentions. And maybe it will be interesting, if I’m lucky. We’ll see.

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