Last post (...or is it?)

It's sad to think that this is the last time I'm required to make a post on here (I might continue doing this, though, because it's an excellent way to rant).  On the other hand, it's kind of exciting to think that the year is almost over (well, I guess that can be sad, too, but I'm too excited) and I'm going to be moving on.  Also, being done with the concentration pieces is... relieving, despite the fact that I kinda loved it.   Now it's just the magazine/Japan project, then we're home free.

I had a great time in art this year!

Eh, heh heh.

So, I still need to take pictures of my art...

Think I'll be doing it with my own camera, actually.  Gotta remember to bring that in.

SO MUCH AMAZING

Because I'm dorky this way I love sci-fi actors.  (Especially DeForest Kelley!!!!  And I'm kinda named after him.)  So, watching both Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: TNG, also Professor X of the X-Men) and David Tennant (the Doctor, from Doctor Who - and Barty Crouch, Jr. in HP #4) in Hamlet is like !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  in my mind.

Hamlet
the Doctor
Captain Picard

GO WATCH IT NOW
IT IS SO SO SO MUCH BETTER THAN MEL GIBSON AND MAYBE ALSO KENNETH BRANAGH.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1473795626/

FML. Again.

Sorted through my art to find my concentration pieces to bring in.  Couldn't find one of the old ones - a black and white cyborg hand - hoping desperately it's at school even though I'm really sure I brought it home to store with the others.  If I don't find it, I'll be one piece short..... O.O   (Or I suppose I could remake it over the weekend - maybe change a few things around.)

Still.  Kinda sucks. A lot.

Portland Art Museum!!!!

Love this place so much.  But forgot to take my camera, so I was stuck with my crappy sell phone.  Ended up taking 80+ pictures, but the stupid thing won't connect to my computer, so I was stuck messaging myself my favorite ones.  XP

Also, they cam in sideways.... Aw.

So tired....

Stayed up late on Thursday for the concert-a-thon (so much fun, though!!!!).  Stayed up late on Friday trying to get ahead on my homework.  Stayed up late on Saturday because the people I was babysitting for lied about the time they were coming back ("8:30, maybe 9 at the absolute latest!"  Yeah, they weren't back until after midnight.  Midnight happens to be my curfew).  Stayed up late on Sunday trying to write that thrice-damned essay for English (the "healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude" can bite my ass).

Also, feelings of nausea abound.  Perhaps caused by dearth of sleep and excess of stress.

-_-    This is me.

Next Concentration Piece:

 

Space shuttle                                                                                           Rauschenberg
                                                                      +

XP

The concentration piece I did before spring break - charcoal portrait of my sister as an astronaut - was... not that great.  I mean, it was okay, but I wasn't too impressed with myself.  So I let it sit for a bit, I thought about it, looked it over, etc.  And I decided that it would be possible for me to change a few things here and there to make it look better.  So I did that.

....

Didn't work out all that well.  At all.  I messed up to the point where it looks worse than when I started "fixing" it.

Yeah, I don't really want to bring it into school tomorrow.  It looks like crap.  I mean, I have to bring it in because it's way too late for me to do another piece, but... it'll be embarrassing.

At least I learned my lesson about going back to mess with stuff.  ("If it ain't baroque, don't fix it" is the quote that comes to mind...)

Wait-listed by William and Mary

: (

Well, hey

Almost forgot - the highlight of my otherwise cruddy break: going to the Portland Art Museum.  There were some really cool pieces there.  And the "Treasures of a City" exhibit was amazing - I saw my favorite Rauschenberg piece.
(I took pictures, but my computer isn't letting me up load them...)

Waiting.... Stressed.... Broke....

The only college I haven't heard back from is William & Mary.  (This is the waiting part.)  But I kinda need to make a decision - not only for my own peace of mind, but for my parents' as well.  Also because my decision will affect the rest of the year, how well I need to do on the AP tests, what sort of money I need to scrounge up, etc.

