I'm going to try something new. Every month starting now I will post eight photos from that month (two for each week) with a brief caption. Here we go.
small children loving a book
Layout of a wheat pattern on a half round platinum band.
Freind about to finish her first climeing route!
Our Gem cutter looking at a 7ct diamond under the microscope
A freind of a freinds engagmetn ring getting worked on!
BFF just got her first manicure - she picked that nice peach color and I went for the most glitter I could find
A sad farewell to the amazing hardware store here in Seattle called Hardwicks. It was announced that they will be closing soon but no date have been given.
A close-up shot of that 7ct from Image 4 on my hand before it was sent back.
My Senior show happen over three months ago now and I realize that I have written so little about it. not just here but anywhere. Maybe I needed a few months to be able to have enough space to be able to write about it. When I started senior project I was already aware of how intense it was going to be. I was still unpaired for the huge physical, monetary, and mental toll it took. there was no point during the making and prep of my senior show that was easy. it was a uphill battle the whole way, but I am also very proud of what I accomplished. Here it is.
Artist Statement
Everything is connected; we are connected to each other through our shared humanity. We are surrounded by links that tie us to everything else. By examining different types of networks and links in my work I hope to gain a deeper understanding of how we relate to other people and the world. I hope to honor the relationships that mean the most to people. Using charts and graphs to plot the lines of things like family trees, friend networks, and smaller personal connections, I take these and turn them into wearable, tangible objects. Based on my own networks, the work is a reflection on the larger connections that we all share, the things that tie us to our community and personal networks.
here's my week according to podcasts, I encouraged to click around and find something you like!
Monday - Stuff you missed in history, Overdue,
Tuesday - Stuff you should know, 99% invisible, Can I pet your dog?, Radiolab (every other Tuesday)
Wednesday - Stuff you missed in history, The Allusions, Sawbones, Oxford DNB (every other Wednesday)
Thursday - Stuff you should know, Spilled Milk, Sex, Death and Money (every outer Thursday)
Friday - The Story Collider, Call your girlfriend (every other Friday), Criminal (every other Friday)
Saturday - the sadist day in podcasting, it's like dead day there is no new podcasts in my Que all day!!! how horrible I generally have one that was released earlier in the week that I catch up on.
Sunday - The chapter titles were so good (T.C.T.W.S.G), This American Life, Lore (every outer Sunday)
If you have a podcast suggestion please leave it in the comments!
I have been doing a lot of sketching over the past week so that I have plans moving forward. All that drawing makes me itchy, so I decided to take a bit of a break and make something.
Last semester, I cast a whole bunch of these pointy shape that I used in my collar, and i had lots of extras.
So one of those became the base, and I curved some silver wire - I wanted a curve to be in this piece. I wanted the contrast the curve would provide.
It took six attempts to cut the bronze piece right. One was to lose some didn't set right one I cut wrong at the top.
Oh well by the sixth one I was much faster at making them.
This pendant has two parts that are meant to be taken apart, and resembled with outer pieces that I have yet to make.
But for now I like it just the way it is. - Katie
Hi everyone,
Guess what time it is? Back to school time! In fact, I just finished up my first week back at school. My last first week of school - this is my final semester at CCA. By Christmas if all goes to plan, I should have my BA in jewelry metal arts and be on my way to whatever comes after that.
My summer was busy and sad, but that's for a different post. I took a lot of photos this summer so I think I will end up putting together a photo post of the summer, but it might take a little while to put together.
This semester there have been some changes. The biggest one is that there are fewer people in the house I am livening in right now - it feels a bit empty, but I have way more kitchen space so that's nice.
I bought a new desk - it's this one from Ikea.
I moved benches in the studio. - I did this for a lot of reasons. The main one is that out of the two rooms we have for seniors the second one is smaller, and I found that the bigger room with more people and more activity is really distracting. I can't afford that this semester, I have way to much to do.
Look how orgnized!
In fact I have done a lot to cut down on distractions, I put together a capsule wardrobe before I came down to make getting dressed easier. I am loving it, I know exactly whats in my closet and just about every peice of clothing works with everything else! It's possible that I will get bored with the clothes I have, but I'm more worried about caving and going shopping (for clothes I don't need but want) before the semester is over.
I also made to major shifts in the food I will be eating - I love cooking for myself, it's fun, I always learn something, and I feel much more confident and safe when I have made the food. But making all your meals every day is a lot of time and energy. On top of that I often eat lunch and dinner (+snacks) at school at my bench. So I need to make and pack meals every day, it was getting to stressful. I caved and started looking for ways to make my life easier, the first thing was getting a rice cooker - I eat a lot of rice. For the past three years I have been making rice on the stove. I cook lots of different kinds of rice, about three times a week - White, brown, long grain, and music rice are all in my kitchen right now. So I needed a complex rice maker, I turned to the Japanese. I read a lot of reviews and got this one.
