WoosterCollective.com is a pretty cool site that showcases street-art from around the world. I've watched the site for a couple of years now, and so, when I found out they were on facebook a while back, I decided to add them. They frequently post interesting questions (like what artist has been most influential to you?) and I generally always reply or at the very least read all of the cool answers people leave. Recently they posted the question "If you had $50 to spend on art, how would you spend it?" I answered "Buy $50 worth of balloons and hand them them out to people, and photograph the process." I didn't think much of it until I got a message saying that they would like to fund my project along with two others. I'm really excited about this! I just found a place where I can get a helium tank and balloons for the money that I have to spend, I have some awesome friends who agreed to help me with this, AND we even have a great time and location picked out. So come this friday, we'll be handing out free balloons! *high fives* for all!

A friend posted a similar entry to this one, and since I claimed one of his free works, it's only fair that I respond by offering free works myself (even if it weren't one of the rules). Said free work can be photography, small drawing, collage, Illustrator rendering of a character...pretty much any 2-d work within reason. If you have any questions/specific requests let me know.

Rules:
1} The first five people who comment on this journal can request a 2-d work on a topic/theme of their choice. I'll do my best to post my "artistic response" in a timely manner.
2} Anyone who comments on this journal for a piece of art must then do this journal themselves and offer five free pieces of art.
3} Have fun.

So anyone who knows me, can tell you that I am one of the most indecisive people on the planet. I can't make my mind up about anything, be it an important decision or where I want to go for dinner. So I am very excited to say that I have decided what I want to do for my senior show.

I'm about to finish up my junior year here at college and I had been trying to decide what work I'm going to want to share for my senior show. The senior show is pretty much sums up your experience in the art program. A HUGE amount to planning, time, and money go into the the show. Students are responsible for planning everything for the event. This mean postcards, posters, business cards, entertainment, food and drinks that will be served, organizing the space, hanging the work, pricing the work, promoting the event, etc. The show is sort of the students debut into the art world.

I had two possible ideas for the work I wanted to show. I plan on graduating with a concentration in graphic design, and that's what I want to do for a career. I've been working on a series of fun package designs, that seem to be pretty effective. For a while I was thinking that if possible employers were going to be at the show, it wouldn't be a bad idea to showcase my design work. However, while I feel like I'm pretty good at design, it's not what I'm most passionate about. I enjoy it a great deal, but I'm not about to climb the nearest mountain and shout it to the heavens. My other possible option is the digitally edited photos that I've been taking of the woods (I've posted a few of them here). I love everything about that process. I love going up into the woods with a camera and snapping away. The forest is such a fun place to be, I could (and have) spend hours and hours walking through the woods, capturing what it is that I love about being there. I love opening up my photos on the computer, and seeing how everything turned out. I love seeing a photo jump out, that I know would look awesome if I tinkered a bit with it. I love working on the photos, and making them tell a story, and seeing the process they go through to get there. I love watching my prints come out of the printer. I love to share my efforts with people and getting feedback. I love having people tell me that my photos remind me of their own experiences in the woods.

Since the later choice makes me so much more happy, I've decided it would be the better choice for the show. I know it seems like the clear choice, but you have no idea how long it took me to reach this conclusion....but that's just how I am. I'm just glad I was able to make up my mind.

Anyhoo, hope all is well with everyone else. And I'll try to post some new work soonish.

I need to work harder. I need to put more effort into my work. It should mean something, represent something. Something other than just a graded assignment that I was able to get handed in. Blah!

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On another note, I've been sort of planning a personal project in the back of my mind. Not too long ago, I posted an entry titled "List of 100 Things". I'd like to possibly expand on that in several ways. I'd like to add more. Call me crazy, but if I can get it up to 1,000 things, I think that would be pretty bitchin'. Also, I want to be able to present it in more of a visual format. I'm sort of thinking photos, which I keep imagining would be either sepia or black and white. In my mind, I visualize kind of ambiguous close-ups, which would mean nothing unless paired with text. That too I imagine would be something simple, like courier new or another type-writer-like font.
I haven't actually sat down and tried to come up with 900 more things yet. I don't know how that will go exactly. If it proves to be more difficult than expected, I might make it somewhat of a collaboration, and ask others what would be on their list. I'm not all together sure how or when I'm going to tackle all of this, but having projects like this stored away for later are sometimes what keep me from going insane.

I’ve been receiving a lot of bad new lately. For some reason, it seems as if a lot of people I know are developing one sort of cancer or another. And more people than I would like to say have died in all sorts of bizarre ways in the past month. On top of that, I’ve been losing weight in sort of an abnormal way. Of course I could stand to lose the weight, but I’d prefer to do it of my own accord, a.k.a diet and exercising. Instead what happens is I get really stressed out about something, and I rapidly lose weight, while keeping the same diet and exercise routine. It happened over the summer when work stressed me out, and I never gained the weight back like I thought I would. And very recently it happened again, only this time it was worse. It was my winter break, and I wasn’t really exercising at all, I was taking it easy. In fact, the day after getting stressed/upset about something I went out with some friends and ate, in addition to three square meals that day, a considerable portion of ice cream. The next morning I get up on the scale and discover that in three days I’ve lost ten pounds. That put me at the weight I was at seven years ago! What the hell.

But on the upside, while dealing with everything, I’ve once again seen the amazing power that having good friends has. They were there for me when I needed them. Try imagining hitting the emotional rock bottom, and suddenly being brought back up into the clouds. That is what my friends did for me. I will always be grateful for the influence they have had on me. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine a better group of people to know. Considering how lucky I have been in regards to my friends, I don’t mind all the doom and gloom quite so much.

In any case, I’m back at school now, and hopefully won’t lose any more weight. It’s true that school can be stressful, but it’s the kind of stress I can handle. In fact I look forward to this upcoming semester. I want to try to get a head start on my portfolio for my senior show, so I’ve got to give it all I got to get some quality work. I’ll also be writing some long overdue responses to messages on here. My apologies if you’re one of the people I’ve delayed in getting back to. Anyhoo, I hope life is treating everyone well. And happy New Year.