As of right now, the two main contenders are U of O and Bryn Mawr.  Now, U of O is a whole lot less expensive (my parents and I would only have to pay about $9,000 - $10,000 per year).  It's also known for it's physics department.  Bryn Mawr is pretty much recruiting me (they named me an "Anniversary Scholar" and will give me $15,000 per year, the Dean of Admissions sent me a handwritten letter in response to my application essay - that quoted from it and if that's not awkwardly flattering then I don't know what is - and are offering to pay my travel expenses if I want to go visit them in April).  Now, Bryn Mawr does have a physics department.  But it's super tiny.  And the school as a whole is known more for its English/Political Science/Liberal Arts education.  It'll also still be super expensive even with the scholarship.  I'll also be super far away.  I mean, I want to go out on my own, but if something happened, I'd be, well, on my own.  But I really, really want to go to Bryn Mawr, even if U of O is the "logical" choice, and I've kinda already resigned myself to going there.

So I'm stressing over all that.  

I'm also stressing over the fact that I have no money.  My parents want me to pay for my own education (they'll help, but....) and I'm pretty much broke.  So I need a job and/or scholarships.  Thing is, no one's hiring.  (I know people who were working at the grocery store, and got laid off.)  And I don't qualify for financial aid because my dad makes a lot of money - but our house and utilities use up a lot of that, and there's always other stuff like my siblings suddenly needing braces or my mom's car breaking down, and my parents are going to have exactly one kid in college every single year for the NEXT SIXTEEN YEARS because my siblings and I are evenly spaced like that.  And there's no place to write that on the FAFSA forms.

Long story short - I've spent the entirety of spring break filling out applications for jobs and scholarships, having "discussions" with my parents that lead most often to anger and more stress, having emotional breakdowns, ranting about it all on this blog, and not having any time left over for things like sleep, a social life, and, oh yeah, homework and art.

My AP Physics homework is only three problems - but each of those problems takes about 45 - 60 minutes to do.  And I only have 1.5 of my two concentration pieces done.

I did one at home during the first part of this month (it's not my best piece of work, but I can't really think of ways to make it better....) and I figured that I'd do the second over spring break.  Because I thought, fool that I am, that I'd have time to work on it.  Yeah.  It's maybe halfway done.  If I want to interpret "halfway" pretty loosely.

So.... My life is absolutely, totally, completely PEACHY.

Hope all y'all had a better break than I did.

Wait-listed by Washington and Lee

Not too torn up about that one.

(Just waiting to hear back from William and Mary now.)

More college stuff! (Because EVERYONE enjoys me bragging about this)

Got into Lewis and Clark.  Which is nice.  Probably won't go - it was the first school I applied to, back in November, when my two "maybe I want to do this with my life..." were physics/astrophysics and law.  Lewis and Clark is a great law school, but I've been leaning really heavily towards the physics thing for a while now.  (Maybe I can get my bachelor's degree in physics, then go to law school and become a patent lawyer - it's a pretty lucrative job, and doesn't require too much actual work.  My uncle's a p.l. with a degree in mechanical engineering and all he has to do is look over the schematics of the product, make sure it's feasible according to the laws of the natural world, do a bit of research to make sure it doesn't violate copyrights, then file a form for the patent.)

Got into another college!

Bryn Mawr!!!!  Another $55,000 per year college, but they're offering a $12,000 scholarship (need to find out if it'll be renewed for all four years...).

Oh well...

Got a rejection letter from Rice University today.  I guess I'm okay with that - it's a really great school, but it's also super expensive ($55,000 per year!!!) and my family doesn't qualify for financial aid even through we'd never be able to pay that much.  Also Rice is in Houston.  I don't like Houston.

On the other hand - rejection = ow.

Woot!

Got my acceptance letter from UW!!!  Not sure if I'll actually go there or not, but I'm still happy.

Pretty cool, huh?

Field of Rosette

The California Nebula

The NASA APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) (CLICK THE LINK!!!!) is super cool.  Each day, a new astronomy-related picture is posted - the ones I put up here were taken by the Hubble Telescope, but they also have pictures taken by the ISS, the shuttle, the rovers, Earth-based telescopes, and even some really amazing pictures where the photographer set the camera up for a really long exposure time and pointed it at the sky.  Each picture is accompanied by a short article written by a professional astronomer or scientist from NASA that explains what the image is.

