Diploma Arrival

This evening I received my diploma in the mail. It is exciting to have this piece of paper, but it makes me think: What am I suppose to do now? Since August I've been working and liking the stability, but not the job. The current population I am working with is not for me. I have given myself a year and 2 goals with it. This job has also has also bought myself some time to figure out what is next. But back to the diploma. Its here; validating; and mine. I am happy to have accomplished this long term goal of mine. Now onward!

Getting Closer!

Today we formalized our invitation as a clas for our group exhibition. This culminating event for graduation will be held in May, and the install begins late April. Here is the image of our postcard for the exhibit. Not to brag, but the Concept and image were my idea. I'm really just glad that we didn't have our faces all over the thing. Its not really suppose to be about us, but rather the artwork.

If you are in the LA area, or are able to get out of town to visit, I do hope you can join me for this event.

Update - Thesis & Work

It's been a long time since I have updated here, but it needed to be done. I am now in my last semester at Otis and working on my thesis project entitled, "Pulse & Parcel."


This is Side Street Projects, the place that I have been working as the Community Programs Manager and Alternative Routes Teacher. I am also been allowed to execute my community component and sculptural land component at the sight.


Here is a detail of the flagging tape that I am using to demarcate an individual plot.


This is a photo of a test plot. I am trying out the materials to see how they hold up to weather.

More updates to come!

Back to School...and Work!

Months have gone by since I swore up and down that I was moving on from Otis and not going to finish my MFA. Well, over the summer I spent my time job searching and interviewing for the few jobs out there. It was scary times, and while I got real close to a few jobs, it was a lot of rejection.

It was down to a week away from when school would have been starting for me, and I had just had an awesome interview with a really cool arts education non-profit in Pasadena. I had pulled out all the stops for this interview and felt really good about it. After a couple of days without hearing back, I started feeling bad about leaving another program, and felt like I just wanted this degree for what ever reason, that I couldn't explain or quantify.

I talked to my program director and somehow had convinced her into giving me more scholarship money and accepting all of my transfer credits. That means I would only need to take 4 more classes to finish this degree. Finally I heard from the job that they had hired someone else, someone that had just graduated from my program. This really made the decision for me, and with the new deal I had worked out with the school, I was going back, just like that. Months worth of stress and laboring over decisions, how to make decisions and utter denial was all resolved in 3 days. Sometimes time fixes things.

In going back to school, I was able to convince this non-profit, to create a position for me, and hire me on part-time. They would partially be paying me through my work-study. So going back to school actually gave me a job. At least I won't risk spending a year job searching and can finish this degree--part-time at that!

I am also still planning to apply to 2 graduate programs this year for the following year. One is in Urban Planning, and could be finished part-time while I start working. The other is a full-time program in Public Health. I realized that no one job path/degree is going to give me what I'm looking for. So the plan is that I will do both. Create a professional option where I can make money in an ethically responsible way and fund my own artwork.

This is of course only the plan for now, and I am open to new opportunities and change, so only time will tell, but I'm looking forward and enjoying the present.

Field Trip!

On the fifth week of James' graduate program his incoming class was invited to attend a field trip for 4 days in the Sierra Nevada Mountain area. This educational experience included tours and trips to Mono Lake, Yosemite and a ghost town called Bodie. We camped for 4 nights with his class in Lee Vining, just outside of Yosemite. The most amazing thing about this trip was that it brought us back a previously visited location on our big cross-country trip on the motorcycle. This area was the place that was the hardest day on the trip, as we ran from snow and crossed Tioga Pass (a road that is closed most of the year, with no guard rails and a 9,000 ft. drop). Traveling on this route again really made us both feel like we were right where we needed to be in life. We had make it through that difficult journey and now we had the pleasure of experiencing it through an educational and professional capacity.


Mono Lake

The group trip ended on Thursday. We spent the previous day hiking through Tuolumne Meadow in Yosemite where we crossed streams, climbed on top of a granite hill and found cougar prints. We broke up into smaller groups: hiking, discovering and drawing. The utter pristine conditions of this location was spiritual. We ended the day by all of us hiking up Lembert Dome. It was incredibly steep and the white stone looked like snow. We sat there as a group waiting for the moon to come up and soaked up the sites.


Where we crossed the stream.


On top of Lemert Dome

After the 4 nights as a group James and I continued on to spend 3 more nights camping, making this our longest camping trip ever. We continued through Yosemite, crossing through the valley and continuing straight through to a campsite just outside of Yosemite called Summerdale Campground. A wonderful spot with a stream that I jumped into.

The next day we were on the road early and made it to Kings Canyon National Park. We found a great campsite called Crystal Springs and spent the rest of the day seeing: General Grant Tree (the biggest in this park), we took a panoramic drive and hiked to see the vista, and finally made an awesome campsite dinner with veggie sausage, mashed potatoes and rice.


James down in the canyon.

The following day we woke early and drove over to the Boole Tree, which consisted of a few miles on dirt roads and a hard hike uphill until finally you're alone with the big giant. This site is one that most don't get to see because of the difficulty of the hike, but that really just made it that much more awesome. On the hike down we discovered that the trail we were on was also used for cattle, and we encountered a cow that was lost from its herd. After the hike we got back into the car and drove down to the Cedar Grove area, which was in the canyon of these mountains. The views were dramatic and unlike anything I had seen before. The final stop was by Hume Lake and then back to the campsite where we had pizza.


The lone cow.


The Boole Tree and me.

