happy birthday to me

Spring Break Twenty-Ten

Lets talk about it! Sarah Davis and I went together to the SNAG conference in Houston TX last week and it was super fun.

Got to see some good lectures but mostly not amazing lectures except for the ones i am denying happened because i missed them and heard that they were amazing.

At first blush the hotel was super fancy, and then the longer we were there we discovered how jank it really is. Good think we got a conference rate because i would be phoning that front desk every 10min if i had to pay $300 a night.

Houston has a bunch of crazy tunnels under it with shopping and food court type things, it was really weird because from what i understand they have nice weather there a lot of the year so i don't know why you would need the subterranean retail.

The whitewater kids found a shoe store that was actually a front for drug selling, at least thats what they say. There was a crazy long line out of it in the later hours of the evening so unless there is something i don't understand about sneakers, they are probably right.

So the big thing that happened was that our JetBlue flight got cancelled 11:30 friday night. We were supposed to fly out of Houston at 3:00pm on saturday so there was quite a bit of time in between when the flight got cancelled and when we were supposed to actually be at the airport. It was weather related but when we got back to new york they said it wasn't super crazy hear like we thought, it was really windy though.

So Sarah and I drove in a rental car 23 hours and 20 minutes to Washington DC in order to only have the rental car for 24 hours, and then her brother drove us half-way to new paltz and Her boyfriend got us the rest of the way, good kids all around. Super nice of them.

Then I took a quick trip to the old Wisco. Things didn't go exactly as planned so i didn't clean as thoroughly as i would have liked but i did get to see Sliv and the Kitties.

Now that i'm back i need to put the pedal to the metal and make some things, critique isn't this week but when there is no class at all you gotta jump on the opportunity!

Close Spring Break doors!

K. Redford

NYC all up ons

I went into "The City" on saturday to see the Armory Show at pier 92 and 94. Its like a SOFA only its mostly paintings and has some sculpture but nothing in a craft-based media. Other people have told me that they saw a lot of fiber stuff, I will believe them because every person who has told me about a thing they liked has talked about something I don't remember AT ALL.

The small bit of new york city i was in seemed a lot like Chicago to me, its just another city from what i observed, only way big. I went on the subway which was fun, luckily I had other people to follow because i would have gotten hella lost as i was ill prepared and had not a single map or set of directions handy, i hadn't even thought about it.

There are some glass cases in one of the administrative buildings for artwork, and metals was supposed to have crap in there a while ago i guess, so on friday we were going to go set it up but it still had design stuff in there, so we will have to do it tomorrow which stinks because we will have to come up with some kind of display, which is difficult i guess because Myra is particular.

Chester rabbit got a new cage today, i think he rather likes it he was making a big mess right away which is his favorite thing.

I will be going to Houston TX on wednesday for S to the N to the A to the G! Hang out with all those Whitewater kids and see my favorite Teresa.

Then its spring break and i will have a super fast trip back to the old Wisco. and get some paperwork and some cleaning done and car things and then run back to new paltz and finish a piece or something because that GD mid-term crit is upon us!

never give up, never surrender!

K. Redford

week two

This week we got rolling with some of these classes I'm taking.

Graduate Seminar: This is supposed to be a discussion about art theory and what not. For this week we had to read something from "The Radicant" by Nicolas Bourriaud. It is a pretty cryptic read and because I accidentally read the thing for next week instead I ended up reading it pretty quickly and was unable to internalize it the way I would have liked. The actual class got out of hand pretty quickly, incidentally what you would expect from a night class as it includes some non-graduates who are auditing in their time off. We didn't really discuss Bourriaud we talked about capitalism a lot because one of the kids got a degree in anthropology, he also started talking smack about function and how that wasn't "art" which incensed a lot of us in the "craft" based media. We didn't really get into it yet, and thats good because we already weren't discussing course material.

Basic Metals: I'm interning in this class, so I am the Teaching Assistant. I'm trying to make sure that I

add to demonstrations and the like without sounding like I know more than the real life teacher, because if he doesn't like me it would make it harder for me to get the real life teaching job for next semester. If I don't say anything then he won't know how awesome I am and how much stuff I know. I think its going pretty well.

Walk-and-Talk: this is what we call individual crit with professors. I talked with both Myra and Jamie this week and it went pretty well. I think Myra and I might butt heads about material choices because she has a

less than favorable view on some of the things I've been using in my work and a formidable disdain for the store "Michael's". Jamie and I talked about fractals which he seemed to like after I showed him some pictures. I'm not sure how things are going to work out with these kids yet, but its been pretty fun thus far.

Screen-printing: This class is quite lengthy, it starts at 3:05 pm and is supposed to go until 9:20 pm so even if we leave early there is still at least 4 and a half hours of class. This class is supposed to be something where we incorporate screen-printing into
our own work, I had planned on printing on metal and plastic but he actually wants paper for this first project. boo. I also volunteered to do the first artist presentation. It is supposed to be on a screen-printing artist but I saw the Nicola Lopez show in wisconsin before I left and I really liked it so hopefully it will be so awesome we just forget about the screen-printing part.

At Home: Marc is leaving next week and he won't be back until the 22nd of February. Dave and I will have to try and keep the fire going and hope the basement doesn't flood. If the
basement does flood we have to set up the sub-pump which isn't a big deal except that the way it works is that it won't drain out all the water, just enough so that the water heater won't get wet. So there will still be a lake of water down there, fortunately Marc has cinderblocks and car wheels for stepping stones.

Grade School thrusters, Engage!

k.redford

Week one

First week in grad school and its pretty sweet. I thought this space would be tiny but it turns out that its very spacious with my very own acetylene set up.

the bathroom stalls are a beautiful yellow, i really like it in there.

I've made a new apron out of canvas, it fits pretty well despite the fact that i didn't really measure anything. It took longer than i thought it would because i broke one of the sewing machine needles and i've never replaced one before, and i lost the instructions.

I've been gold-leafing a lot of stuff, its pretty fun. I'm going to try and make jewelries out of soda cans but i bet it turns out to be more work than its worth.

At Home Marc and Dave have been watching a lot of movies, we've watched "Big Fish" and "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" which is one of Marc's favorites, then they were watching "Ben Hur" this past friday. Marc has been telling a joke about something that happens in there but he's never seen the movie before, i was asking if it had been worth it and he told me that the movie is in two parts so they've only watched half, and they haven't gotten to where the joke comes in yet.

Graduate Seminar looks to be a lot of work, but I'm glad that I've taken a theory class before because its really just another one of those but scarier because its in grad school. It seems a little like jumping in the deep end taking this class 1st semester, but if I'm going to eff up in grad school it might as well be the first semester right?

Somebody is ruining stuff around here. The band saw was left running, but what i think is worse is that someone was using the vacuum-casting machine to vacuum their investment but instead of using the investment side they used the casting side and somehow fill the machine with liquid investment, craziest thing i've ever seen. They've locked the door to that room so I don't have a picture, but I'll get one if I can, its real crazy.

Some kids here are going to Germany for "Schmuck" jewelry thing, they asked if i wanted to go but its the week before SNAG so i can't, i hope people go next year too because that would be pretty awesome. They are also making some kind of cards or advertising thing to hand out at SNAG but i'm supposed to have an image of something that i've made here, so that gives me like two weeks (more like one week now) to get something done.

Ok that was week one of grade school so far so good!

K. redford