En Route #28
Countdown
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Ah, where to begin, where to begin. This week started off as nice as they come for us students with a perfectly timed 3-day weekend. Having Monday off honestly may have saved me this week as it was the perfect breather for what promises to be a hectic next two weeks. In typical Senior year fashion, I’m clinging onto the fact that I still technically have three more weekends to heave my Thesis project up to where it needs to be. One of the best parts of the weekend was a make-up class for RISO. Even though it took a bit of effort to pry myself out of bed early on a Saturday, it turned out to actually be tons of fun! We did a silk screen tutorial, and as someone who had been avoiding printmaking for most of my college career, I was interested to see how things would go.
Turns out, I might actually enjoy printmaking after all as the three of us who managed to make it to the studio had a great time printing on some of our extra RISO prints. I’ve been a bit apathetic when it comes to the idea of printmaking and was only won over by RISO this semester, but it was genuinely cool to learn this technique as I don’t know when I’ll have the chance again. It’s very physical with mixing ink, moving things around, and the clean up required, but we were all pleased with the results. I think I’m happiest with RISO as it’s a more even balance of digital and physical work, but it’s good to know I can do silk screen if I ever want to again.
One of the more delightful pieces of news I received was being nominated as one of the student speakers at graduation. I feel more than a little honored to have been chosen, and am really excited to start getting my speech together. Just between you and me, I do have a fondness for sharing about the challenges and rewards of being in art school so I just hope I can do it justice. Thankfully, I’ll have plenty of opportunities for practice as the final presentation for the Terra project is next week along with my Senior presentation just two weeks after. I’ve been really trying to hone in on my research topic and had to write up an abstract about my findings and conclusions. I was more than a little stressed about it and asked my professor if she would take a look and just let me know if I was totally off base. I’d been so worried about it that I was really tempted to burst into tears when she told me it was strong.
As students and artists, we are used to toiling away without constant reassurance, and it is my firm belief that we as students and artists should not need praise in order to do our best work. The less external factors you rely on in order to create, the better. I won’t get too philosophical, but art comes from within and if you’re only doing it for the handshakes, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong business. Even so, my soap box isn’t so tall that I can’t see that we’re still just human, and sometimes a nice hint of feedback really just does the trick. This happened to be one of those times, and after getting the thumbs up that my presentation was on the right track, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted. Having received a dose of motivation, I then made it my mission to continue on this productivity kick and get ahead as much as I can.
On Wednesday there was a workshop about AI being given for the Communication Design students so almost all of the department gathered together. Long story short, it was probably one of the most delightful presentations I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a while. The speaker was personable, passionate, and put together an ultra visual powerpoint, complete with funny videos and pictures to entrance teachers and students alike. We all left the room a lot more familiar with how these programs work, which can only be a good thing in this frighteningly modern age. Towards the end of the week, it was time to make another pilgrimage to my Printer along with my designated French speaker and dear friend who once again accompanied me. We spent nearly two hours there, but was able to actually see my book being printed and verify that everything was how it should be. Now I’ve never given birth myself, but watching my book being made in real time is probably as close as I’ve ever gotten in my 21 (almost 22) years of life. To celebrate and revive ourselves, we picked up pizza at the place next door and skipped home to bask in a job (almost) done!
As the week comes to a close, I feel quite zen about things. While I’ve been a mixture of anxious nail biting and pure jubilance in weeks previous, I’ve settled somewhere in the middle as I’ve realized that I’m really just ready to be done. I don’t want to rush through the next few weeks, and I can’t imagine having any longer to dwell on things, so there’s really nothing left but to just survive them as best I can. My nerves have mostly faded and been replaced with a strictly goal oriented mindset which frees up a lot of head space to just focus on checking things off my many lists. With two weeks until Finals it’s safe to say that the countdown has begun.