Please someone, help me. NOW

So I got more than five hours of sleep last night for the fist time in about a week and a half.  I still feel exhausted.  Also my feet are so dry that my heels are cracking, so they're painful and bloody and I can't walk which is horrible because I'm a bit of a kinesthetic thinker (means I process better if I move - so trying to do math homework?  Or studying for my AP Physics test?  Yeah, not happening).

And my siblings are SO annoying. Like, if you hear on the news that a Lakeridge student go arrested over the weekend because she tied and gagged her siblings before leaving them outside for our population of carnivorous deer to eat, that's me.  (And I'm not joking about the deer - there's a female who's the permanent resident around these parts, but she always gets knocked up and will have, at any given time, at least three young fawns around her - and they eat roadkill squirrels.  Like, if there's been a roadkill incident around the neighborhood, the deer will go to it, sniff around the carcass, and then the carcass will be gone.  (I've never actually seen them EAT anything, but whatever they do, it gets rid of dead squirrels. Might as well say they're carnivorous.))

Also my concentration piece is still only half done.

So, uh, let's explain that - I did a charcoal portrait of myself as a cyborg, another one of my older younger brother as an alien, and now I'm working on one of my sister as a space-explorer/cosmonaut/Captain-Kirk (but, you know, a little girl Captain Kirk - maybe that would make her Janeway?  But I've never really liked Voyager...).  I was going to turn it in as one of the two pieces in the most recent concentration check but I didn't manage my time well (I could have brought it into school to work on it, but that would have meant moving it from my house and loosing the little art-niche I claimed for myself in the living room - and then I would have never gotten my space back.  The way my family works is that if you don't actually have something in your space to claim it as, you know, your space, it will be taken over.  It's like the law of the jungle in my house).

I ended up doing a last minute oil pastel thingy of an "alien landscape" that's really, really shitty - but at least I had two things to turn in.  I was really hoping I could finish the portrait this weekend and then have three pieces to turn in on the 30th (I have enough cool ideas that I want to start two new projects this month), but I don't think that will happen because I can barely put any weight on my left foot and absolutely none on my right foot.  So standing in front of an easel is out of the question.  I'd get a stool, but my mom has banned me from walking - or even moving my foot off the plastic I have it on now because my heels are bleeding through the band-aids.  And bloodstains on white wool carpets?  Don't come out.

Basically, I'm immobile, wracked with pain, subjugated to my siblings, and really hungry.  Wondering if I can make it from my desk to the kitchen without leaving a trail of bloody footprints down the hallway and up the stairs.  Or if I can use, like, my textbooks or something as a moving bridge - like stand on one, put the other in front of me, step on it, then move the first one forward..... But that involves a lot of standing and stepping and OW.  I could ask the sibs to bring me something.

Yeah.  Right.  Like that would work.

I am so miserable.  And I don't have a life.  Like, my lack of a social life has always been a constant, but now the rest of my life consists of me posting to my art blog.

Speaking of, have some cool sci-fi art (I wish I could be this amazing):

Cosmic Girl, by Jamiroquai

I must've died and gone to heaven,

'Cause it was a quarter past eleven
On a Saturday in 1999 - 
Right across from where I'm standing,
On the dance floor she was landing.

It was clear that she was from another time,
Like some baby Barbarella
With the stars as her umbrella.
She asked me if I'd like to magnetize.
"Do I have to go star-trekking?
'Cause it's you I should be checking."
So she laser beamed me with her cosmic eyes.

She's just a cosmic girl,
From another galaxy.
My heart's at zero gravity.
She's from a cosmic world,
Putting me in ecstasy,
Transmitting on my frequency.
She's cosmic.

I'm scanning all my radars - 
Well, she said she's from a quasar,
Forty thousand million light years away.
It's a distant solar system,
I tried to phone, but they don't list 'em
So I asked her for a number all the same.

