The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton Will In Time Both Outpace And Outlive You

So. It's almost 4am on a Wednesday night and I haven't finished my Degas master copy that's due tomorrow. Why is that, you ask? Well, there is a good news reason. and a bad news reason.

The good news reason is that I was at callbacks for a fabulous play directed by the fabulous Ria DiLullo until 9ish. I was cast as Sheherazade in her/PW's production of Jason Grote's 1001. It is a clever, gory, funny, raunchy, post-modernist take on the Tales of the Arabian nights (an oft-adapted story, I know, but this one is pretty sweet). The text itself is not world-changing as he is kind of a young playwright, but it's absolutely something I read and immediately knew I wanted to be in a production of it. Exciting things happen with story-telling and character development. Visually cool things are already in the script and it's going to give our director a lot of really exciting problems to solve narratively and visually. It is a sexy, sparkly, heartbreaking cornucopia of a play. It also includes this:

so yeah. awesome.

This news makes me feel very excited and very very flattered for several reasons. 1) so many incredible actors were called back along with me tonight 2) There are only two women's parts, so I didn't have super high hopes 3) This will be my first non-shakespeare play at brown so far (nerd.) 4) Ria has assembled a team of supremely talented tech and various backstage people that I am super excited to work with, and she has put together an exciting cast that I am itching to get into rehearsal with. Read-through to look forward to on Monday!

Upon hearing the news, my boyfriend sent me this email titled:

DRAMATURGY FOR YOU FROM WIKIPEDIA

 Sooo, I clearly have two directions to go with this character:

OR

(Above Image courtesy of Mattel's racially ambiguous plastic figurine division)

Soo the 2nd, bad news reason that I am jittery and awake and a lil pissed and not working on my master copy is that a) there were 2 articles without illustrators this week and I had to scramble to get an illustration together and b) one of my illustrators at the Post decided to submit completely unusable illustrations, leaving my to do a completely new cover in about a half hour. People are busy and illustration is not there lifeblood and I need to recruit more illustrators/revamp the illustrator assignment process before next semester...but THAT is another blog post entirely (douchiest phrase I've ever written or will ever write?). 

Oh management/art directing, how much more I have to learn about you. I want to not be an art director and just kidnap Maira Kalman and steal her life y'all. Speaking of Maira Kalman, EVERYONE should check out her New Yorker cover for the April 25th issue, its freaking awesome. (My boyfriend subscribes, not I. He goes to Brown, I think a lifetime subscription to the New Yorker comes with their acceptance letters.) 

Jesus. Matisse-inspired editorial illustration that
includes a frilly pink dress, flowers, a rabbit and a snappy hat.
It's like Maira Kalman can SEE INTO MY DREAMS.
 professional illustrators can do that you know.

Anyways, here are the two illustrations I stayed up all night doing (as well as some writing for my final for my Brown class in between, I'm not that slow gosh.) Worth it? NOT REALLY, but imma post 'em anyway.

Music article about multi-media resources for music info during your post magazine-less summer weeks. Composition? AWFUL (that blogger symbol is driving me freaking nuts), but I like his face. a lot.

Cover illustration for feature article about Teach for America's new role in the context of the various crises in the American education system. NOT AWESOME. Done in like less than a half hour at around 3am. I'm sorry, oh gods of illustration :( 

One thing I do like about scrambling around doing little things for the Post is that it has forced me to develop the basic skeleton of what I think might end up being a pretty cool b&w/pen and ink/possible comic style, but who knows. 

I wanted to post some of the angry Mountain Goats songs I had on repeat whilst doing that last illustration:

 Ahh the comforting buzz of a crappy tape recorder, John Darnielle's nasally voice, his staccato acoustic guitar strumming, and his often purposely obtuse and/or angry and/or achingly poignant lyrics. I have a signed, really sick, silkscreened poster for his 'Life of the World to Come' tour that I won about a year ago, I'll post a picture of it at some point. It's of a crystal healer. I brought that album up in a previous blog post because I plan to redesign the cover for my illustration class. That should be done my monday, although I suspect that Easter/life festivities will get in the way of that plan. we'll see.

