Misguided Blog

Season's greetings from Kansas! It's hard to believe the winter break is over already. It was an eventful one, in some good ways and some not so good. Of course there were things I really wanted to do with the free time that I just didn't get to. I guess I was so wiped out from the semester that my body's enforced laziness response (ELR) kicked in (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). We hope that you all had a great holidays and that your New Year has started out on the right foot.

Our Christmas and New Years were pretty low key but fun. We hung out with Mom on Christmas and enjoyed one of her famous lasagnas. Of course she had trouble finding her usual ingredients from the local Dillion's stunted Italian section, but it was exploding forth from the pan like usual and it was tasty. New Years was spent with friends Sonja and Michael at a local Indian place. We couldn't get into the New Years party they were throwing so we listened to the cheeky Bollywood dance remixes from the next room and feasted our hearts out on a wide assortment of curries and vindaloos.

And suddenly: Kittens!!! That's right, I

said it, kittens. Little bundles of fuzzy energy annihilating everything in their path, walking on our heads, climbing up our backs, perching on our shoulders and flopping in our laps. We adopted them from a local shelter and they were one of the more exciting

things to happen to us this break. Introducing Toots Hibbert (grey tiger, aka "Toots") and Lee Scratch Perry (white long-hair, aka"Scratch," "Lee," or "Lee Scratch") 4 & 7 weeks old respectively when we got

them a few weeks ago, they aren't litter-mates but they were

raised together almost from birth so they might as well be brothers. They are just about the most friendly and playful little guys I've ever met. Ya know how some cats have issues and will hide under the bed and hiss at you?

Not these guys.

They claimed us and the house the moment we let them out of the box. They just let us think that we adopted them.

We tried to introduce them to the pigs but the pigs literally pissed themselves (good thing Sue is used to that) so we've been trying to keep them apart. I don't think the kittens would do anything, but we don't want to stress out the piggies.

Way back in mid-December, Ken (Sue's dad) & Pauline visited us and finally got to see Wichita and our new home. They stayed in the upstairs bedroom which seemed to be comfortable enough for them and we took them around to the many exciting attractions Wichita has to offer, like the P.F. Chang's and the Coleman camping supplies factory outlet. Mainly it was good just to have them here to see our new life and to hang out with them. I'm sure we'll get back out to San Diego at some point in the near future. Don't ask us when right now though, the semester starts in two days, TWO DAYS!

Last semester went pretty well for me, still going strong and having fun, though each semester seems to be getting more busy and stressful than the last. Sue definitely had her hands full with the Division Chair position and this coming semester finds her teaching even more classes, so needless to say, she's a little stressed. Lately she's taught herself how to make

various origami weapons, ya know: mace, long-

bow, nunchakus. I don't know what that means. Anyhoo, this semester I'll be taking on two more design classes along with painting and sculpture. The only non-art class will be basic algebra which doesn't even meet my math requirement.

Some of you may remember that I was attempting to take college algebra this past semester, well that didn't work out. I knew I was in over my head pretty quickly and so here I am taking a couple steps back. Hopefully I'll get intermediate out of the way this summer

and then tackle college algebra in the fall. Yay, more math please. The student designer position has been going pretty well. They haven't canned me yet and I'm expected to stay on this semester, so I guess that's a good sign. It's been fun getting my hands on various projects

to promote the university or various events.

Now for the not so great news. Sue just came back from more than a week in Pennsylvania visiting Nan and Pop and it appears that Nan's health is taking a serious turn for the worst. She was admitted to the hospital just a couple days before Sue flew out and has been diagnosed with a growing litany of health issues. The doctors have been vague, but the prognosis doesn't seem very good. Ken and Sue's brother Scott are visiting them right now, and hopefully arrangements for her care if and when she gets out and for Pop's care are being prepared. Of course it's always a difficult situation, but having them so far from most of their family only makes it much more so. Any good vibes you can send our way for a peaceful resolution to this difficult situation would be appreciated.

Finally, here are the last two print projects I completed in my totally awesome printmaking class.

This is Soundsystem Selector Version, based on a cool old photo from the 70's of a Jamaican soundsystem operator posing in front of his tricked out ride. It's a drypoint, which is similar to an etching. Using a stylus, you scratch the design into a pane of glass (plexi for our purposes) and the ink gets trapped in the scratches, the surface gets wiped clean. We were going for smaller sizes on these last projects, this one was 5 X 7.

Finally, this disturbing image, called Fire Escape Collapse, 1975, was taken from an even more disturbing photo, a burning apartment building in Boston, a young mother and child on the fire escape awaiting the ladder, a photographer was there to capture the moment it gave way. Amazingly the child survived the fall. The technique is etching, one of the more traditional printmaking processes. You cover a sheet of coper with a quick-drying liquid called hard ground that forms a solid layer that you then carve the design out of with your trusty stylus. It then gets dropped into a chem bath. The hard ground protects the coper from the chemicals so that only the parts you carved away get burned, or etched. Once it's all wiped clean, your design has been eaten into the coper by the chemicals, which you then use the same as the glass plate in the drypoint method to produce the final print. This one was only a 4 X 6.

Here's hoping winter is kind to us all and that you haven't already abandoned your New Years Resolutions. Talk to you soon!