If Larry Busbea can condense Adolf Loos’s essay “Ornament and Crime” to “Everyone who likes decorations is a sissy-baby,” then I can make my design history essay’s outline look like this:
Rise of Industrial Revolution
Eminem (Marx + Morris)
Loos bein’ a hater.










I finally got my final typography project back from last semester. We created a book of all the work we had done in the class, including sketches. It was expensive to print, and I hand-bound this book, but I got 100/100 points for it. I’m glad I have a good archive of my work.


This past Friday was the opening of the FACE Four Seasons show. The show is of women artists, and it includes emerging (juried), mid-career (invited), and advanced (jurors) artists. It is pretty open-themed, but the goal of the show is to give a sense of the multi-facets of women’s lives.
The show is split between three galleries in Tucson: Stone Dragon, Kachina, and 5th on 6th. I have a photo diptych in the Kachina Gallery (3rd floor of the SUMC at UofA), so come by and visit!
See works by the artists here: http://www.face-uofa.com/Artists.php
————
Feb. 3-Mar. 31 Four Seasons show Dragon Stone Gallery, 1122 N. Stone Ave.
Feb. 1-Mar. 31 Four Seasons show Kachina Gallery
Mar. 8-21 Four Seasons show 5th on 6th Gallery, 439 N. 6th Ave.
Feb. 13 5-6pm Opening ceremony at Kachina Gallery, The University of Arizona, Student Union Memorial Center, Level 3
6-8pm Panel discussion: Life as women artists The Union Kiva
Panelists: Julie Sasse, Chief Curator of TMA; The University of Arizona Prof. Barbara Rogers, Prof. Beiley Doogan, Student Union Memorial Center, Level 2
Feb. 26 5:30-7:30pm Workshop on career development Stone Dragon Gallery
Mar. 2 6-7:30pm Co-event with the Women’s Resource Center: Kachina Gallery, Launch of movie on professional artists, The University of Arizona, “Who Does She Think She Is?” Student Union Memorial Center, Level 3
Mar. 3 7pm Movie: “Who Does She Think She Is?” Gallagher Theatre, The University of Arizona, Student Union Memorial Center
Mar. 20 6-9pm Closing ceremony at 5th on 6th Gallery
Mar. 27 12-2:30pm Potluck and closing ceremony of Four Seasons Dragon Stone Gallery
Normally in class I take wonderfully helpful notes. I didn’t sleep last night, so today I just took wonderful notes.
—
Secession building, 1898, Olbrich
“Ver Sacrum” rights of spring. Name of their joural
Produced like Kemscott press model (Karen) of normal flesh
Ver Sacrum
Meant to be an art object, and it deflated in NY twice
Hoffmeann and Mose wanted you to regard the fork as a iece of art
Germany
Henry van de velde
Eptiomy of Art Nourveau magazines.
–
Interpretations:
>>Produced like Kemscott press model (Karen) of normal flesh
Means: Kelmscott Press model> printing press > Karen Zimmerman let me use a printing press > models have normal flesh (?)
>> Meant to be an art object, and it deflated in NY twice
Means: Deflated twice> a reference to this work by Claes Oldenberg that was vandalized. The piece inflated and deflated, and the twice refers to the the pre-vandalism and post-reconstructed forms.
I love involuntary typing. I wish that I could type up my dreams as I dreamt them, outside of class.

Every time I think of something I want to do, I put it off until summer. Sixteen weeks away.

Things I did today:
Researched and took notes on banks’ websites at my internship.
Went to classes.
Thought it was neat that I know everyone in my classes.
Read about typographic history in “Graphic Design: A New History”.
Said hello to my roommate.
Chatted with Adam.
Ate potato salad, coleslaw, and fries at a BBQ joint, with friends.
Today wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.

My internship with The Caliber Group starts tomorrow. I feel like I don’t know how to do as much as they think I know how to do. I guess we’ll get to know each other.
School starts Wednesday. Courses include: Design II, Typography II, Contemporary Drawing, Design History, and Contemporary Art History. Today I spent 5 hours working on the first assignment for Design II, and I’m only a quarter finished with it. It is due on the first day of class. I’m going to die.
A photo diptych I made will be in the Four Seasons show in February and March. The show features art about women made by women artists (just in time for Women’s History Month). Last November I completed a series of diptychs that explored the differences between how a woman is viewed and how she would prefer to be viewed, so the show came up at the perfect time. It is a juried show, and I still don’t know how I feel about juries, but I think the show will be really great. Four Seasons will be in a couple different galleries and there will be a panel discussion and opening parties and such. I’ll let you know more about that later.
Now that my semester has ended, I’ve had time to work on some projects that people have asked me to do.
Christian Challenge, a student club at UofA, is starting a series next semester that explores the different facets of identity. The title is “Unlocking Your Identity”, and I was asked to design a poster for in-dorm use, and small fliers to pass out. My concept for the poster advertisement was to have all different sorts of keys that are clearly unique. I thought that probably the easiest way to do this would be to find a whole bunch of photos of keys, remove the backgrounds in Photoshop, and turn the keys solid black. After working on the first key (of nine), I wasn’t satisfied with how the final image looked.
I usually try to avoid drawing. It’s not easy for me, it’s really time consuming to practice, and things rarely come out exactly how I want them to. Even though I try to skip that step every time I design something, the design ends up looking better if I draw first.

Before a couple years ago, I didn’t understand how people went from the sketching process to the computer stage with scanned images. I would see pencil sketches, then I would see computer-generated gradients on the sketches, and it really didn’t make sense to me.

I scanned my drawings, then traced over them in Illustrator. When I was done, I could rearrange and resize the keys however I wanted. The imperfection of my drawings carried over and are even more apparent in my tracings (double the trouble—I’m not great at using the pen tool in illustrator either). Originally, I had perfect outlines of keys in mind, but after they were done I realized that they have more personality if they’re not perfect. People aren’t perfect either.

View this large.

Lakewood, Colorado. Nov 2009.