Amazing Things

Hi Everyone,

When I was in Lacoste, I took a bookmaking class. We made several small books to practice binding techniques, and I wanted to find the best use for them. They were too small for my normal journaling or sketching habits, but I didn’t want them to sit around being cute but empty (I feel the same way about books as I do about people).

At the time, there were several frustrating scenarios that I was dealing with and it was easy to get bogged down with them. But I didn’t want my time in Lacoste to be wasted: I was doing art in the south of France in the springtime and that was AMAZING. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was experiencing tons of amazing things everyday. In the end, I decided to use my journals to write down one amazing thing -- the most amazing thing -- that happened each day. I found that doing this made me more open to remarkable occurrences and that ending the day with a specific example of something truly wonderful caused any frustrations I had to take a backseat.

My two most recent Amazing Journals

Here are some of the most interesting entries from my Amazing Journal from the last few months:


August 3: Today I hit Matthew in the arm with a bag of tortillas. It was so much fun I did it again to his other arm.

August 20: Today, Judi and I were unpacking some pedestals for the gallery and they came with ziplock baggies which each had five binder clips, one screw and a Jolly Rancher.

August 25: Today, about 30 minutes outside of Wenatchee, our bus got pulled over. After a few minutes, the driver got on and asked if a Mackenzie so-and-so was on board. No one answered, so he said everyone who had gotten on in Wenatchee had to raise their hands because there were two extra passengers. Two girls got up and went up to the cop who had boarded the bus by this point. He took them away.

August 27: Today Katie Stout told us that she knows someone whose friend got to choose her name when she was six. She chose “Beanbag.”

August 30: Today Elizabeth told me that her husband, who is in the Coast Guard and is learning to deep sea dive, is in charge of buoy tenders, the boats that maintain the buoys along the coast (among other tasks). I’d always wondered who did that!

September 2: Today I learned that James and the Giant Peach is on the list of banned books. What on earth for? How could you get offended by a fictional giant fruit?

September 3: Today I learned that while in remote Indonesia, Luca found a bunch of WSU sweatshirts. What?!

September 4: Today, while Krisi and I were walking, I found a tiny snake (about 2.5 inches long). Its front half was black and yellow and its tail was baboon-bum blue. It really looked like it was two different snakes fused together.

September 5: Today in Home Depot, Matthew and I stumbled across two employees cutting a gigantic onion with a pair of oversized shears.

September 7: Today, as Becky was driving me back from the airport, there was a road sign (lit in red letters) that said “September is preparedness month. Plan ahead and be prepared.”

September 16: Today Jonathan Mayer told me that NASA spent millions of dollars trying to develop a toilet that would work in zero gravity. The problem was that it had spinning blades (to prevent poo from getting loose) so nobody wanted to use it. It turned out that the astronauts were just wearing diapers.

September 18: Today two Christians accosted me in Forsyth and asked to do a video interview of me. They asked me 1.) “Do you think you could love someone unconditionally?” 2.) “How are you prepared for the Day of Judgment?” and 3.) “Do you have any siblings?” They then told me that a huge group of people in the park were doing a Nordic dance. Upon further investigation, I realized that they were essentially jazzercising to Christian music.

September 24: Today I learned that the average college-educated native English speaker has a conversational vocabulary of about 30,000 words. Level 2 students in ESL have 2,000-4,000. Wow.

October 1: Today Cindy told me about how when she asked her nephew what he wanted her to draw if she could draw anything for him, he said without any hesitation, “God’s thumb.”

October 9: Today I learned that SCAD has an intramural Quidditch team.

October 17: Today Becky told me that when she was little, her family found orphan guinea pigs in a dumpster in Canada and they smuggled them across the border by having her grandfather keep them tucked in his shirt.

October 18: Today as I was walking back from Kroger, the bag I was carrying kept catching the breeze in just the right way so that the little plastic flaps kept making kazoo noises.

October 21: Today I learned that Professor Drummond was taught by Quentin Blake!

October 24: Today in church, one of the hymns we sang was written by someone named Augustus Montague Toplady.

Have a good and amazing week! Happy Halloween!

Sarah/Mouse

ps: I discovered a great website this week that gives a “Wonder of the Day.” Each day, a different question is posed along with an accompanying YouTube video, an explanation of the answer and activities that kids can do to further investigate the topic. The website is intended to promote curiosity and learning between parents and children, but it’s also pretty interesting for those of us who don’t fit in those categories. The website is: http://wonderopolis.org/.

Artistic Modesty

Hello Everyone,

This week, I turned in an assignment for my Illustration Markets class which I loved doing. A year or so ago, our professor created all the illustrations for an issue of a magazine called In Character. Each issue highlighted a different virtue, everything from thrift to loyalty to forgiveness. We were instructed to choose a volume that we resonated with, re-illustrate the cover and do two inside “spot” illustrations. I chose modesty because I have been thinking about it a lot in the last few years, especially since coming to SCAD.

