Illustration at Parsons.

I never thought I'd be so enthralled with school again, but it feels good to be back.

It's a little strange being the oldest one in all my classes; I should be a senior by now, but I'm technically a second semester sophomore. I took a more eventful route, changing out of the Fashion Design program after one semester and switching to Illustration, and then taking a year off because I was overwhelmed.

I'm one of those people who really sucks at "doing school"; I have a hard time with schedules, lectures, routines, homework, completing long-term projects, and pretty much getting anywhere on time. It's partially my learning style and partially that I'm easily derailed, I get distracted by a million other things. I could write miles about how the school system fucked me over because I was/am "gifted", but let's save that for another day.

This is a drawing I did awhile back (I'm still trying to catch things up to my recent work) of a lot of random visual elements; I was thinking of embroidering the design on a back of a jacket, but I've only done a little bit so far.

My current classes are:

• Sophomore Concepts
• Sophomore Painting
• Global Issues in Design & Visuality
• Materials & Methods
• Sophomore Drawing
• Fashioning Power

So far, my favorites are Painting and... all of them.
By some freak accident, I ended up with a seriously quality group of instructors, and I think I'm going to get a lot out of this semester, I can already feel it.

My painting class is really getting under my skin, in a good way. Gavin has a perspective on painting that is the antithesis of my own, but one that I know I need to internalize. Remember when I was talking about art and fear and how I know it's keeping me from being more prolific with my work? It's like that.
My first class, he went on this rant that really set my brain on it's end, about how important it is to forget about the final outcome and finding your own visual voice.
When we were doing a demo on underpainting, he kept erasing entire sections saying

"I don't care if I do this! It doesn't matter! I can even step on my painting (and procedes to do so, blotting out part of a face) and LOOK! Look at that! That texture looks amazing! Stop being so precious with your work and just PAINT!"

I spent an entire class drawing models in 5 minute poses with my non-dominant, left hand, and felt myself getting frustrated after the second or third hour (our studio classes are about 6 hours long). And I just wanted to quit, because usually I'm pretty decent at life drawing but I just couldn't get the gist of it, couldn't get the pose right, it wasn't good and I was angry. And I came to this point where I wanted to stop, and get mad. But instead I embraced it, and pushed myself to look at why I was getting angry. And it was because I felt like, if I wasn't producing beautiful drawings, then what I was doing was worthless and I shouldn't bother. And I know I feel the same way about my more involved art, and I shouldn't. I should create because I'm compelled to, not so I can impress others.
I'm slowly learning to let go of the fear I have, that somehow became so entangled in my working process in the past few years.
It's hard, but it feels good.

And my other class that I'm kind of obsessed with, is the Fashioning Power class, which is all about fashion and sociology, and why people dress the way they dress, how self-presentation affects social interaction, and all the intricacies in between. This is the stuff that I've always understood intuitively, and it's incredible to understand it in a more academic sense. My final project is going to be kickass, I am so, so excited about it.

All these things in my life are conspiring with me, lately. Classes cross-connecting, everything integrating, the universe is connecting the dots for me, and it feels really nice. I feel really hopeful, especially since I have a lot of opportunities that suddenly started to come my way over the weekend (flyer design, art/video collaborations, party design) and I need to keep on it and not get overwhelmed.

I feel like I'm on the brink of something big.