She said, "step in my transporter,
So I can teleport ya
All around my heavenly body."
This could be a close encounter,
I should take care not to flounder.
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face

She's just a cosmic girl,
From another galaxy.
My heart's at zero gravity.
She's from a cosmic world,
Putting me in ecstasy,
Transmitting on my frequency.
She's cosmic.Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face.
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face...

She's just a cosmic girl,
From another galaxy.
Transmitting on my frequency, yeah, cosmic, oh...
Can't you be my cosmic woman?
I need you, I want you to be my cosmic girl
For the rest of time.

(Only one of each of us)

Two big things:

One: "Quadruple Fugue for String Orchestra", by Randall DeBruyn, is stuck in my head.  And has been for the past week and a half.  Especially the first subject.  Especially the part where the firsts have the first subject about two octaves higher than we've played it before and the seconds are doing the second subject and the thirds the third and the violas the fourth....
If anyone is reading this (XD Yeah.  Right.  Pfft) and knows what I'm talking about - that's really great.  If you don't know, come watch the TRL Orchestra competition on March 15 - it's in the Lakeridge auditorium, is completely free, and Lakeridge will be on stage as school lets out.

Two: "In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets.  And in this universe, three million million galaxies like this.  And in all that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us." [Paul Schneider, for ST:TOS: "Balance of Terror"]

It's really hard to put into words exactly what this quote means to me.   It's kind of the summation of my beliefs, my inspiration.  It makes me feel special - valuable - on a sort of cosmic scale, connected to something larger than I have the power to truly comprehend.  It also makes me feel achingly small.
Part of me wants to work this into my concentration.  There's a few ways I could do that - but none of them would satisfy me.  This quote and, far more importantly, the concepts it represents, invoke emotions that I cannot visually represent and still feel as if I am presenting truth.  (It would be more natural - but never easier - to explain with words, to labor in "the agony and the sweat" of my heart with a pen and a piece of notebook paper.)

Ah ha ha!!! JK, JK

So the "Howlin' for You" movie trailer WAS a hoax.  It's actually a music video in disguise for the Black Keys song of the same name.

They even had three different fake "movie reviews".

*facepalm*  I feel like such an idiot now, to be taken in by this "War of the Worlds" wanna-be.

Here's a link to the video:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi695638553/

Also Blerk

I think I'm getting sick.

Also I'm not sure how I'm gonna pay for college (even in-state tuition, if I end up going to U of O is... not pleasant to think about) (on the upside U of O gave me a scholarship [yayyy!!!], on the downside, it's only $2,000 per year - doesn't even come close to paying for a dorm forget classes).

Also I still don't know what I'm going to do in art class tomorrow (I'm in the middle of a project right now, and can't quite move it... um).

Also I have a crapload of AP Physics homework to do.

Also an essay for AP English.

Also AP tests to think about because I was dumb enough to sing up for all the AP classes when I only needed an English class and a semester's worth of an elective to graduate.

Also I'm not sure if I want to pay the $87 dollars (because my parents will make me pay for it) for the AP Art portfolio/test/whatever the hell it is because I'm not going to art school or majoring in art or art history or anything (actually, I really want to go into astrophysics) and it's a possibility that I might take an art class as an elective but why should I try to get exempted from the beginning art class when I take art because I enjoy it and it helps me calm down and concentrate like meditation and therefore why not take Art 1 just for the fun of it and then blow them all out of the water when I reveal that I'm actually more talented than the rest of the people in Art 1 will most likely be because I was in advanced art and they're all taking the class because it's an easy A that can staisfy elective requirements?

Also I'm not even sure if that above monster of a run-on even made sense.

Also I've run out of things to go "Also..." about.

So...
...
...
Have you guys heard about that new Tricia Helfer (super model and Number 6 of BSG fame) movie coming out?  "Howlin' for Me" or something.  It looks really really REALLY stupid.  I was kind of amazed and not in a good way - Helfer was in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!!!!! Possibly one of the most intense, intelligent, thought-provoking sci-fi TV shows EVER!!!!!!! AND NOW SHE'S DOING THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  (I'm trying to tell myself that it's a hoax.)

