Dear Stranger

There was some trouble with the servers over this weekend and Dear Stranger has been offline since saturday. Apologies to everyone, we should be back online without any more interruptions (fingers crossed on that one).

I’m not sure why these photographs have been on my mind this morning but they have.
They are from a project that I worked on my junior year at Parsons called “Home Turf.”
As I remember it, the basic idea of all of the projects done in this class was to explore the relationship between a given institution, The New School, and those who utilize it. For my project I had interviewed a random sample of students across various divisions and programs at the school, asking questions about how the expectations they’d had for their educational experience compared to the actual experience of being a student navigating through the school. Towards the end of the project I worked on this set of photographs as a way of drawing this “public” exploration back down into a “private” or personal-to-me one.

I played with this one in a few ways. It was a particularly simple but striking statement to me at the time… and still, but for different reasons.

Not all negative sentiments…

But many were

I’m happily done with Parsons now and studying at Hunter College instead. I set the curve on an exam in my “Brain and Behavior” exam last week, which is part of why Dear Stranger hasn’t seen a decent update in a while.

There were other thoughts… maybe later. I’m baking a lasagna.

I got a copy of anders nilsen’s “The End” this morning.

It’s sad. In that way that things are only ever sad when they’re really honest, so it’s beautiful, but you feel a bit guilty for thinking so- because under the beauty, it’s still sad, honestly so.

Which is to say I liked it a lot. I like most of his stuff. You should look it up.

Here are the stages that the drawing went through more or less. Click for larger versions.

(You can also read my rant about process on the sketch blog I’m starting with my roommate, http://thewickertoilet.wordpress.com )

“the suffering of others wins poetry contests and gets you laid”

I saw that over at secret vespers today and I really liked it. It reminded me of something I had written down while flipping channels and stumbling on the show “Intervention” on A&E. I meant to work it into a drawing or something eventually, but haven’t found the right image to really relay the thought just right:

“People are coming apart at the seams, and it’s entertainment.”

I play with the idea of confession in my own art quite a bit, and with suffering… but it’s always honest, it’s always my own to talk about, and it isn’t really with the intention of entertaining anyone. Just… in the hopes of offering some sense of connection. For you or for me, I’m not so sure.

I’m keeping a sketch blog with my roommate called the wicker toilet.

I just posted some of the process work that went into this image:

This song: I wish that I could see you soon, by Herman Düne puts me in a good mood, the video does too. Reminds me a bit of Cat Stevens. It’s one of those songs that I keep playing on repeat and grinning to. I like the green men.