Come on in, we haven't slept for weeks, drink some of this, it'll put color in your cheeks. 

Goodnight all, going to sleep a couple hours and then git up and go paint. Also, I'll post some of the semi-ok stuff that's been going into my sketchbook lately but now I need tooooiiiiin slee;eoil.p[ko[aw ijge mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmpppphhpppphhpphphhhhhh

besos, 

Emily

Spring Weekend, Poached Eggs, Chicken Vaginas

As promised, here is my finished Illustration for the Post's Spring Weekend Guide:

This afternoon I successfully poached a egg. Delicious. It should be illegal for eggs to be served any other way. For some reason the cooking process takes away the slimy, eggy flavor and make the yolk taste like melted butter. Here are some top tips for egg poaching:

 a. Use about a tablespoon of vinegar in your water (white is best but other varieties will work) the vinegar acts as a coagulant and will keep the white of the egg together.

B. Use a small container to plop the egg into the water. Cracking it into the pan leads to sloppy, cloudy, egg-white-y water. ick.

C. Use a shallow pan instead of a pot. It  allows for more movement with you spatula/spoon, but make sure it is deep enough the water to cover the top of the egg. Also water-wise, plop the egg in when it's just about to simmer, but when there is a minimal amount of bubbles and/or movement in the pan.

Vegan-friends, avert your eyes.
Conclusion: Things that come out of chickens' vaginas are delicious but they are especially delicious when you poach them.

Pictured: Chicken Vagina. ALWAYS ON THE CLOCK.

E.R Recaps, Unsuccessful Lasagna, DO YOU LIKE AIR?

First off, I want to take this opportunity to plug my geniuswriterfriend™ Lauren's amazing, amazing new blog: County, Generally, where she plans to do recaps of every episode of E.R, ever. It is everything you hoped an archive of an off the air NBC medical drama would be an so much more.

RE: Unsuccessful Lasagna...I made a veggie lasagna for a party. It was gross. Peeps ate it anyway.

I'm currently working on my full-page color illustration for the Post's Spring Weekend guide..should be done within the hour so I'll post that as soon as it's finished!

DO YOU LIKE AIR?



Watching this in the lounge tonight whilst attempting to finish my creation story illustration for class tomorrow. Wish me luck.

A ghost comes by and says 'come on, be my man'

Illustration for tomorrow's post article about the Low Anthem.

Karen Moss...an embarrassment to RISD? yeah, pretty much. Reaffirming why Postmodernism is the worst ever? yeah, pretty much.

Human/animal hybrids, playful suburban children traced from 1950's coloring books, panoramas of repeated black and white outlined figures, traced images over broad washes of color...I had the vague feeling that I had seen all this before, except exponentially better executed by outsider artist Henry Darger.

Painter, RISD grad and veteran artist Karen Moss' show at the Fourth Wall Gallery in Boston this weekend was unoriginal, tacky, and vaguely offensive. Moss appropriates images of graffiti, trash, homelessness and military life with the same flippancy with which she uses traced images of 50's coloring book children and animals. It is very clear that she has nothing to say about homelessness, war, street art or poverty and is using this charged imagery purely to achieve some sort of vaguely marketable aesthetic. Thank you Karen Moss. You are why people hate artists.

Moss clearly had very little to say, few aesthetic ideas and even fewer technical or visual communication skills to back those ideas up.

The centerpiece of 'Dissonant Worlds', 'The Commuter' (above), is a prime example of the flimsy,   "concepts" behind Moss' work. The blue acetate rabbit is 'the commuter', the art student ( he's carrying a palette and brush, do you get it? do you get it?) who commutes between the pastoral picnic tableau on the right hand side and the urban alleyway on the left hand side (graffitti, street art, trash, rats = baaadddd). Moss presents us with these two contrasting settings ("Dissonant Worlds" do you get it? do you get it?) this imagery, and this character...and then does nothing with it. She doesn't comment on the idea of the commuting art student, or on the dissonance between these two settings, she doesn't present the viewer with any questions about the imagery, the concept or the situation presented. As with all of her work, Moss simply presents the viewer with simplified, barely conceptualized imagery and tosses her hands and announces that she is done. None of the pieces in this show go beyond the presentation of appropriated imagery and Moss expects the viewers' associations with the presented imagery to carry the piece. Thank you, Karen Moss, for reminding me why postmodernism is the worst ever.