The last day of the trip we woke knowing that were where going to see the biggest tree on Earth. We had saved the best for last and boy was it! The first stop was right to this tree: General Sherman, and its was definitely worth the wait and the mile hike. We had wanted to see this tree 3 years ago on our big cross country trip, but couldn't fit it into the schedule because of the difficult location of the park. Next we drove over to a meadow area and hiked around a while while it lightly rained. There was a whole grove of giants, and we even drove through one. The hike in the meadow was amazing, and we were able to see a bear and a deer within 100 feet of each other. The final stop before we left the park was Moro Rock, which is a round boulder on top of a mountain. There is a trail of mostly stairs that you can hike up to it. Once on top you are higher than anything else in the area. The trek down was a little scary, but the most frightful part was the lightening we saw in the near distance once we were off the rock. The rest of the day we spent driving home, arriving by 6:30pm.


Driving through a tree.


Walking through a tree.


The Bear!


An average tree in the meadow.


Hiking down from Moro Rock


Together on top of Moro Rock

Another School Year in the Bag

On May 4th, I completed a year of art school in the graduate program at Otis College of Art & Design. With only one year to go, I feel complete in my educational experience there, and am ready to more on to an education that can create a job for me. This experience has fulfilled my dream of going to art school, and before I drop another 30 grand, I'm ready to explore a more financially sound future. While I still believe that a person can survive, and even make-it as an artist, there is a life-style choice that has to be made and a lot of luck.

While the good-bye has not been finalized, I am at a point of no return mentally. I have lost my faith and trust in the idea that art with be able to sustain me. I suppose I always knew this, but thought I might have a chance at becoming one of those rock star artists. Upon meeting some of those artists types at school, I've decided that that life is not the one I want.

This last school year was good. I had a successful community based project with the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, a good LA Times Review, meet some amazing people, got to think and talk art a lot, and enjoyed the sights and sounds of LA.

Now, what do I want to do next?

He's Grad School Bound!

During the first week of March James found out that he will be moving on into grad school. He was formally accepted to Cal-Poly Pomona for their Landscape Architecture Program. This is a 3 year program, with the option for a fourth to double major in Urban Planning. He was also accepted to Cunny in NYC, but we've decided to stick it out here in LA, and see what happens. Beside, Cal-Ploy's program is much better.

As James is about to begin his career path, I am floating around in mine. A year through my MFA and I have a terrible feeling about the direction of this path. Everyone that has come lecture through our program is broke, and has been working odd jobs for the last 10 years and making art on the side. If this is the case I don't think I need to waste another year's worth of money to make that happen. Ah, yes the option to teach in a university. Well, there is always that, but apparently that's just as unlikely as anything else.

So while I'm thrilled for James and our life together, and I'm back at the drawing board for my career. Two masters programs down, how many more to go? For the first time I'm considering the most practical of career paths, and am finally ready to make money. For the time being I'm looking for work, and looking for a new direction.

Artwork Up.

Today I installed a piece of artwork at school for a group art show. It feels good to be doing something so familiar and something I know very well. I chose to display a piece that I think I wrote about earlier, the bindle stick or "hobo bag". The reception for the show is next week, so I will take a picture then and post it up.

It feels good to be focused on something other than my feelings for a change. I'm really looking forward to the end of the semester.

Therapist, I am not.

While it's been a while since I've written here, it has mostly been because I have been in a bit of a mental debate. I have decided to take next semester off from school to reconsider whether I want to be a therapist or not. While I feel like I had consider this before, there is nothing like the experience to show one the opposite.

Over the last 2 months I have been working at Tewksbury State hospital, which I was really excited about, until I started. And it was probably after I learned of the severity of the patients problems that I started to realize that I do not want to be trying to heal these people. While I do want to make the world a better place, I am not sure I want to do it this way. I am a very sensitive and emotional person and doing this work leaves me drained and depressed.

So my plan is to get a job after I return from Florida and to work and make art. I'll be staying in Boston because there are still a lot more opportunities up here than in Florida. In addition, this will give me the option to continue the program if I realize that it is where I want to be. I've also been looking at another program at my school called "Community Arts" which is a masters in Education. It's a shorter program and would redirect my work back to the type of work that I had been doing. I think education is a better place for me.

I'll keep you updated on the process. Right now I'm feeling really good about this decision, and everyone at school has been really supportive too. It was difficult at first to not feel like I had failed, but the truth is that I'm glad I tried it and would have never really known otherwise.

Finally Starting

On Tuesday I finally began my internship site. And by that I mean I went to orientation. It's interesting working for such a huge facility. I've never worked somewhere so large. The site, Tewksbury State Hospital is a government funded facility for those that need specialized long term care, or for those that have no benefits. It's an interesting place and I can already tell that I am going to learn a lot. I'm a little nervous about working with adults, but it was the same thing when I started working with kids, and I loved that. One thing is for sure, I'll either love it, or I'll go back to working with kids. I'm so interested to see how its all going to unfold.

I'm most excited about the space we have. My site supervisor is really nice and encouraging and I look forward to working with her. Just today I started to get excited about all the possibilites of the space and the site.

There'll be more updates as I learn more.

School Update

What to see what I've been up to in school? Come see my other blog, which is really for documentation purposes, but it gives you an idea of some of the work I've been doing.

http://arttherapyart.blogspot.com/

Here is a resent image of one of my last projects.
http://arttherapyart.blogspot.com/2008/09/bindle-stick.html

Other than making art, I do lots of reading. It's really great though, and I'm enjoying the whole experience.