My parents were away in Las Vegas over the weekend and they brought home for me a pack of Beatles guitar picks, shirt with the album cover from the Beatles' Revolver, and a mood necklace. Like a mood ring only around my neck. Shaped like a bear paw.
Easily I lost to what each color means but I like look at the colors change. But why do they change? It clearly isn't my mood.
So I looked into it.
The "stone" is hollow glass or quartz with liquid thermotropic crystals. These crystals respond to a change in temperature by twisting. By this process of twisting the molecular structure changes, changing the wavelengths of light absorbed or reflected. Although they are not telling me the mood I am in I think the fact that you can watch it change its molecular structure right before your eyes is pretty cool.
in order from warmest temperature to coldest the colors are:
violet blue
blue
green
yellow/amber
brown/gray
black
Michelle and I have been working on this very strange art project called "Gross Garden". It consists of us drawing fruits and vegetables with human bodies in strange positions, doing odd acts, implying terrible things. Michelle and I have doodled together adding on to each other's doodle before but this has much more of a theme. We decided to collab with each other by exchanging a look while Mr. Ganes mentioned group work. I don't think it would be appropriate to use this as our STAC art project but we are still having a ton of fun with.
It is very easy to tell that Michelle and I have a very warped sense of humor. There were points in doing this were we were laughing so hard and people would come by trying to understand why were hysterical only to get confused and walk away. Michelle and I get like this often. things like "little blueberry with flower" get us going. I don't know why either but it does.
These are something that not only we find entertaining to do but are easy to make so it is something we can keep up with if we wanted to. We feel it is some interesting and simplistic we can put these out for the public to see. We are using tumblr as our outlet. I think this was the best choice because tumblr is a format that it is very easy to share and spread work around. Plus the majority of avid tumblr users have a sense of humor as warped as ours. I think a great examples of strange comics getting very popular on tumblr is the artist Frenums. During the Halloween season frenums made a lot of comics featuring skeletons saying really stupid or punny jokes.
an example:
If you would like to keep up with Michelle and my madness follow us on tumblr here
Lately I have been avoiding work that I find stressful or extremely tedious like annotating a book I wanted to enjoy or thinking about getting ready for college (I am going to SUNY New Paltz if I didn't mention it before). This is not healthy in any way and I do not promote avoiding things like I have been. However, I have made the choice to instead doing nothing but scrolling through the internet or sleeping to avoid things that I will do things that are more productive and beneficial. In this I have been teaching myself more and more German on the iPhone app Duolingo. If you don't have Duolingo I would totally try it out because it is fun and easy and most importantly free (my favorite number) I own Rosetta Stone for a different language and I honestly think Duolingo is better for the price and you can take it on the go. I find myself able to grasp languages fairly well so teaching myself German makes me feel like I am doing some good, creating some ability that may come handy in the future. I have also been spending more time playing bass. I stopped for a little bit because I gave the bass I was mainly using back to my cousins so they can put it in their restaurant (The restaurant is Beatles themed and the bass looked like Paul's). I currently have my dad's bass from when he used to play back who know how long ago (definitely before I was alive). I really have to change the strings or I will rip my eyes out.
But just don't sit down cause I've moved your chair
Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair- Arctic Monkeys
I
had quite the adventure this week. I feel like have been all over the
place in the span of about eight days. Last Friday I went snowboarding
for the first time. I was better at it than I thought I would be but I
also go wakeboarding in the summer. I think if you can balance your
weight standing on a train you can snowboard. I have a deeper
appreciation of the the snowboarders at the Winter Olympics this year.
I'll get more into that later.
I
then went and saw Panic! at the Disco with Danielle (it was her first
time seeing them)! Had a nice time and even got myself a pick from one
of my favorite bassists Dallon Weekes
Then
on Saturday I took Julian to the Neue Galerie during the day. Julian
kind of asked me to explain things about art which made me come to the
conclusion that talking about art is much harder than it seems. At least
for me it is. For me it seems so natural or common I feel like saying
"well you just paint it" or "just draw it" and I find it hard to point
of key details that may help others with making art. Maybe this is why
all those how to books about art go from two circles to the Mona Lisa in
one step. Hopefully I spoke well enough about the art at Neue that
Julian has a better understanding. That day felt like a "treat yo' self"
kind of day and I bought myself a book on Schiele and some more Schiele
post cards (I have two at home I put on my walls).
After
Neue Julian and I then walked through Central Park because I have only
been on the corners of it and never really infiltrated it. Clearly
nobody thought to put any ice on the paths and I kept falling on my ass
every two minutes. Julian never slipped and I don't know why.
Later
that night after I departed with Julian I met up with Caitlin and went
to see the Arctic Monkeys. It was my first time in Madison Square Garden
which seems kind of weird since I have been to so many shows. To be
honest I found that MSG was smaller than I thought it would be. The only
arena I have been to was the Barclays Center which is huge! I also got
seated tickets which I don't normally do but I was very close to the
side of the stage. Who opened for Arctic Monkeys but none other than
Deerhunter! Poor Bradford Cox had the flu but they still performed well
(heard a few songs we did in Metamorphoses). HOLY COW the Arctic Monkeys
are really something. After years of listening to all their songs I
finally got the chance to see them live and boy they are worth seeing
live. Their most recent album AM in my opinion was probably the
best album released last year. While some of the bands I listen too put
out records I enjoyed I none of them I can really say were their best or
just as amazing as the rest but AM is a really solid album and I
recommend you all listen to it. They have both great music and lyrics
that are clever and pretty snarky. Listen to a few of their songs and
you'll know exactly what I mean. They even covered a Beatles song to
honor 50 years since coming to America. I kind of think Alex Turner's
speaking voice sounds like a Beatle, not just because they're English.
Alex Turner always sings with a noticeable English accent so maybe I can
consider singing along as practicing for the play (however I don't
think I'll use an accent from Sheffield, England). Overall they put on a
great show with excellent imagery. The whole imagery for this album is
very cool from the album cover to this video (watch this, it gave me
some cool ideas maybe it will give you some too. Gets interesting around a minute and a half):
One of my favorites off of AM:
Here is their cover of "All My Loving" by The Beatles
So I was looking through my twitter and came across a reply Gerard Way made to Amanda Palmer. Looking for context of two very cool people conversing I looked at Amanda's original tweet that contained a blog post. After her TED talk (the one we watched in class) she said she had been contacted by a few publishers and she is now writing a book and "it’s definitely going to have a lot of ME in it, and presumably a lot of YOU."
So her first question was:
"The doctors and the nurses they adore me so and it's really quite alarming cause I'm such an awful fuuuuck!~"
Hello everybody, sorry for my absencein the blogging world I hope to get back up and running very shortly stress and school has been tougher than I thought it would be this year. Sometimes I wish I could catch "senioritis" but even after choosing to go to SUNY New Paltz and finishing my PiG paper I still care a whole lot about my work. Sometimes I care too much, but I like learning and I really like understanding.
Since the last time I blogged I have completed a zine as an art director! Although projects like these usually get me wound up and my mind is scattered all over the place I stayed relatively calm throughout it (except for the times where I told Austin to shut the hell up). Was I truly calm or just stoic? Not sure, but this time I let myself step back a bit even though I was still very involved in what was going on. I contributed art to both zines but mostly The Light Edition of the zine.
I think this and the Polar Bear are my favorite contributions, really.
Note to Future Sarah: if you think that doing two zines at once is a simple and easy idea-- stop. don't. If you try to do more than two zines at once then I will come from the past and hit you with a brick.
your fiend, Past Sarah
After that I help a little bit with the new STAC website, figuring out things that are important/vital information to things that should be shown subtle. When writing down questions I remembered when I first auditioned for STAC back in the eighth grade (my how time has gone by). I remember reading and learning anything I could on the website because until a day or two before auditions I didn't know anything about STAC. I am the oldest child in my family and none of my older family friends mentioned it so I had no clue. I also thought of all the things my parents wanted to know about the program. I went into auditions thinking I wouldn't even get in and just went for it and here I am four years later!
I have not worked much on the website since but it looks awesome! I used to know very very basic HTML coding but I forgot a lot of it over time.
I also gave Julian Ashley and briefly Danielle a lesson on painting with oil colors. I never really saw myself as much of a teacher but I tried my best. For me, I feel like teaching fine arts is quite a challenge. I'm so used to just doing it that I find it difficult to explain it well enough that you can understand how to paint. I'm thinking "oh well you just paint it, duh" but that wouldn't really teach them anything. Although I was given a bag of colored oil paints I decided that colors are kind of hard on it's own and I wanted them to get the idea of painting with oils before worrying too much about that so I went with the handy dandy Payne's Grey. It is what I started with when I began to oil paint my freshman year. They did very well with it and seemed to like it. I hope my 'teaching' helped them!