Could her piece 'Strangeness in the Suburbs' (above) possibly be a more poorly constructed imitation of the sweetly naive panoramic illustrations from Henry Darger's 'The Story of the Vivian Girls'?

When I first walked in the gallery opening on Friday, I took the pieces I saw with a grain of salt. I thought that the show was exhibiting the work of a an inexperienced, newly graduated undergrad painter and not that of a 67 year old veteran who received her masters from SMFA & Tufts in 1974. When will art schools start reinforcing the dangers of using appropriated imagery purely for aesthetic purposes and ignoring the meaning behind that imagery? When will artists realize that simply presenting the viewer with imagery does not make the work in any way conceptual or meaningful? When will we all take our artistic blinders off and realize that homelessness, war, poverty and other socio-political situations with oft-appropriated imagery exist and that simply using them for aesthetic purposes furthers the intellectual separation between art and the real world. Appropriating imagery of homelessness, war and poverty make it seem less real for the viewer and establish these issues simply as wells for meaningless isolated imagery. 

Although this show ranged from disappointing to mildly upsetting, the Fourth Wall Gallery is beautiful space that I look forward to seeing other shows at in the future. 

besos, 

Emily

That I do, sir.

Sooo as promised I'm posting the new 6-panel comic I just finished for Judy Sue's class. The professor provided the 6 lines of rhyming text:

Full 6-panel comic

1st panel

                                  

2nd Panel

4th Panel

                                      

5th and 6th Panels

Anyways, I'm prepping for my triumphant return to RISD on Monday (stop by the picture collection between 10 & 12:30 tomorrow!), looking forward to Spring Weekend and the Post Magazine Spring Weekend Guide 2011, which I am Graphics editor and a contributing Illustrator for! I spent a good part of the beginning of my break drawing our charts of who's illustrating what, the articles and assignments and now it's all kind of coming together! I'll post my illustration for it as soon as I am done and I'll post a link to the online version of the guide once it's out! 

I'm trying to cheer myself up now that break is over and I didn't get as much done as I promised myself I would, so I will leave you with this, most enjoyable clip from ScyFy's cinematic masterpiece, DINOCROC VS SUPERGATOR:

\

Currently Listening to: 'The Leaving of Liverpool' - The Pogues

Next Post?: Probably a review of the Karen Moss (PT '66) show I saw in Boston this weekend. (spoiler alert: awful). Also I have to get around to posting images of that material I got at Winmill fabrics in China town this weekend. And images of my sketches for what I want to do with it. Also: I need to write my solo show. Jesus.

It's the Bizness. Yeah.

So I thought that I'd start my first blog entry by auspiciously posting the most amazing music video ever (credit goes to my boyfriend for showing me this first). It features the coolest child to exist ever, awesome geometric face paint, sweet costumes and the world's sickest facial choreography. Enjoy:



Consider this blog cleansed.

As far as work goes, I'm staying up late finishing my first-ever comic. The assignment was to make a 6-panel piece using these 6 lines of text that our professor provided. I played with the format we were given (a lot) so I hope she's cool with that. I'm incredibly excited about how it's coming out although I feel like I'm kind of walking on a creative tightrope and that this could turn into the worst thing ever in a second. It's all pen and ink and I only have 1 panel left :D I think I might go to bed in a little bit but I'll post a photo as soon as I'm done.

Currently reading: 'Mr Funny Pants' - Michael Showalter, 'Blankets' - Craig Thompson
Going to start reading (soon): 'The Children's Book' - A.S Byatt

Location: just got back from Boston, spending the last few days in Spring break at the parent's house. (I'm going to try to convince my dad to make me a pancake tomorrow. He makes one big pancake and it takes two pans, he's the best ever.)

Future Projects: Just bought some crazy colorful fabric in Boston today, so I'm poised to start a sweet summer dress as soon as I get some time on my hands. which will be never. I'll post photos of the fabric soon.

Besos, 

Emily