Sometimes they'll paint your box gold.

A great deal has happened this week and I'm still unable to wrap my mind around all of it. Though I wish that I could sit here and type 300+ words about life drawing that just seems illogical for me and I apologize for that ahead of time. I believe that our art is directly influenced by our lives and what is going on around us not only in our institution but in our state, in our country, in our world. Now, this may seem like it's going somewhere that a great number of people would rather not see it go and well... depending on who you are I suppose it is. So I'm going to start rambling because I am a bundle full of passion and a powder keg ready to explode. Some things that really bug me: People who spout nonsense about issues that they are not educated in, people who call names and argue simply because they like to, and people who don't allow others to express their opinions without continuously bashing them. Now I'm no saint and I do realize that I have done this many times in my life but in this case things have changed and I'm not going to sit back and take all of this anymore. I already knew a little about the rally and the protesting and yada yada but this morning it started to get personal. A professor of mine that I respect greatly spoke in front of the class about the "Budget Repair Bill" and the impact that it would have on our professors and in turn on all of us students. The professors in my department are already on a 3% pay cut in order to hold onto some of the more experienced educators and now they're expected do lose somewhere around 17% of their salaries. It's not only the professors and all the educators around the state but it's all state employees that are expected to make this sacrifice. I know that not everyone agrees that this should be protested but as a college student at a university in Wisconsin it sure makes me wonder where our tuition money is going. I was talking to a friend of mine who mentioned a conversation she had with a custodian who has worked at Stout for nearly 30 years, she stated that her pay would now be reduced to around 7 dollars an hour when she could earn more than that working in the drive through at a fast food restaurant. What is keeping our professors and other state workers here in Wisconsin when they could be making more money instructing at almost any community college in the surrounding states? I have heard many complaints from students about this issue and most of them are about them wasting tuition money for their professors to protest. I'll stand firm in my beliefs that I would much rather be taught by a professor that is not afraid to stand up for their rights than one who bends over and takes it. Now most of this might have seemed like rambling on about nothing but I encourage you to look more into the subject and find your voice in the matter. I respect different opinions and I listen to opposing arguments, I don't expect for you to change yours and don't think for a second that you can change mine.

Nobody fed the creature and the creature died.

This last week had a lot of ups and downs and unfortunately they all had to do with the art program and my brain trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life... I know that this might be a recurring theme being that I am in college and should probably try to figure these things out as soon as possible, but whenever I do it causes more harm than good. At the beginning of this last week my friend Lauren and I moved into our sculpture studio space and then things really started getting serious. I am blessed to be able to surround myself with wise upperclassmen that know more about what they're doing and where they're going but it also stresses me out more than it probably should. We are brainstorming for our first sculpture project and I'm not as far as I'd like to be but I have been distracted by other classes and that doesn't help much. Also, these last two weeks we have had a show in the student gallery that has been up and it took up an hour of my time every day... So this is the start of some of the downs; The show failed because as a group we didn't work as collectively as we should have and I regret that I hadn't mentioned anything to the class about that but what's done is done. Lars told us that our issue was that nobody fed the creature and the creature died, and I think that I am going to start to bring that idea into my practice more than I have been. If we have creative ideas that we let sit in the back of our brains and we don't constantly feed them than how are they supposed to grow? I figure that since this is a life drawing post than I should probably address the class and talk about this week's progress. At the beginning of the week I felt a great deal more confident than I did at the end of the week when I walked around and took a look at the drawings made by the rest of the class. I thought for awhile that I was getting the ribs right but I think I am going to need to start to search for models on my free time because I might need twice as much work as the rest of my classmates when it comes to this course. It was interesting to have a male model at the end of the week because it gave me a chance to see the difference between the curves in the female figure and the opposite in the men's figure. Tonight I just got back from molding the muscles on my skeleton and I am pleased to report that I am actually doing quite a lot better with it than I was before, I think that the model that we can look at helps because when I look at the book I get more confused than I should be as to where the muscles go on the bones and what not. I hope that I improve in my drawings this week because that would be a nice change. Sweet Dreams Wisconsin.