Two more weeks

I am quite happy to say that, in two more weeks, the summer of hell will be over. Yesterday, I payed my tuition for fall semester and bought the books I need. Luckily, I only needed to buy two, as the other two that are required were ones I had from previous classes.

I wish I could say that the summer semester had gone well, but to be honest, I've managed to tank all three of the classes I took. I had been taking Art of Film, Art History, and Computer Literacy. Art of Film was entirely online, Art History was an independant study class, conducted mostly through email, and Computer Literacy was "web-enhanced". Halfway through classes, Vera broke and needed to be shipped off to be fixed. So, my mom lent me her laptop to help keep me sane. One of the raccoons startled me one evening while I was outside avoiding the lack of air conditioning, and I dropped it, leaving a huge, oozing crack across the monitor. During this time, I went to spend an evening with the kids, and some hose or something exploded, splattering power steering fluid across the ex's driveway and leaving me without reliable transportation. So, I'll be retaking classes next summer.

The one really good point to the whole summer is that I've finally gotten the studio cleaned out and ready to move in next week. It's not a large space, but it will be enough for me to have a quiet area to leave my work, and enough space to put a bed so that I can sleep in peace. It still needs painted, because the walls are an extremely ugly wood paneling. I'm hoping to paint them white, and on the one wall that has no windows, paint the quote "People in glass houses sink ships". It seems appropriate, considering the building's previous life was as a greenhouse.

I'm not entirely sure when I'll be able to post up pictures of my new space, because it seems that my camera was most likely stolen out of my car. I'm hoping that I'm just not seeing it, and will find it when I move my art supplies out of the car and into the studio, but if not, then I'll have to wait until I can afford a new one to post pics.

The Studio and Summer Semester

I've been working on getting my family's greenhouse cleaned out so that I can use it for a studio. Took a long while to do, considering most of what was in it belonged to either my aunt, or my cousin. While my cousin and I were happy to throw crap out without taking much of a look at most of it, my aunt insisted on going through absolutely everything, even if it wasn't hers, to sort things that she thought needed to be kept. That really slowed the process down, and it took us several days just to do that much. We finished that part on Friday, fairly early in the afternoon, so my cousin invited the kids and I over to go swimming at her place. I didn't get in the pool, so I had the chance to take pictures while they played.

Summer semester is going pretty slowly. Well, to be accurate, my work on summer semester is going pretty slowly. The semester itself is flying by faster than I'd like. It's frustrating, I just have reached the point of not wanting to do it. Part of it is fear, I know. The closer that I get to graduating, the more scared and stressed I get. I'm trying to work out ways to focus more on my own work, and less on the fact that this is my last year, so long as I don't screw up anymore.

Thinking things over...

I've noticed that I've been neglecting my blog the past couple months. My classes had been taking over most of my time, and I just hadn't much felt like updating. There's a lot still going on, and now I've been thinking over what to do about my blog.

See, when I started it, I had this idea that, as hard a time as I've been going through, it would be interesting to blog about what I was doing to get myself back onto my feet. I'd had this idea that, as hard as I knew it was for me, there might be others out there that felt as alone in a similar situation, who might be able to use a bit of encouragement just knowing someone else out there was slowly trudging their way along, too. Over time, it's really become apparent that with all that trudging, updating this blog is the last thing on my mind. When I do take the time to look around at other blogs and such, I don't really see that many that I can identify with. There are many out there that I enjoy, but even those are difficult to relate to most of the time.

As I said, I've been thinking over what to do about it. Some of the time, I'm convinced I should just outright delete the blog in a big fit of "meh". I've also considered just deleting the old posts and starting over with new ones that just feature the stuff I make, and pictures that I take. Then I think it might be worth starting over completely with a blog on the url my dad gave me as a "hey, you're taking a web design class" gift. The more time I spend mulling it over, the less sure I am of any particular route.

