What I'm about-Part I

My Dean, Mr. Ted Rose, is having keep a journal-type thing of thoughts pertaining to me and how they filter through to my art. I thought I put the first entry here, and I might do that all through it. He and I have formed a small class (I am the only student) that meets constantly called "Portfolio Presentation" or "Get Meiska into the Perfect Graduate School by Christmas." Warning, this is a portion of my brain. Don't expect to see a link between the subjects.

Here goes:

I love old things-photographs, letters, shoes, whatever- anything with a past, with a memory (only these things can't express a memory. Maybe that's where I come in?) Art Nouveau, organic lines and shapes, William Morris, Alphonse Mucha. I have always been delighted by the posters from 1870-1930ish. Early Kandinsky. The Pre-Raphaelites.
I like painting figures, faces, because=? It engages the viewer in a series of questions- "Why are you looking at me?" "What do you see?" It also causes the viewer to question the subject- "What kind of life did/do you have?" "What joys and pains did you experience?" "Are our lives, though far removed in years, similar in any way?" etc. That's why I like working from old photographs. They do have a background that I and the viewer can question.
I love fairy tales. I love Picasso's early paintings (Saltambiques, Blues). Pattern tends to catch my attention, I love it's interaction with the things around it.
I like remembering things, moments, and being able to translate everything that goes into such a memory into a painting. I'm interessted in time's affect of memory and our own iimagination's affect on our memories.
I am interested in the relationship between the viewer and art and subsequently the viewer and the artist. I think an engaging pair of eyes confronts the viewer and forces the viewer to sstep out and have the realization that they are viewing.
Illuminated manuscripts, scriptures, etc! THey are so lovely and ornate. Icons are beautiful. I think a series of paintings on boards shaped like gothic windows/icons would be amazing. Only they should feature people we cannonize today, or family maybe. Hm.
I love fabrics, especially velvets. I love the way the light and shadows play of fabric, in fact, it may be the most rollicking fun that lights and darks get to have. Trees have always been fundamental to my survival. They've lived here or there a lot longer than me, still around. What have they witnssed? What has my ancient oak tree, outside my bedroom window for 21 years, seen of my life? Could I measure my life by those events?
I want to go to India. And to Wales. And back to Portugal, Scotland, England. I want to go to Russia. I want to see the people there laugh at my name. But I don't want a 'visit' mindset. I want to be immersed in the culture, I don't want a schedule.
I think I am fatally stricken with wanderlust, and probably wonderlust too I guess. I want to see as much as I can, as soon as I can. That alone would have tempted me to become a pirate had I been born male and 200 plus years ago. Or royalty (not that you can really choose that).
The color green is my favorite. It is the color that is life. Things that are growing and can be rejuvenated are green. It is both rich and cool, which is quite an accomplishment.
Synaesthetics intrigue me. Kandinsky experienced this phenomena with music/painting. I do this too to a degree, but more with taste/touch/smell/experience things. Maybe I'm a tactile synaesthete?
Words are interesting things. I like to think about how it is that a single sound, or string of sounds, holds a world of meaning, and that meaning changes with every single person and their experiences, and can change at any time in every person's life. I like realizing, riding down the highway, that each in every car has a life and problems and joys and experiences. Roads are intersections of the most diverse kind, but we all keep on driving, we meld with the vehicle. Driving steals a person's humanity.

I just saw a flower move. I have a vase of tiger lillies and daisies on the counter across my room. I was laying on my bed just staring at the flower, not doing anything in particular, and the lily's petal just opened up. Right in front of me! I have a very mischeivious feeling about me now, like I should be suspicious of that flower and spy on it. Of course, I always knew flowers could move. . .

soon

School is getting ready to start, and I can't wait for that time to get here. But at the same time, I wish I had more time between now and then. I have a lot to finish up and get started on. Normally when I feel like this, I would just start on it, but now I sit and think about how much I have to do, and accomplish nothing. I think its the summer blues.

My english professor just informed me that part of my being able to miss every Monday for lab includes me teaching a class on Emily Dickinson in Novemeber, a thought that is both exciting and scary. It will be good for me because for a fellowship at grad school, I'll have to teach a whole entire class. But still scary.

Lots to think about, to be thankful for.

Happy Birthday, Mr. The Edge

The best

The best time to sit in traffic, is during an electrical storm at night. Being stuck on the tip top of a bridge over looking the Nashville skyline on one side, and what seems to me to be God's most excellent light display since Creation on the other, is pure bliss. Sensory details have popping up recently to form a symphony of delight for me. I've noticed things more deeply than ever before, it catches my breath now to see the lightning coming while still in a calm, bright area. It gives me chills. Drinking orange blossom iced tea, or mint iced tea, is a sensation like no other. Drinking something that tastes like it smells is like becoming a flower (only iced tea works for the flower effect, flowers should never be hot, they wilt). Last week at camp, far from any city's lights or stream of vehicles, I swam at night during a storm. (There were lots of moths swimming to, as it were, because of their reckless pursuit of {the pool} light, which is also amazing) I looked up into the falling rain to discover I was moving at light speed, or so it seemed. The wind was moving the water all about and there was a chill in the air; it was the closest I've ever been to (physically) feeling shipwrecked. These sensoric (I may have discovered a new word there) moments also happen during the most mundane of activities. Like getting into bed after a hot, humid day (the kind of day that makes my hair a perfect afro) and feeling the crisp, cool sheets and the approaching rest. And I reach to turn off the ligth, and I notice the shadows being cast on the wall and get caught up in them. I get into bed every night, but just sometimes it hits me just right and I breathe a deep sigh of contentment and thankfulness. He didn't have to make my life rich with these extra little feelings, but I think He knows me well enough to know when I need to experience His closeness in this sort of grasp-able way, even though it isn't tangible really to most. And sometimes He just indulges me.