Modesty (and its younger sister, humility) is something I hear about all the time in a religious context, but rarely in an artistic one. And when I do, it’s always negative. “You have to have an ego,” our professors tell us. “You have to be able to sell yourselves or you won’t make it as professional artists.” Modesty, in other words, is fine for people who have a “normal” profession with job security and health benefits. Us artists? We can’t afford it.

Every fiber of my being refuses to believe this. I think it’s not only unnecessary but actually detrimental to separate my religious beliefs from my artistic ones; surely it is possible to be humble and creative at the same time. So when I got a chance to do an entire project dedicated to the concept of modesty, I leapt at it. And when I saw that this issue included an article called, “Can Artists Ever Truly Be Modest?” by Eric Gibson, the editor of the Leisure and Arts page of the Wall Street Journal, I leapt again, this time literally.

Gibson highlights several reasons why artists generally aren’t modest. For one thing, as he says, “Artists are in the business of drawing attention to themselves” and, I would add, to their work. This is partly for reasons of patronage and financial survival, but also because you have to be confident enough in your work that you think it’s worth seeing. In general, an artwork isn’t truly complete until it has been viewed by someone. (If a painting is done in the woods and no one is there to see it, is it still art?) Also, art almost always deals with the human experience. My professor said of this particular project that “it’s all about us” as people. But it could be equally said of all art anywhere; we are inspired by events, emotions, scenes, objects, actions that involve us. How narcissistic! Furthermore, making a work of art is inherently tied up with identity. We sign our work. We paint self portraits. There is a sense that when we paint a picture, part of us is represented on the page. When I look at pictures by Henri Matisse or Jackson Pollock or Eric Carle, I feel like I know their makers. This makes sense religiously too: looking at Creation is a way of knowing the Creator.

It seems like making art is destined to be wrapped up in ego and self-promotion, and this is dismaying. How do I deal with moments in the artistic process that tempt my pride: professors telling us we need to be confident and sell ourselves; people complimenting me on my work; the occasional dreams I have of winning the Caldecott? Assuming that false modesty is really just a more sneaky form of pride, how do I respond? Of course, humility is the trickiest virtue to cultivate because if you recognize any progress in yourself, it almost always turns instantly to pride at your accomplishment. One step forward, two steps back.

Fortunately Gibson concludes that, though rare, it is actually possible for artists to be modest, and that perhaps they have a modesty unique to their profession. He describes the humility artists have when they recognize the artists who have come before them, when they acknowledge that they create within a larger context. He talks about artists being daunted by the immensity of the work ahead of them. At one point, he even quotes Michelangelo saying, “I am not . . . a painter” as he was working on the Sistine Chapel. Often, artists can feel that their art is bigger or beyond themselves, that they can get lost in their work. Gibson discusses artists sacrificing themselves for their work (and though he doesn’t mention them, there are clear Biblical parallels here too).

I would add several reasons to Gibson’s observations. Artists working in any kind of a community, be it a class or a company, must continually hear and hopefully incorporate advice from others. This is particularly true in Illustration, where an art director or an editor can manage your project until the final publication. Cooperation fosters humility when it reminds us that our methods and opinions are only one possible approach.

Mostly, I think that artists can be modest when they recognize that everything they have, be it talent, training or opportunities, comes from someone or somewhere else. After honesty, I think thankfulness is the biggest contributor to humility. And very occasionally, in our best work, there is a sense of awe. Every so often, I look at a picture I’ve made and think, “Wow! That’s good! I wonder how I did that.” It sounds prideful, but I think it’s actually the point in the artistic process when artists can be most modest. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I remember I was somehow connected with making the work in front of me. And it is that surprise that reminds me that I’m not completely in control as I create. And that is terrifying, amazing and relieving. It is, in other words, humbling.

And we’re back to the infuriating thing about modesty: here I am, telling you how humble I am as I make art, the iteration of which isn’t exactly modest. But as I get caught in moral eddies, I am aware of the impending deadline -- my assignment needs to be completed, not just thought to death. And again, I find that art (like children, stories, nature, and good friends) takes me out of myself long enough for me to forget the whole debate and actually make something.

Here are the results of this assignment:

The cover: My friend Erin suggested doing a peacock precisely because they are known for their vanity. I thought it would be a striking image for a cover, and it would be fun to have the peacock with a sort of fan in front of his eyes.





For the first "spot" illustration, I wanted to show an artist locating herself in history and yet still making a distinct impression: "It is here, in relation to the past and their sense of their place in the history of art, that artists exhibit modesty in the truest sense of the term."






For the second "spot" illustration, I decided to do an image for an article about how scientists won't ever be able to know everything about the world: "From time to time, when we catch glimpses of the unknown, we feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in learning something that no human has ever known before -- but we are equally humbled by how much we don't know."

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

ps: If you’re interested in reading Gibson’s article, or any others from In Character, you can access the full text online at http://incharacter.org/archives/. I find this a very thought-provoking publication.

Website!

I recently got a website to display my art. You can find it at here or by clicking the blue link to the left. I'd love any feedback you may have.

Enjoy!