So...I figured I'd put the question out there, in case anyone is actually reading, and then make my decision once I get my studio finished and some actual work done. Should I just outright delete the scrap the whole idea, or try starting over on a new blog?

Update

Well, things have been fairly busy the past couple weeks, so I didn't get to do the update I wanted to last week.

Well, they fixed the radiator and head gasket, which got the car to start again. Unfortunately, the cylinders were badly warped from the heat, and the engine was worthless. So, after already spending 1600 on the repairs they recommended, the entire engine needed replaced, which they could do for another 1200 if they got a used engine. We left the car there over the weekend and went home to try and figure out how we were going to afford to pay for a new engine. Wednesday rolled around, and we went back up to the garage with the first of three payments we were going to make on it. At which point, the tow-truck driver says he's got another option for me to consider before I commit to replacing the engine.

So, the guy leads me outside and shows me a green Ford Windstar that he says he'll sell me for 600 dollars plus my old junker. The rear window is broken, and the front seats won't adjust...but other than that, it runs beautifully.

Other than that, we had our critique on our first two projects in ceramics. The first item was a polka dot candy dish that I made for my daughter. The glaze inside in one of the corners began to chip off, but other than that, I'm overall pleased with the way it turned out.

The second item was a water pitcher, which I glazed with white glaze, then used black and blue stain to paint water and ice cubes around the outside of it. It's really fairly small for a water pitcher, but it's light, and overall decently shaped. I'll look forward to using it once I bring it home.

The third item that was included in the critique was my box project. I was really pleased with the way it turned out, and the rest of the class seemed to be really impressed with it. On two opposite sides, I sculpted reliefs of each of my kids' school pictures, with holes cut through on some of the contours to allow light through if a tea candle is placed inside. On the lid, I cut two keys, to make sure that the lid sits properly. Each key matched what the kids were wearing, a butterfly on one side, and a spiderman mask on the other. The box was glazed with white glaze and then each face painted to help it stand out against the rest of the box. There were a few things I'd change if I could redo it, but overall I'm very pleased with it.

We're working on a project of our own choosing in drawing class. I've decided to do a series of drawings of a friend of mine. One will be pen and ink on white paper, one will be red conte crayon on brown paper, and one will be pastels on black paper. I'm still struggling with proper proportions in the human figure, and also struggling with planning out my work to fit in the allotted time. This is by far the most ambitious project I've done so far this year.

We put our midterm projects into the display case in the library. While I don't have a picture of it in the case, I do have pictures of the finished book. The covers, the spine, and each of the pages were cast out of resin, with various items embedded inside to create the images. The covers were cast, then painted with acrylic paint to help give the look of an old leather book. The cover was then bound together with a brown faux suede cloth, with an extra layer added around the spine so that the good side of the fabric showed both outside and inside.

Each of the pages have a loop of brown paper ribbon glued to them at the top and the bottom of the page. I then trimmed and stained a bamboo skewer, slipped one through the loops for each page, then glued the ends of the skewers to a small wood slat, which was then affixed to the spine of the book to hold each of the pages in the wood slats covering the ends were then stained to match the rest of the wood, and left to dry overnight. The paper ribbon loops give a small amount of room so that each page can be picked up and looked at, rather than just flipped back and forth. There are seven pages, each one dedicated to a single classic children's story. The two shown here are Sleeping Beauty (the page on the left, a netting of quilled rose vines) and Rumpelstiltskin (the page on the right, with the frame of straw. In the middle are a background of finer straw, a castle, a crown, a spinning wheel, and a handful of little spools of gold tape).

The car...

Well, they finally got the car running. Then, they said the engine "sounded weird" and wanted to keep it to try and get it in better shape, at no extra cost to me. So they kept it an extra night, and called me back today.

They've put all new spark plugs on it, and done a number of extra things (for free) to it to try and get it to work. While the engine does now run, it is definitely NOT safe to drive. In fact, when he started it up, it went "chug chug chug BANG!!! "and started spewing smoke. Definitely NOT drivable. His suggestion? another $1200 to put in a new engine. That's $900 for a used engine, which he'd need up front, and $300 worth of labor that he'd be willing to work with us on. And another week in the shop.

The major problem with this is....I spent all my money on the $1600 it cost to find out that the engine was crap. So, I'm thinking of selling off my drawings and ceramics and whatever else I can come up with to gather the $900 as quickly as possible. Because he's likely to start charging a storage fee come Monday if I can't pay for the engine.

Heading into midterms

Wow, it sure seems like the semester is flying by. We just had our last check in on our book project in drawing, then two weeks after that, the final object is due. So far, I have two pages, a spine, and the front cover made. Still have one page (maybe two), the cover, and the binding to finish. This past week, the Pell Grant Disbursement money fairy showed up. I'd planned on getting a few things done that were "needed but not urgent" with the money, then taking my daughter to get her ears pierced and a pedicure. Unfortunately, the one "needed urgently" item was getting my car fixed. It's been sitting in the driveway since the first of the year, not starting, and just overall looking pathetic and unloved. I missed my car, and most importantly, I missed what little freedom having it gave me. So, I had it towed off to the shop. 115 dollars down there. Then they looked it over and gave me a call the next morning to let me know what the damage is....apparently, the ORIGINAL problem was that my radiator more closely resembled swiss cheese. This is what was causing it to overheat if I drove any further than across town. And thanks to the fact that I couldn't sit on the side of the highway at night with two kids in the car and no cellphone, I pushed it even after it had started to overheat. This caused the second (and more expensive) of the issues needing fixed. I blew the head gasket. Final (hopefully) tally? $1625.66 to get it fixed. There goes the money fairy.

The advantage, however, is that I will have my car. And with the radiator replaced, I will hopefully be even more mobile than I was before. The guy at the shop said it should be finished by wednesday. We hope. As soon as I get out of class that day, I'm going to run over there, get my car, and go turn in my application at Dollar Tree. I've been waiting to apply because it just didn't make sense for me to apply if I had no reliable way to get there. And then next weekend? Pick up the baby girl, take her to Claire's to pick out earrings and get her ears pierced, then off to the beauty college to meet Nana for the three of us to girl it up with pedicures and other such things to make the girl feel like the princess she is.

The glimmer of slightly-less-dark at the end of the tunnel

Well, it's been a fairly busy few weeks getting settled into my new class schedule. In the best of semesters, the adjustment would be exhausting. This semester, exhausted sets in at noon. My drawing instructor was willing to allow me to continue being half an hour late to his class, so I've been scrambling to clean up and get from the ceramics studio to the drawing studio as quick as possible. So far, it looks like it's paying off, in drawing at least. my first drawing got an 18 out of 20 points.

It was interesting working on this one, because I chose to use a set of india ink markers that I bought. I've never really worked with pen and ink before, and I'll admit, I sat there for a long while before touching that first pen to the paper. I was very worried that I'd ruin the picture, since you can't take back a mark in ink. After a while, though, I got into a sort of rhythm with it and was able to just let my hands do their thing, focusing on the overall picture instead of making each little line perfect. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted, and there's a few things I'd try differently next time, but overall, I'm pleased with it.

In ceramics, we'll be bisque firing our first project on Monday. Using pinching and rolling, we were supposed to make two items, one of which involved joining two bowl shapes together. I don't have a picture of my second item, but my first has turned out pretty well. Once it's been fired, it will be glazed white, and painted to look like it's holding water and ice cubes.

The next project is using the slab roller. We'll be constructing a box of some sort, and it's supposed to either include a self-portrait, or reflect our own interests. I plan on making a tea-light holder, with two opposite sides each having a portrait of one of the kids cut out of it, so that the light will shine through them.

I figured up my credit hours this week. As long as I pass everything from here on out, I have only 24 more credit hours to complete, over the next three semesters. So by next summer, I should be done. That's if I manage not to screw up any more classes. Yay!