A bit of a recap

In the very beginning of the summer, before I'd hardly had a chance to unwind, I boarded a plane bound for West Virginia where I went to visit my Dad. I had not, for a multitude of reasons, seen my father since the day I graduated high school in 2005. There had always been all these reasons and excuses why I hadn't visited him. I've realized that despite everything and anything...there are some relationships in your life and people you meet or know that are worth holding on to. While it was stressful in its own way, I'm grateful the trip gave me the opportunity to get to know him better.

Working for CTY this summer as an administrator was above all things a tremendous learning experience through which I made a small handful of incredible friends. While it was not what I had expected and my naive enthusiasm for the position did not serve me well, I adapted and made the best of it. I missed working more closely with students and found myself creating opportunities--visiting floors to join in on improvised four square games, co-facilitating afternoon swing dancing lessons, acting as a pirate judge for campus color wars, and performing in a staff lip sync for the talent show just to be a greater part of the action.

While I have not made any decisions regarding future endeavors (as I really ought to as soon as I can) I'm hopeful I will return to CLI in Baltimore next summer, where I really felt I had a tremendous positive impact on the staff and students.

Moving back to New Paltz was like coming home. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude and keep reminding myself to soak up every minute and to take advantage of every opportunity I can.

I also started working on a new body of work. At the end of last semester I spent an exuberant amount of time in the studio cutting out magazine clippings. I kept finding all these characters and scenes that suggested strong narratives filled with tension. I've begun scanning these collages and am making large format digital prints of them that I'm going to continue to print over. I'll have to post some images soon.

Song of the day: The Weakerthans-My Favorite Chords

SOLD! and a Conference Winning roll call

Alas, my group show on the New Paltz campus has ended! It was dismantled and its contents distributed to new homes on the walls of my room February 24th. The Art Society of Kingston (ASK) "Generation Gap" show has also come to a close. "I wish that I could have been warned", the print I posted in my last entry was featured on the cover of "Art Times", a small Hudson Valley Arts guide. I was unable to attend the opening. I did manage to sneak a peek at the show on Valentine's day and I'm incredibly excited to say that the print was sold! I'm flattered and truly grateful for the publicity and support of my work.

My father, who has really come around to the idea of me studying art in general, has also offered to buy one of my prints as an act of support. I will be sending him a framed copy of "Poster of a girl" in the mail shortly. :)

This month has been a whirlwind of activity and I can't say enough how grateful I am for the opportunities I've received. This past weekend I represented New Paltz an annual Residence Life conference at SUNY Cortland. Our team of 12 student leaders from New Paltz put together a lipsync for the conference's roll call challenge that really wowed the crowd and won first place! There are links to the video all over facebook, so I'll see if there's a way I could post it here!