Sunday, March 27, 2011

What's In My Bag: March 28, 2011

The bags I carry, which don't change very often, are usually pretty big, and always full of stuff. This isn't because I'm a soccer mom who lives out of her giant purse, or because I'm a high-maintenance twenty-something who absolutely has to have all her makeup products with her at all times.

It's more because I don't really like using my pockets, I tend to pick up a lot of stuff when I'm out, and I forget to empty my purse out until I'm walking into work, wondering why my purse weighs as much as a large baby.

A couple months ago my friend Kelsey made a video explaining everything she had in her purse. Apparently it's this thing going around Tumblr and various blogs, and I thought it was kind of cool, so I figured I'd do one too.

Because of my weird tendency to pick up random stuff while I'm out and just throw it into my purse and forget about it, the contents of my purse are sort of an ever-changing cornucopia of spare change and assorted toys. Today, it looks like this:


That's a condensed version, since everything in my purse, plus my purse, wouldn't fit in the picture. Here is the unabridged version:

Circle 1:
- A tiny stuffed manatee
His name is Hugh Manatee. You can see why this is essential.
-A plush chlamydia microbe
David got this for me at Vault of Midnight, the coolest comic store ever. His name is Clammy. He is mostly for throwing at people and shouting "YOU JUST CAUGHT CHLAMYDIA!" Classy, I know.
-Mew
Also from David, and one of my favorite little things. Plus, who couldn't use a Pokemon in their purse?
-Squeezable stress Pokeball
I keep forgetting this is in there, and it's always a happy surprise to see it.

Circle 2:
-Assorted change
-A bunch of extra Nerf darts
Um. . . these are for my Nerf gun. Which was also in my purse, but I figured I should take it out. You know, for school and stuff.
-A litchi hard candy
Have you ever had one of these? OMG they're tasty.
-A silly pin that has a zombie saying "BRAINS!" on it, in the Obama pop-art style
-Trident citrus gum
-A little wooden d6

Circle 3:
-Pop-out hairbrush
What. I have a lot of hair.
-Novelty pen, shaped like a purple lipstick, covered with purple plastic jewels
Basically the best thing ever.
-Schoolcraft College flash drive
-A pen and two pencils

Circle 4:
-Blistex Lip Medex
If you have terribly chapped lips, this will fix them. I promise.
-Novelty candy hearts bracelet
-Dr. Pepper chapstick
Because everybody needs to just smell some Dr. Pepper now and again.
-Blistex chapstick in tropical citrus
I didn't realize I had so much chapstick. Geez.
-Hair mascara in blue, purple, and black
I think I've used these once, to give Stephanie a coontail in a Denny's. For the record, it looked awesome.
-iPod

Other things:
-Post-It notes in various colors
I have this thing about writing nice notes for people, whether I know them or not.
-Two light-up jewel stamps
The purple one is a chrysanthemum, and the pink one is a really silly pair of lips.
-Old license
-Nintendo DS charger
I'm not sure where my DS is, actually. I guess I know it's not in my purse now. . .
-Fat little notebook
I constantly have the need to write things down or draw stupid cartoons.
-Wallet
-Registration for my 2001 Saturn wagon, Randall
-Gap "So Pink!" perfume
I love this perfume. It smells like grapefruit!
-Makeup bag
-Burt's Bees hand salve
The only thing that gets rid of the awful heat rashes I get at work.
-Clip-in cat ears (black)
-Self-published comic book Jon got at Vault of Midnight and told me to read, that I forgot about

Wow. I really need to clean out my purse.

And just where is that Nerf gun? I'm definitely looking at three darts that someone shot at the TV, but where is the gun? Who am I going to throw Clammy at next? When am I going to use that hair mascara? These are questions that need answering. And seriously, everybody could use an awesome coontail.

Friday, March 25, 2011

My New Hobby (or, A Follow-Up To Last Sunday's "Insomnia" Post)

I actually did go out and buy a few boxes of epoxy resin, some molds, cups, Mod Podge (which is so much fun, you don't even know), and various other supplies, and I started experimenting with making my own resin casts! It's a lot of fun and really easy, but resulted in most of the things in my kitchen being very sticky.

It sticks to everything.

I've been pretty consistent about working on this stuff, too, which is a change for me. A couple of days ago I tore through the house trying to find my jewelry pliers and the three-pound box of broken jewelry parts Chelsea gave me, and pliersed all the charms off of every bracelet and necklace in the box. Yesterday I got the idea to make casts that look like fishbowls, so today David and I went out and got actual molds (instead of just dessert and candy molds), and an assorted pack of polymer clay, and I spent an hour or so cranking out little hand-sculpted recreations of food and aquatic life while we watched The Birdcage.


Pictured: assorted angelfish, goldfish, a jellyfish, an eel, a sea anemone, chocolate chip cookies, a fried egg (sunny-side-up!), a flower, and a chocolate-covered strawberry.

Tomorrow I will probably make more, and get even more ideas for little tiny clay replicas of things to make. I can already feel my hands getting sludgy. I keep getting new ideas, like I Spy boxes, and aquariums, and tasty food casts.

I'm incredibly excited. Share in my excitement! Anyone have any ideas or requests?