Dilemma Averted!

Or at least postponed.

Got sick last night, so I didn't have to go to school.  Which means my question of "What I am I going to do in art on Tuesday?" is now "What am I going to do in art on Thursday?"

Joy.

Hey y'all

Not sure if I was supposed to update this week or not, so I am anyways.

Don't have much to rant about - my life's flowing pretty smoothly right now.  My biggest problem is what to work on in art class tomorrow.  XD  I have two projects planned for my February concentration with a third as back-up just in case.  The thing is, the one I want to get done with first, I would really, really prefer to do at home.  I have all of the supplies I need here and I'd rather not deal with having to lug them back and forth (especially because there are kind of a lot of them).   The second one I would also prefer to do at home - or at least do the first few steps here.  It involves printmaking, so I think it would be nice to use the actual printing press (the way I do it works, and I can get everything lined  up pretty well, but it's time-consuming.  Also, my mom's paranoid about me getting ink on her rolling pin...).  My third on, the back-up, also would work better if I did it at home.  If I do it, it'll be a photography based project, and will probably require quite a bit of manipulation - I can't take the pictures at school and I can't edit them on the school computers because I don't know photoshop well enough to do that.  I need to use the program I have on my home computer.

So, basically, unless I spend the rest of the afternoon getting most of my print carving done (not happening due to my other homework) or come up with a fourth idea of what to do for this concentration, I have no clue what I'll be doing in class tomorrow.

Hmmm... maybe I could plan Sydney with Katie.  Well, we already have a plan.  But I could always draw another sketch!!!!!  Roseneau would probably really enjoy it....

Concentration: Science Fiction

charcoal on paper

acrylic paint on CD, acrylic paint on record

acrylic paint on canvas

acrylic paint on "canvas" paper

The last three were going to be a quartet, all mounted on the same board, but I changed my mind.  The CD and record can be separated - it was just more convenient for taking a picture to have them both on the same thing.

Concentrations? What's that?

So, I did one piece at school... and totally forgot about the other until fifteen minutes ago.

FML

Luckily, there was this thing that I was going to do for one of my earlier concentration pieces but then I ended up not doing it so now I can go back to it.

So... not FML.

Yay.

My post for this week....

... is uninspired.

Gotta vent

U of O is my back-up school.

Apparently it's not a good idea to tell them that when they call and ask what your interest in the school is.

My parents have gotten all "now you've just ruined your chances and you won't get a place because they'll be too crowded for you and you're not gonna go to college because all the out of state schools are too expensive and we're not going to pay and you don't get federal aid because your dad's income is high enough but they don't take your siblings into account so U of O was the only one we could have afforded but now you're not gonna get in."

I'm not sure if I'm mad at them for being all doom-and-gloom or if I'm really worried/stressed because they're right.

Either way, the oily sick tangle of emotion in my stomach is making me sick.  As in I need to go worship the porcelain goddess.  (This happens when I get stressed.   I also get grey hairs.  I pulled two of them out yesterday.  I'm too young for this shit.)

Star Trek continues to be unafraid to boldly go where no other science fiction shows of the time dare to go!

Star Trek - Deep Space 9: "Rejoined"

Portfolio day...

... Was an adventure.  Also (sorry Ms. McB) a bit of a waste of time.  Well, I got a bit of valuable information (more on that in a moment), but the whole thing ate about three and a half hours of my afternoon - that's three and a half hours I could have used to work on things like my explication/synthesis mutation for AP English.  Or my SQ3R for AP Euro.  Both of which are due Wed.    And I didn't get any homework done on Saturday, like I was planning to, because my parents had me babysit - but then stayed out three hours longer than they said they were going to.

Whatever.  Enough griping.  On with the epic tale of my adventures at OCAC!!!!