'This painting of mine was all done in Payne's Grey
July
1518, in a part of the Holy Roman Empire called Stasbourg, France the
Dancing Plague outbroke when a woman, Frau Troffea started fervently
dancing in the streets. If one person fervently dancing wasn't odd
enough within the week the number grew to fourteen people, in a months
time... 400 people dancing. Some of these dancer died from a heart
attack, from a stroke, or exhaustion. The local physicians ruled out
supernatural or astrological causes but thought the dancing disease was
caused by "hot blood" and that is was natural. Rather than the usual
prescription of bleeding they encouraged more dancing. They
encouraged my dancing by guiding them to a grain market, open two
guidehalls, construct a stage, and even hire musicians to keep them
dancing. This dancing mania was recorded in historical documents such as
physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and
the Stasbourg city council.
A
possible reason for such an odd plague is stress induced psychosis.
Some think the stresses around them, famine, disease, etc. was so
intolerable that it could cause mass psychological illness. This dancing
plague, or choreomania occurred on multiple occasions, the earliest
known incident in 1020 and most recently in the 1840s.
Bo Burnham's new comedy special came out today! I may have mentioned it before but I saw his show last may and I must say I was laughing so hard that there was a point where my laughter would not suffice for what I was feeling and I started flat out yelling.
For this special he decided not to sell it or make any money off so he put the whole thing for free on his youtube channel and on Netflix. He jokes about it in the preview:
I find this a cool gesture but it is no surprise to me, Bo has always made connotations to disagreeing with how a lot of art is just for the buck, or to make some profit. The only thing he is really selling at the moment is his poetry book Egghead: Or You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone.
One really great song he did about this very thing is called "Art is Dead" from his last show and I hope you listen to it:
I love Bo Burnham. He is my favorite 6 foot 5 child (not a child, 23 actually). He got started on Youtube and got picked up by Comedy Central when he was only 18. He can seem absurd on the surface but underneath there is so much knowledge to his work. I feel like Bo Burnham is really smart but sometimes it goes over people's heads or they believe too much in his stage persona. I had the pleasure of meeting him last May and I noticed he was a lot more introverted offstage. I personally liked that about him because I feel like I am the same way to some point. I am fairly introverted, but I feel that when presented with an audience that introversion goes away a bit or becomes less apparent.
I look like a toe but take note that I am standing and he is sitting in this picture.
Compared to his past work I think What. is a lot more visual focused and more philosophical. Maybe if you like what you saw or heard here I would check out his earlier work too. You know, if you have the time. I understand hot commodity time is these days, believe me I do. If you don't have an hour to watch his whole special here is a clip from it. A song from the perspective of god.
If you have an hour here is What. in its entirety:
So yesterday I submitted a drawing for MGMT's poster drawing contest. They are having a concert tomorrow at the Barclays Center (that I am super excited to go to) and they have been hyping this particular concert up because it is the last date on the tour and they have not been to NYC in over 3 years. I don't remember what made me go with this idea but I went with a Metropolis theme (maybe NYC and Metropolis both cities).
I doubt I will win I am not so confident with my design but MGMT posted it on their facebook page which is pretty cool with. They are one of my favorite bands so I had to do a double take seeing something I did under their name. You had to submit it through tumblr or instagram and I did both but the sizing on the instagram one was off and looks worse. Of course that is the one they choose to put up! I commented the link the better version. Oh well!
Wow I don't think I was emotionally prepared for this movie. All the acting in it was so fantastic, every slight movement, facial expression, even the smallest glance put me in awe. Sir Ian McKellen is amazing on screen I can't even imagine how it will be to see him next week in Waiting for Godot. Starstruck already? The film starts off as this funny, kind of perverted old man but as time goes on it gets so much deeper you begin to feel his every ache and pain (which again can be attributed to the acting). Even Clayton Boone's (who is fictitious) character development, starting off as a dopey gardener to seeing him crying on Whale's floor was really good. I kept finding the smallest details that can connect to something said or done or even just a visual image popping up on the screen momentarily. The way The Bride of Frankenstein was weaved into the plot was done really well and it makes you look at the the 1935 film in a whole new way. I feel like the film would be a lot different for somebody who has never seen any of James Whale's films... maybe the interest in Whale wouldn't be as strong? Even though the film was necessarily about Frankenstein it was really tied to it like using the sketch of Frankenstein with the message "Friend?" to clarify to Clayton what Whale's real intentions were.
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I feel like I still can't talk about this film properly. There was so much about that film that I still can't grasp into words. Maybe it is a poor memory or maybe it is what Joseph Cambell meant about the things we just can't talk about. Maybe I'll have it sit on the brain for some more time and come back to this.