Catch Up -- Back in Savannah

Hello Everyone,

I have just finished up the fourth week of class in my second year at SCAD, and it’s hard to believe that I’m already two fifths of the way through the quarter. Things have been busy, as usual, and I’m sorry I haven’t been more consistent about writing. (I know I owe many of you individual emails.) It’s definitely not because of a lack of things to write about. There have been several significant changes to my experience at SCAD this year, and I want to take a minute to catch you up with them.

Most significantly, I have moved into an apartment. It’s close to the Illustration building, and it’s on one of the lovely downtown streets of Savannah. The apartment was pretty disgusting when we moved in (we suspect that the previous tenants not only didn’t clean once during their stay here -- they actually sprinkled dust and dirt in every possible nook as part of some sacred ritual we haven’t yet figured out). We spent the first few days scrubbing every surface we could find, including our walls.

Meanwhile, we needed furniture. I had many Craigslist encounters, some more rewarding than others. We rented a U-Haul truck which I drove around Chatham County successfully after an initial stressful moment when I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t keep from reversing. I eventually determined that I actually needed to turn the engine on. Imagine that! And people say automatics are easier than manuals! By the end of the day, I was even able to park without leaving six feet between the curb and the front of the truck. Slowly, we gathered pieces of furniture and managed to haul them up two flights of steep stairs. We are settled in quite nicely now, and aside from the occasional cockroach slaying, are finding the place peaceful and comfortable.

The best part of the apartment is that I get my own room but also have great housemates. In my room, there’s lots of light and I’ve managed to hang up all of my South African mud with clothes pins.

Some of my South African mud.

I have my art supplies organized with a whole drawer dedicated to adhesives. Mostly, I’m loving having my own space.

My bedroom, which has a nice little nook with a window which lets in a lot of light.

I’m living with my friend Qian, who lived in the same suite as me last year. She’s a Graphic Design major from Shanghai and is hilarious. She is incredibly talented and often gives me good advice about my work. I’m really enjoying living with her again. My other housemate, Becky, is, believe it or not, also from Spokane. And, believe it or not, her parents work at Whitworth. And, believe it or not, her grandmother was my mentor in high school. And, believe it or not, we live five minutes away from each other. And we hadn’t met until this summer! Becky had been teaching art in China for four years and decided to go to grad school in art. We emailed for a while and I was very excited when she decided on getting an MFA in Illustration at SCAD. We decided to live together and she and Qian have been chatting in Chinese and comparing cooking tips. Becky and I have been having lots of fun realizing how similar our childhoods were (NPR shows featuring prominently, our fathers talking about being “good stewards of time,” enjoying frozen yogurt at Didier’s, etc.). We laugh together a lot and in my opinion, at least, that’s the main requirement for a good home.

Becky, Qian and me at Becky's birthday dinner.

Over the summer, I was becoming wary of coming back to SCAD for a few reasons. For one, it seemed like I was quite adrift in many of my classes -- there wasn’t a whole lot of cohesion to my work, largely because the professors were stretching us in divergent directions with different projects. But it’s different this term, due to an increased flexibility on the part of a the professors and an increased confidence on my part. I feel like I’m finally doing what I want to be doing the way I want to be doing it. This is exciting. My studio classes are Illustration Markets (where we explore the various markets available to us as illustrators) and Children’s Book. Both professors are encouraging me to continue using mud, for which I’m grateful.

I was also wary because I felt like art school seemed so insular. It seemed like very few people (apart from my closest friends) wanted to talk about the outside world. It seemed narcissistic and lazy. It was hard being in South Africa this summer, where I got to revisit the places I’d worked in 2008 and where I’d felt relevant and at least mildly helpful. Grad school provides a rather luxurious and closed environment in general, and the nature of art school only exacerbates this. Several things have made it better this year, though. For one thing, it helps to be living with Qian and Becky. I think about half our sentences begin with, “In China . . . ” or “In South Africa . . . ” We’re constantly reminding ourselves that there is a world outside of downtown Savannah. Also, the professor of my other class, Art Criticism, takes a global view of art history which is essential and unfortunately rare. We’re required to subscribe to the New York Times, and she has an entire class period devoted to art criticism in Africa! I am continuing to tutor ESL students which brings me in touch with a number of people from all over the world. So although I’m back in the SCAD bubble, it doesn’t feel nearly as stifling as I’d feared it might.

And there are great benefits to being in art school which I’m remembering. Aside from seeing my friends again, my favorite part about being back how naturally quirky everyone and everything here is. It’s good to be back in the land of lectures with titles like, “Is There Any Depth in Flatness?” It’s great to get emails from friends with advice about the best glue to use in various situations. In class the other day, one of my friends was looking at our peer’s work on the wall. He sat there holding his hand up in front of his face for about twenty seconds until the professor said, “What are you thinking?” It’s good to be in a place where what might look like insanity to others is actually a sign of thinking. For my friend’s independent project, she is crocheting images of punk rockers. I’m still where I need to be, and that’s also exciting.

I hope you are all well, wherever you are.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse