Misguided Blog

If we keep this up, Sue and I will have to clone ourselves to keep up with our crazy schedules. Definitely the busiest semester for both of us, but we've survived. At least Sue had some accomplishments this semester like when she and her fellow English dept colleagues organized what everyone has been calling the...best...Litfest...ever! Some of my festival highlights included the participation of Wichita's first slam poetry team and a visiting appearance by NYC Nuyorican slam poet Carlos Andres Gomez, who wrapped up the festivities with a kickass set that brought the house down. He's a truly decent guy, too, who stayed afterwords to talk to just about every last person there. The ICT Slam Team (Wichita is sometimes called ICT after its airport - Intercontinental) just started up last year based out of a very cool new poetry cafe on the eastside of town call Poetic Justice, a must-visit if you're in town. The owners of the cafe are awesome people dedicated to bringing some cool and positive youth culture to Wichita. We hope they succeed.

Another highlight of the Fest was a reading by English depart sooperstar professor Bryan Dietrich from his work in progress, a sci-fi novel that he's been writing. Bryan is an accomplished poet who has published several books (including his latest: Prime Directive, in stores now!) but this will be his first work of fiction and from the teaser he gave us, I can't wait for him to finish.

Oh and I guess I should also mention that I won first prize in the Sheridan Edwards Review's prose category. "What!" you say, "That's impossible!" I know! That's what I said! But there it is. I even got to read an excerpt of the piece I submitted, The Void, at the Fest. The SER is Newman's literary journal that every year accepts writing and artwork submissions from students and the public and this year I submitted almost all of my pieces from last semester's printmaking class along with the short story. They accepted almost all of it and I was pretty stunned when I found out about the prize for the story. If you have some time, you can read it here, a short surrealist tale about a world turned literally up-side-down.

Well, as I alluded to earlier, this has been one tushy-kicking semester. I haven't had time to work on music, go to Taekwondo, or practice Chinese. Every moment, seven days a week, has been spent working on projects. With two design classes and two studio art classes, I spent a record amount of out-of-class time working on my assignments. I won't lie and say I didn't love it though, especially painting class. See some more examples of stuff I've done below - not best you've seen, I'm sure, but I've been having fun. I decided to act like I'm in art school and start getting dark and angry. Everyone else was doing sunflowers and rainbows but that made it all the more important that I do people with their heads being blown off. I'm not sure why, it just was. I even got to play around with street-style stencil art techniques which was awwwwwwesome. I'm just a noob at it, but I plan on doing a lot more of stuff like that when I take painting 2. Later this summer I plan on creating a portfolio site so I can better display all the design and fine art stuff I've been doing, and now maybe some writing too!

Oh, I said I loved painting

class but I also got a kick out of sculpture, especially the last assignment: metal work!

That's right, nothing makes you feel like a man

than wielding a blow torch and slamming bright orange shards of superheated rusty metal with a sledge hammer! Arrrrgh! I call this one

Mosquider, it's already got a spot staked out for itself in our garden.

There's been a bit of drama in the design program at Newman: our design instructor, Heather, is leaving and who knows what the program is going to look like next fall. I'll say I'm a bit worried but Sue is on the job. She's been put in charge of the search committee to find Heather's replacement. I'll miss Heather's guidance, she's built a fun and challenging program, but at least I'm taking two portfolio classes with her this summer before she's gone for good. The portfolio classes are usually taken by those about to graduate, which for me won't be until next summer, but it seemed worth it to take advantage of Heather's being around for a little bit longer.

Along with the two portfolio classes this summer, I'm also taking Sociology, which started yesterday and Intermediate Algebra, so no rest for the weary! But I'm enjoying the classes so I can't complain. Sue is excited to be taking a watercolor class which started yesterday. It's a five-days-a-week class, so it's pretty intensive, but she's really looking forward to be doing art stuff. The other bit of drama came earlier this semester when Darrel, the graphic designer I was working with at University Relations left to take a job closer to his home, leaving me virtually alone as the only designer in the department for a few weeks. They shielded me from having to shoulder the full workload by myself but it was

a good opportunity to show that I can stand the heat.

The kittens and pigs say hi. Toots and Scratch are getting ginormous quickly, especially Scratch who is on his way to becoming the longest kitteh in the world! They are still adorable and loving furballs but have gotten into an annoying habit of waking us up at five in the morning. Unfortunately, we've had to start locking them upstairs at night so we can get a decent night's sleep.

Mom hurt her wrist in a dog walking incident earlier this year but hasn't let it stop her. She managed to go on a short trip to Savanna, GA and met up with one her friends from New York, and has since had the cast removed and is undergoing therapy to restore movement. She's kept her good humor throughout the ordeal.

So anyway, keep scrolling to see some of the work I've done this semester, caution: some disturbing subject matter. We have no plans to visit people right now, so if anyone feels like a long weekend in the heartland, we're all for it! We love you all and hope you're doing well. Talk to you soon!

Burning Monk, a triptych of the disturbing photo from the Vietnam war of the Buddhist monks who burned themselves alive as a protest. The background was made to look dull and washed out while the flames were rendered bright and with texture that makes them jump a little off the canvas. One of my favorite from the semester.

Two companion pieces called Victoria Fascista and 500000. The first is from a photo from the Spanish Civil War, the second a fascist propaganda poster from the same. I got to play around with stencil and spray paint for these, rendering the backgrounds in oil paint and building stencils for the subjects. Tricky to get it looking as neat as I wanted but some gritty street messiness was desired so I'm happy with them.

Boxman is a wood relief cut. Self explanatory: a man stuffed inside a box.

The Most Comfort is some sort of post-apocalyptic advertisement for gas masks. Can you tell I like typography and doom-and-gloom? Came out a little more cartoony than I planned but I wanted it to be graphic and poster-like so it's not far off the mark. Possibly inspired by nuclear meltdowns in Japan.

Pastele with Rice and Beans was our first assignment, food, meant to correspond with the Litfest which was food-themed this year. All of our pieces, along with the drawing and photography classes, were hung outside the Art Dept during the fest. This one celebrates those awesome meals Grandma made when I was young.

This was the first sculpture assignment, a giant hornet made from wire.

This was the last assignment in my Materials And Processes class, a desk sculpture toy, a collection of blocks or pieces that someone could arrange in any way. Mine is called D3 - Desk Droid of Doom. The tag line under the name on the box says "All your desk are belong to us" for those of you who recognize that early Internet meme. The boxes are hexagon shaped and have magnets in them so they fit together in a variety of ways. The boxes have various abstract mechanical graphics on them. We also had to construct packaging. D3 is a workstation defense system designed to keep away annoying coworkers, tyrannical bosses and pushy clients.