Figure study
charcoal on paper, 18" x 24"

I've been preoccupied with my budding new school year.
Taking a drawing workshop with artist, Elena Sisto.
I haven't worked from a model in years and it feels really
meditative to just reduce thought and work with the
figure. I'm enrolled in various humanity courses this term, so
the drawings I do will be my only escapist vice away from all
the literature I am to read each week. I'm really excited because
although I love so many different forms of art, I've always felt more of a
challenge in negotiating pictorial space. Things just kind of appear
or hover above one another and I'd like to establish more technical practice.
It's a weird concept to create works on flat surfaces.. works as a mark-
making mechanism, or a self-observational study?
I'll figure that out at some point but for now, I will enjoy
that erratic, manic feeling before an easel.

fall semester:
Personality Theories -M
Drawing Workshop -Tu
Visuality and Modern Art I -Tu
Civilization and its Discontents -Th
Society and Nature -F

My favorite courses so far (can a majority of them be considered "favorites"?) are Visuality and Modern Art, the aforementioned drawing workshop ..... and Civilization and its Discontents(yes this is a Freud class!). In Visuality and Modern Art, we are studying different ways of seeing and as visual devices gained the public attention, art movements and sub-movements unearthed. Optical instruments play a number of roles in art in the mid 19th century. In our first lesson, Isabel Taube, our professor had us read a publication by neurologist Oliver Sacks(in which he investigates the common and varied experiences of blind people/synesthesia) and she showed us that secret optical illusive painting for devout Napoleon Bonaparte followers. a link here: Napoleon, Josephine and their son.

Anyway, I had Isabel as an instructor for a previous class, Modern Art through Pop, and she's great. The only art history professors I find who have really done their part to help keep me loving what I love are Ann Wooster, Isabel Taube, and Amy Taubin. The class entitled Civilization and its Discontents, is a phenomonal consumption of my time. Led by novelist and journalist, Jim Knipfel; a literature class focused on Freud's writings among others. This last week's session, we were presented the 1972 cult film, Pink Flamingoes by John Waters. It was a controversial comedy(NC-17) to say the least, but truthfully, watching this just felt like someone fed me a plate of my own feces and my dog's and then sprinkled old lady bunyon shavings on the top and then for dessert, a dismembered penis in a pool of phlegm. Twas that gross. Anywaaaaaayy, we are reading good things. And Jim is really hilarious, soft spoken, and is friends with the Church of Satan's preist, Peter Gilmore... better known as Magus Peter H. Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan.

As for outside those class, I have been investigating secret societies, psychology, philosophy, media, buddhism, and architecture. I'll update later on how excited/depressed this all makes me. How priveleged my viewers should be to read thangs they already know about. womp womp.
I have to go read and finish up a birthday gift. Ta taaaa for now!