The third and final school I "visited" was OCAC (nonexistent line FTW...).  I talked to Georgiana Neahl.  She was nice I suppose.  Didn't care about my art.  Didn't want to look at my portfolio.  Said I looked like a smart young lady and went on a spiel about OCAC and how it's such a good school and the standards are so low they only require one math credit in freshman year and of course that totally prepares you for a life in the real world  and by the way did I want to go on a tour of the campus?

The second school I visited was PNCA.  This was the good one.  Really enjoyed it.  The woman I talked to, Tracy, happens to be a sci-fi fan and thinks my concentration was pretty cool.  She had some suggestions about how I could "articulate my thought process" better and some really cool ideas about elements I could include in my concentration and overall portfolio.  She thought that my technical skills were good - pointed out some things that she thought I did well and some things that I could work on.  She took the time to go through my stuff piece by piece, which was nice, especially when you compare it to the first school I went to...

... Laguna College of Art and Design, where I talked to Mr. Lumberjack Man.  Mr. Lumberjack Man didn't have much to say about my technical skills.  That's because Mr. Lumberjack Man was mortally offended by two things.  First, Mr. Lumberjack Man thought that my pieces should have been either bigger or smaller - I  refrained from pointing out that I happen to like my pieces the sizes they are and that art is subjective thankyouverymuch.  Secondly, Mr. Lumberjack Man was convinced that all good art MUST HAVE A BIAS OR A MESSAGE.  I asked him what was so wrong with a pice that just presents, unassumingly, and lets the viewer do something like, oh, I don't know, think for themselves maybe.

Mr. Lumberjack Man didn't have a good answer to that.  Mr. Lumberjack Man said "you obviously don't have enough experience in the art world to know that the basis of all art is imparting your message to the world."

I told Mr. Lumberjack Man that "I have enough experience to know that I detest people trying to shove their opinions down my throat.  I'm not going to do to someone something I don't like done to me."

I thought about pointing out that while overwhelming messages have their place - like when the artist is trying to raise awareness about a political or social issue (and don't get me wrong - I totally enjoy spitfire shocking art like that) - there's also art that exists mainly to look at and maybe have a bit of an emotional transference.   Like Monet's  Water-lillies: they make me feel calm, but they impart no weighty social commentary or political analyzation.

But Mr. Lumberjack Man just said I was young and disrespectful.

I proved him wrong by being respectful and not punching him in the face.

Mr. Lumberjack Man was pissed anyways.

CONCENTRATION ARGH

Well, the plan was to do one painted thing kinda like my little diary entry comic strip from last time, and a bigger charcoal portrait of an "alien" (aka my brother with modifications).  The painting took on a life of its own.  Which is a good thing!  Yes.  Um.  But not what I originally intended.

The charcoal portrait?

Totally not going to be turned in.  Just.... Ugh.  A bit unsalvageable.  Actually that's a lie - because by "a bit" I mean "really, really, very, horribly".  So.

I've decided to do two different things:

1 - Do the portrait a different time - I like the idea, and it has a lot of potential.  But I need to let it sit and have alone time for a while so I can have an easier time taking it from my brain and through my hands onto paper.

2 - Do two extra pieces.  I was only going to do one, but I did it really quickly (it looks good though!  Wasn't a bad sort of quick picture. There is a part of it I'm not too crazy about - I'm thinking about cutting it off, but I'll get other opinions first....).  So I had time to do another, coordinating piece.  Which also turned out well.  Except for a part I want to cut off.  Again.

This is the first of the two.  I like the hand a lot, but not the words so much.  If I cut it, I'd get rid of the words and leave just a thin strip of white to the left of the hand.  (Pay no mind to the funky ass shadows - I sneezed with the marker in my hand, and this was the best solution.  If you didn't notice the funky ass shadows, don't go looking for them.)

This time, I'd cut out the right of the paper - at about where the dark blue fades to the light blue.  (There's a lot of blank space in this one, but there's not much I can do - it'd be too busy if I tried to add another thing.  I'd put on a layer of clear nail polish, but I learned the hard way that it discolors this particular type of paper.  I'd put on a layer of acrylic medium, but the paper's too thin and would warp.  Ugh.)