It's beautiful, I'm in love. The manual is huge it has 8 different settings, two timer functions, two warming options, and has fussy logic so it can compensate for a cold outside temperature or a "Full" cup of rice.
the second choice I made was to subscribe to a food delivery service, it's called Freshly. they send me six pre-made meals every week for $69 dollars a week. - The first week is only $30 and I'm really glad they had that promotion because what if they were horrible? Well, I got my first box and had eaten my first two meals and decided it's not horrible. It's not great mind you- they do have flavor, but it's all a bit muddled, and I feel full but not really satisfied like they are missing something. I can live with that - the time and piece of mind it's giving me is huge. They are also very healthy, lots of protein and no gluten in any of them so I am just screening for eggs and dairy. Besides I still am making food just not as much. In a few weeks, I will re-evaluate how freshly is doing and maybe write a more formal review.
here are four of the six meals - I already ate the other two.
I also have a subscription to Nature Box. The snack subscription box that comes monthly. I have had this for about a year now and this too provides good snacks that I don't have to shop/make - I will be keeping this as well.
So here's to a productive semester!
Talk to you later - Katie
two projects have come off my bench recently that I want to share - this collar piece is the largest piece I have done in a long time, it felt kind of great to finish this piece and then to see the reactions from my classmates it just felt really good.
So there is Project One - project two came right after I finished the larger piece I just wanted to make a quick fun and cute little thing. So I made a three part ring, the stones are a blue topaz (the teardrops) and two small aquamarines on the larger band.
on the non-jewelry side I glazed my huge ceramic Goldfish when it comes out of the kiln it will be gold but the glaze goes on matt black, and it looks way cool as well - but I can't wait for it become out :)
So its April now, we are past midterms by a week or two and we only have a few weeks left. I'm not going to lie, this semester has been a bit tough and I feel very unproductive looking back on it. It’s a disappointing feeling because all I want to do is work, but things keep getting in the way. I have more urgent work, I get distracted with helping someone else, the room is too messy and I have to clean, I'm working and then I start to question what I am doing and then nothing gets done.
Ceramics - about 6 weeks into class the ceramics teacher had to take a medical leave and withdrew from the class, so we got a new teacher. This was rather lucky for me as I was failing the class - yes I was failing Ceramics. I know, I know, stupid, right but me and the Ceramics teacher did not like each other much. I hated every project he gave and his habit of adding in extra requirement half way through to challenge us to loosen up and experiment made me want to scream. The new teacher and I get along just fine, so I have started to enjoy Ceramics again.
the project I am finishing up right now it's a huge goldfish that will be pained gold. Get it a GOLDfish....haha...
The assignment was to create a visual pun...
Senior Project - this is my only jewelry class and I can't say I have enjoyed it much - Senior Project is tricky, for one, it’s six hours long. Can you imagine sitting for six hours and reviewing everyone's work? It’s not fun, and while last semester was organized with little formal structure, this semester has had too much. I keep having assignment that feel useless or unproductive to me at the place I am in my process. In the past week I feel like I have finally started to make progress and I can’t wait to update you on that later.
a very in progress photo. Hopefully this will be done by Friday and I can move on!
Zen and the Japanese Garden - still stupid but has gotten a bit better she finally finished a syllabus - don't mind the fact that its unreasonable and practicality unreadable - she wrote one. Now the thing that bugs me the most is the insulting way she talks to us, I think she is trying to do that friendly ribbing thing, but it borders on mean and offensive most of the time. She has taken to calling me the Queen of Questions - because you know I ask when things don't make sense and are unclear.
Interdisciplinary Crit. - well we took a trip to LA that was nice. There’s not a ton to say about this class, we review people every week and talk about their work. I like one of the teachers more than the other and there are a few people who I can't stand, but mostly its a great class.
African American Art - A odd class, but I like the teacher, he's funny and quite laid back - maybe a bit too laid back as I somehow completely missed the midterm paper because I did not know it was a thing, but he's so laid back that he doesn't care if its weeks late - at least he is consistent. In fact, I find his class good enough that I will be taking a class from him again in the fall called The Color of Humor.
My last days of spring break were spent on a class trip to LA to visit galleries. I didn't know this was part of the class when I signed up but seeing as I have now lived in the bay area for three years and never been to LA I decided it was a great opportunity.
As the trip drew closer I began to have some reservations, the two teachers, who I do like, are much more on the "Fine Art" side then the "Craft" side. We have had Crits in this class where what I'm seeing and what people are saying don't match, in fact sometimes people will say something completely nonsensical and people nod like they totally understand - and I am a bit worried that they do...
So I was worried that I would spend two days and a lot of money for something that did not relate to my field and would just make me angry at the state of "Art". I was kind of right, but I had a great time, and I’m glad I went.
I liked these - the metal sculptures and the painting witch was done by mixing tiny light reflective glass beads into the paint - ACE gallery (please excuse the photos I forgot to bring my nice camera and regretted it the whole trip - all the photos were taken with my phone)
I flew down on Friday, and man, I was glad I got there in the evening, because the temperature was in the 90's on Saturday. We started our travels in a loose packs wandering in and out of gallery's and pilling in cars to move to different areas. Instead of giving you a rundown of the gallerys we saw, I’ll just give you some impressions I got from the trip.
this is one of the building attached to LACMA - I did not get a chance to go in but the space is cool
1. The gallery's in LA are huge, bright white rooms - high ceiling and lots of windows. In SF the gallery's are nice, but small, because space is so valuable. It was very cool to see such huge spaces dedicated to Art
2. We saw a lot of paintings - this was kind of unexpected, we could have seen anything because gallerys rotate art all the time, but mostly it was paintings which was fine, I have a very low threshold for modern sculpture.
3. Parts of LA are very photogenic.
but not this part...this was as close to the Hollywood sign as I got and I'm ok with that.
4. There is some cool public art in LA.
5. I liked LA more than I thought I would - it was way to hot and the traffic was horrible, but it was fun, and huge, and I would for sure go back.
I fit in a non-school thing on Sunday before flying back to Oakland. I visited the museum of Jurassic Technology! It was AWESOME I loved this museum, it was delightfully strange and interesting! but I won't say much about it here because I think it would not do the experience justice.
It was a too quick trip. I hope to go back to LA at some point (with a car) to play tourist properly and see the museums and maybe a beach!
This past week was spring break. In a normal university this week is a real break between quarters, people fly off to the Florida Keys to make stupid decisions and spend the entire week drunk. Do people still do that? I don't think I have known anyone who took the classic spring break featured on TV, but maybe thats a comment on the people i know more than the typical spring break...Anyway...
So in art school spring break is kind of a touchy subject...see there's this view that if you don't spend your week off working on your projects then you are not a true artist. I had more than one teacher tell me quite seriously that "it's ok you have all next week without classes to work on your project" to which I would make this ummm noise because no, I was not going to spend all week in studio. In truth, no one is there as much as they say they will be.
look at those lovely painted houses in SF
I did spend the weekend In the studio so maybe I get some artist points for that...
On Monday my best friend Onj arrived! Highlights of the five days included;
1. Making some amazing sandwiches
2. Wandered Valencia Street in SF
3. Onj getting her nose pierced in Berkley
4. Dragging Onj into the studio to make glazes and have her help on my ceramics project - and having a lot of fun :)
5. Being boring and just not doing much because we both needed that
I took almost no photos because we didn't really go anywhere, but here is one of the bell tower on the Berkeley campus that we went up.
The view from the top of the Berkeley bell tower. If you squint into the fog you can even see the golden gate bridge.
Onj Looking out at the view and contemplating the view.
After a wonderful five days we both packed and headed to the airport. Me for LA and Onj back to Seattle. I have a lot to say about my trip to LA but I will save that for a later post. I think this was one of the best and most relaxing Spring breaks I have had, its also very possibly my last which I feel kind of sad about.
so I have been sick and that always sucks. the Doc I saw thinks it was a stomach bug - whatever it was it was unpleasant, and I don't feel fully recovered yet either. Also Terry Pratchett died on Thursday and that threw me for a complete loop. I knew that I would be sad when my favorite author passed on and it wasn't super unexpected either but the news proved a bit more devastating then I expected. I am sure I will write something on him and his impact on my life at a later date when things are not quite so close.
so last week was not great...and I am happy to be moving on to this week although I have so much to do, and I still need to take it a bit slow.
but there is so much to get done - because next week is Spring Break! I have to be healthy and caught up for that! my best friend is coming down from Seattle to spend five days with me and then I will finish off my break with a weekend trip to LA on a class trip to visit galleries! very exciting stuff people.
In the mean time I have become obsessed with a BBC show called Call the Midwife about a group of midwives and nuns in a poor area of London in the late 1950's I finished the third season and am now running into the frustrating problem that season 4 is airing in the UK but doesn't air here in the states until later this month *Sigh* I do feel that it has added my recovery thought :)
I hope all of you are healthy and happy.
talk to you soon Katie
