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.

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!

Greetings from Wichita! It's been a while, hasn't it? Toss that up to another crazily busy semester. Sue and I both have some new responsibilities this time around, both exciting and challenging. Sue's new position as Division Chair has meant dealing with quite a bit more work. I probably shouldn't go into any greater detail here (cough! hack! politics, cough!) but I'll say that Sue is rising to the challenge and doing her best to give her students the same attention and care as always. She has been enjoying teaching latin this semester, and has managed to find time to take a class on James Joyce, taught by friend and fellow English faculty, Marguerite. As for me, I applied and got a new Student Assistant position working with Newman's in-house Graphic Designer, Darrel. Which means that I am no longer just a design student, but now a student designer as well! I've had the position just a couple weeks but it's offered a lot of great experience. I've gotten to go to a local printer to do press checks and even direct a photo-shoot (of the campus chapel for a new brochure). I'll continue to work a few hours here and there for Julie in Arts & Humanities such as updating the HTML on the Steckline gallery's Facebook page and churning out the occasional flyer. Julie and Mary (director of the Art Dept) have been awesome to work with so I will miss them but I'm just across campus so dry your eyes y'all!

Oh yeah, we went to the State Fair again this September. The only news to report from this go-round is...well, I can't really explain it to you. I'll just put it this way: Crispy Kreme Burger. Nuff-said. When asked how she felt about it, Sue made this face.

This semester has also brought a new arrival to Wichita, my mom Ann! Freshly retired from the Post Office (yahoo!) she took the drive out with her two dysfunctional

cats and found an apartment near downtown right next to the confluence of the two rivers and the Keeper of the Plains. Already she's made friends and has found herself busier than she was in New York. I'm sure she misses living a block from the ocean in Long Beach, LI, but she likes the more relaxed pace here and the friendliness of the people. I'm sure she especially likes not working for the Post Office.

I have to say that Autumn in Kansas is pretty awesome. The season that

lasts about two weeks in New York has been long and pleasant with warm temps here and hella more sunny days. It's also funny to note how into Halloween people are around here. Especially here in College Hill which is apparently the trick-or-treat mecca of Wichita, hosting kids from all over the city. This is our first Halloween in this neighborhood and we were not prepared. We ran out of candy three times before we decided to turn out the lights and hide in the basement hoping that the little buggers would go away. No, seriously, the kids were polite and sweet, there were just a LOT of them. Then there is the incredible spectacle of the "Halloween street" just a few blocks

over from us. A section of Broadview is closed off to cars and the home owners along this stretch go to unbelievable lengths transforming their entire property. They must prepare all year for it, building giant pirate ships on their lawns, encasing their house in spiderwebs patrolled by enormous spiders. And then they hangout in front of their houses all day and night giving out ungodly amounts of candy. I wonder if they have to take out loans to pay for it all? Even our across-the-street neighbors rent a popcorn cart for the occasion. It's crazy. Go figure, wichita is a very religious city, and so naturally also has the most exuberant Halloween celebration! (Photos courtesy of the Wichita Eagle)

OK, now I have to give props to a couple local institutions. You wouldn't think I'd be blogging about a local pizza place, but I'll be damned if Bartelli's Pizzeria doesn't make genuine New York style pizza. It is literally the only place in town that even comes close. Knolla's is a local favorite that claims to be New York style, but don't be fooled, Bartelli's is the real deal. In the home town of Pizza Hut and Poppa Johns, the family that runs Bartelli's used to live in New Jersey, (close enough for us) and they know how to get their crusts both thin and chewy. Any NY pizza chef will tell you the secret is the water, and Bartelli's must import it straight from the Adirondacks. I also have to give it up for Raging Sea, a hard working Irish-folk band who Sue and I have seen a few times now. Just this past Friday we caught them for an intimate performance at our local favorite, the Donut Whole (mmm cake donuts and leopard print). Lead singer, guitarist, fiddler, and all around decent bloke, Shaun, also happens to be in my Contemporary Art History class.

Speaking of classes, check out some of the pieces I've produced in what has turned out to be my funnest class this semester, Printmaking. I bought my own carving tools and definitely plan on continuing once my schooling is done.

This is called The Lab, a linoleum block relief print. Carve the design out of a shallow block of linoleum, the areas you carve will stay white, the areas you leave raised will transfer the ink to the paper.

This is Say Nothing. A callograph which is also a relief print except instead of carving the design out, you build it up using various materials. Certain materials will give it a sense of texture. I used sandpaper to get the decaying bared brick look of the buildings.

This is a second version of Say Nothing using the intaglio method. Where a relief method uses the raised areas to transfer the ink, with the intaglio method, it's the lower areas that get filled with ink, the raised areas get wiped clean. You then use paper that's been soaked so it presses into the lower areas to absorb the ink. Creates a roughly reversed image from the relief print. Some interesting messy effects but is hard to control.

These three, called Funk 1 & 2 and Science, are monoprints, one of a kinds. You apply different color inks to a sheet of glass (plexiglass in our case) and do multiple "drops" top get the final image. Also creates some neat messy effects but I had trouble getting the colors to blend all that well.

Well, I guess that's all for this time. We love and miss you all, talk to you soon!