Specialization

Hey.

So I'm gonna write a little about a journey I've been on for a while...

I wrote before about Cecily Brown and the influence she had on my practice so far. And since hearing her speak, I've really felt like I want to focus my 'practice' on the figure, and painting people. I'm really not interested in painting much else; I'm not a fan of still life, or landscape paintings. Well. I like looking at them. But I hate painting them myself. 

I was planning on doing a minor in sociology which is available at OCAD. But then today I heard that there's a new specialization: Life studies. It's starting next year. So like, I'd be one of the first ones to get this degree! The specialization means all of my courses would be geared towards painting the figure, learning about the way people work, anatomy, etc. and even some psych/soc stuff. So now what do I do right? 

I thought it would be a good idea to minor in sociology because my end goal is art therapy. But this is like... my passion? And it could lead into art therapy right? like it's all about people..... 

So now I don't know what to do. Should I stay at OCAD for like 2 extra years to minor in sociology too? If I'm doing that, I might as well minor in art history too! Except I'm poor too. So that's a factor. I have a lot of thinking and planning to do. And after hating school for my whole life, I'm all of a sudden looking forward to at least 6 years of schooling (including art therapy school...) or more! 

I think I'm going to set up an appointment with a program adviser or something. I thought this would help me get out this excitement and confusion. But I'm still confused and excited. GAH!

xo 

xo

HP

Process

So, after my last post, I've done a bit of reorganizing.

It all started because I love our apartment. It's everything I would want in a place. Except it's too small, and the laundry business. But otherwise, our lease is flexible, we're allowed to paint the walls, or renovate the kitchen - the landlord himself said, "it's a dogs' breakfast". So as two messy (REALLY MESSY) artists, it's the perfect place. It's also pretty convenient, it's right on Yonge St. and very close to the subway. What more could we ask for. It would be so hard to find a bigger place as relaxed as this...although I'll be keeping my eye out just in case. 

So anyway, Andrew and I have been throwing around the ideas of renting studio space, finding a bigger apartment, or staying here and using the school as a studio. Then it occurred to us that we could attempt to reorganize the apartment to make a studio. 

Aj had mentioned this to me before and at the time, I was way too comfortable with having the typical living room, and bedroom separate. But now that I've been in school for 4 months, I've realized I need to re-prioritize if I want to stay here and be productive.

It had gotten to the point that we never wanted to make any art, because it was a huge hassle to set anything up, or just to move around. So we were pretty lazy, and never did a thing.

This idea was sort of an impulse thing. We thought of it last night, and then moved on it today. 
Here are my pictures from before the switch- 
Living Room
Bedroom
When we were originally moving in, we were pretty excited- but we also knew we only had so much space. We made blueprints of the place and measured all of our things, and made floorplans for how we'd fit everything in. Thankfully, we had those plans saved, so it was easy just to move things around on the computer to make sure this would work. So we dragged and dropped and had two working plans. We decided based on how much floor space each new plan offered, so the plan with the most floor space won. 

I was like, "let's wait til study week, so we have time to do this and so that we have more time to think it out." and he was like, "ok".

Then we got home from school and he starts re-measuring everything, walls, the fishtank, EVERYTHING. So I'm like, "what are you doing?" and he's like, "lets do it today." and excitement took over and we started throwing stuff around and taking everything apart and whatnot. We ended up moving all of our furniture but now we still have to move everything else back in. So it's like we've moved all over again, and we have one weekend to finish moving and the rest of our homework from first week back. There's still a bunch of little things that we didn't think about and no longer have homes, but I'm sure they'll find one. 

I'm really excited about the new arrangement, I'm hoping it encourages us to be more productive. The studio is pretty empty. It also only has two-hole plugs, so no computers, or anything good. It's a comfy open space to work. And there's not much else we can do in there. 

Here's the new layout- 

Wish us luck! 

We dropped the TV in the process, and ruined one of my drawings which is due next week. I knew something would get wrecked. But Aj fixed the TV, it just doesn't have any buttons anymore, and we can't seem to find the clicker for it - even though we just tore apart the place. And my drawing- who even cares. I'll be making so much stuff now!

Instagram vs. Blog + Holiday wishes?

I'm in a constant battle with myself. I can't reuse photos from Facebook or Instagram for blogging...which I have the tendency to do. But who wants to see things they've seen somewhere else. The only extra you get is a stupid little blurb about the picture. 

So. My solution? I've downloaded a new app for editing my pictures- for those of you that follow A Beautiful Mess blog, I've succumbed to purchasing their app. It's nice because I can post to Instagram, Facebook or just save my photos. So now that I'm using that, I don't have to publish every picture to my other social networking sites. 

I'm the worst person for blogging because I'm also the kind of person that's late for everything, forgets important things (like my apartment keys...), and makes Christmas cards but forgets to send them. I have a bunch of cool ideas, that never make it here. Same with my art. I have ideas and stuff, but whenever I get down to making something I forget what they are. And every time I reorganize my life, it doesn't take long at all to re-disorganize. And art school sort of makes it easy for this to happen, because its the curse of an artist, and all of my professors are artists. It's an endless cycle. I don't do my homework, but it's ok because the prof forgot anyway. 

My goal right now before I make a complete personality change to keep up with dates and homework, birthdays and everything else going on, is to keep my apartment clean. So wish me luck for that. 


On another note- happy winter!

I slipped on the ice yesterday and have a gnarly bruise on my knee. Thankfully we missed the ice storm when it hit, we were visiting the family up north. AND it's really cold outside. So I just don't go out there much.

And we don't get snowdays. Unless things get crazy crazy. OH! and Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!



xo.

Hayley