Dear Stranger

In about 2 weeks I’ll finally be done with school for this year and begin a short break before the insanity of the next year starts up. I intend to go back to the normal comic-ish format once I have that break. It takes time to finish a fully painted page, and I haven’t had time lately. But I do have 2 pages started that just need color, and some others to work on when my time is mine again.

I don’t know why, but I’ve never been the type who was able to really devote herself to making art. I mean, I graduate from art school excited to finally have some time on my hands to make things my way– and within a year I go and throw myself back into school to study in a field that (at this level at least) has nothing at all to do with art. So I’m stuck trying to divide my time between attempting to memorize cell anatomy and statistics formulas, and mixing paints… Even in art school I couldn’t just settle into a life of drawing and painting classes, I had to stuff my schedule with HTML and ActionScript, or random ass architecture classes just cause I get bored so easily and needed a challenge.

I like to think that some day I’ll figure out a way to synthesize the vast database of random knowledge that’s stored in my head at this point. Instead I mostly just feel useless for knowing a ton of shit that no one needs to know all at once and not being able to put almost any of it to use in real life.

Ok, rant over.

I haven’t been art making lately, but I have been reading- boring for you, important mental hibernation for me. I like this:

“When Thomas Mann was very young, he wrote a naïve, intriguing story about death. In the story death is beautiful, as it is beautiful to those who dream of it very young, when it is still surreal and enchanting, like the bluish voice of far-off places.

A young man, mortally ill, gets off a train at an unknown station. He walks into the town without knowing its name and takes rooms in the house of an old woman whose forehead is covered with eczema. No, I do not wish to go into what took place in the rented rooms. I only wish to recall a single minor occurrence: walking around the front room, the ill young man had the feeling that “in between the sounds made by his footsteps he heard another sound in the rooms on either side – a soft, clear, metallic tone – but perhaps it was only an illusion. Like a golden ring falling into a silver basin, he thought…”

That minor acoustic event is never developed or explained in the story. From the standpoint of the action above it could have been omitted without any loss. The sound simply happened; all by itself; just like that. The reason I think Thomas Mann sounded that “soft, clear, metallic tone” was to create silence, the silence he needed to make the beauty audible (because the death he was speaking of was beauty-death), and if beauty is to be perceptible, it needs a certain minimal degree of silence (a perfect criterion of which happens to be the sound of a golden ring falling into a silver basin).

(Yes, I know. You haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about. Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise – the noise of words, the noise of cars, the noise of music, the noise of signs – we live in it constantly. It has sunk as deep as Atlantis. The only thing left is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.)”

-Milan Kundera<

There’s a broken clock on the wall of my 2:30 class on Monday afternoons. I noticed it on the first day I had the class, for the whole hour and twenty five minutes the clock claimed that it was 10:43 on a wednesday, the ninth. The second hand is bright red and it just ticks in place between 36 and 37 seconds. The second hand is what caught my attention at first, on every tick it jumps lightly in place, but on the tocks it jumps more forcefully, as though it’s really hoping that on this tock it’ll finally break free of it’s 37th second prison. I spent most of the first class watching the clock, I was curious if the minute hands would actually make some attempt to tell time, but they didn’t budge.

When I came back the next week, at 2:30 once again, the clock claimed it was 4:25, still on wednesday, the ninth. The second hand though, hadn’t moved from it’s spot between 36 and 37, and still jumped lightly on the ticks and forcefully on the tocks…. Why do I find this interesting? God only fucking knows. But I spent the whole of that class watching the clock again, trying to catch the minute hands in action, to no avail. THIS is what I waste MY time doing, watching clocks that move without moving, trying to catch them in the act.

I was back in that room again today. It said it was 5:40, still wednesday, still the ninth. Although, the wednesday is only half visible now, which makes me suspect that next week it may finally be thursday. The room is obviously stuck in some sort of time warp where, conceivably, life is moving at a much slower pace. Today I started musing about what wednesday of what month of what year it was that I was visiting while I sat in the room. My teacher asked why I was smiling, and I quickly made an excuse and a mental note to control my facial expressions for the rest of class.

To get out of this dry spell I’ve made up a new game. I’ve solicited assignments and I’m required to complete one every day until I’ve gotten through the list. They don’t have to be good, but they have to be done. Aubrey’s Boy and Owl was the first, and a pretty good start, I might even make that one into a color piece.

I finished this one yesterday:

As assigned by kate.

And this tonight:

A portrait of Hayley, as per her request.

More to come. And I’m still taking requests.

My one a day plan is on a bumpy road cause I broke with a fever late last night, so concentration is off. But here goes #4 assigned by Cat.

(click for larger image)

And as an added treat, a second interpretation of it by Cara:

Super rough, but it makes me giggle. This was for Cara’s suggestion of something out of place. No more sicky, so back to trying for one a day.

Ok, so this is a weird one but I said I would draw anything… so: A pineapple man playing a ukulele on a swing set, for tim.

Technically I owe her a willow tree, but I was in the mood for portraits this week so:

for Marta.

I just finished this, it’s the first one I’ve done but I’ve got a whole collection of unpainted boxes to work on.