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Kelli's Foolproof Process for Irreversible Insomnia

I need to stop bringing my laptop up to my room with me at night. This is what happens to me:

"checking Facebook real quick before bed" turns into
"wait I think I'll check out this link Steve posted", which turns into
"hey, Regretsy is pretty silly, I think I'll look at 40+ pages of it", which then turns into
"wait, they sell resin flowers online to make jewelry with? I guess that's kind of cool, I should check that out on Amazon", which THEN turns into
"resin molds? Like, I could actually MAKE my own jewelry?", which, of course, turns into
"I guess I'll do a Google search and click on every link until I figure out how I can make my own resin jewelry in my kitchen"

and then it's 6:04 in the morning and I'm sitting on the couch eating shredded wheat, watching Rugrats: All Grown Up! on Nickelodeon, and compiling a list of materials (complete with projected costs, which, in case you were wondering, are next to nothing!) I will need to make my own resin jewelry in my kitchen, with my newly acquired knowledge of every single process required to not only do it, but do it SUCCESSFULLY.

I've abandoned all hope for sleeping tonight, because now, I am completely wired, with an open Sunday morning in front of me, during which I can set up a workstation, find my heat gun, go to Jo-Ann Fabrics as soon as it effing opens and obtain all my supplies, and have my first batch of pendants cooling before anyone in this house wakes up, and that's including the cat.

Oh look, Chuckie is trying out new nicknames, and they're all dorky. Well, that's why he's Chuckie, I guess.

This is what happens to me in the middle of the night. Somewhere between one and two AM, I find out about some ridiculous craft that it turns out is incredibly easy to do, and for the next few hours I devote myself to soaking up every detail that I possibly can.

It would be great if this could happen somewhere between the hours of one and two PM, but unfortunately my lust for new and ridiculous crafts is an unruly beast who can't be arsed to stop and check the time.

Oh well. At least Sunday night is (optimally) an excellent time to get my sleep schedule back in order, just in time to paint things to auction off for charity on Monday. And if I raid my emergency stash of chocolate-covered-espresso beans, I'll be likely to stay awake for all the fantastic plans I decided to make for myself today.

Lord help me.



Edit: It is now 8:21 AM, and I have drawn out a plan of action for retrieving supplies, watched several episodes of kids' shows I didn't even know existed, looked at about forty more Regretsy pages, and now know how to make my own silicone mold for casting resin, as well as the pros and cons of using candy molds instead.

I still have not slept.

Monday, March 14, 2011

I Hate 'Artists'.

I typically don't rant on this blog-- I think the last time I did was in that Rent entry, when I explained how I feel about "performance art". I don't want to be "that guy" that blogs about how everything everywhere is retarded all the time.

But I think just this once, I can get away with it. So here you are. . .



BAGELS & SOX PRESENTS
"WHY I HATE 'ARTISTS'"
a Tyler Perry production

In my Watercolor class a few days ago, we had midterm critique. This means that everyone brings in the work they've done so far over the semester and give a little presentation on it. Our teacher (whose name is Ellen, for future reference) comments on each piece and then asks if anyone in the class has any comments or suggestions, which they usually don't because no one wants to be the jerk that points out that the flower you painted looks more like a giraffe.

We have a split class. Mostly it's Watercolor 1 students (of which I am a part), but there are three or four Watercolor 2 students corralled off in the adjacent room. I always assumed the reason they were separated from us had something to do with their projects being different than ours.

Now I'm kind of thinking it's because they're all assholes.

So everyone hangs up their projects, and for the first few, no one really comments on them. Everyone claps, Ellen is encouraging, and the students get to sit down without being subjected to any sort of embarrassment. Everything is going smoothly.

Then, and I'm not sure exactly what started it, this girl in Watercolor 2 (we'll call her "Crindy") started speaking up.

Above: An artist's rendering of Crindy.

I'm talking interrupting and giving "suggestions" after every piece. And they all sounded exactly like this, which is a direct quote.

"This piece really evokes a feeling in me, like an emotion of, I dunno, fear, and shadows, I think. I really think you should use more darkness and shadows in your piece, because it will lend it a lot of depth, and when I first started out as an artist, like a long time ago, I was like, afraid to use a lot of shadows, but then I did, and I was like, wow, this really evokes a certain feeling, of like, depth. Remember that, Ellen?"

I'm not kidding. Every thirty seconds, a gem like that would come out of Crindy's sweet, deluded mouth.

When the first cycle of critiques was over with (we had to do two cycles because we could only hang so much up on the walls at a time), Crindy jumped up and started setting up her projects in the first spot. I was incredibly curious to see what they would look like; she had such an informed opinion, that surely her art would back it up.

It didn't.

Crindy went first, and she introduced her pieces, which were mostly of people's faces or bodies coming out of some mass of color, by saying:
"A lot of times, I just wake up from a really intense dream, and I think, oh my God, this is really meaningful, I should paint this, and I like, sketch it out, and it's just so amazing."

She pointed out to our teacher that having a circuitboard (or as she called it, "this computer part I found of my boyfriend's floor") glued to one of her paintings ("with wood glue") was mixed media, because she was supposed to do one mixed media piece. One of the paintings was a log cabin in a scribbly forest, which was supposed to be "deep" and "haunting" but was also, according to Crindy, one of her worst paintings, and she didn't really want anyone to look at it because seriously it's so bad okay PLEASE DON'T LOOK AT IT IT'S TERRIBLE.

Then she told us about her favorite piece, which I have replicated in stunning detail in MS Paint.


Crindy introduced this piece with the following speech, which I assure you is a direct quotation.

(To ensure that you have a proper understanding of the experience, I will ask you to read this out loud in your best Mira Sorvino (Romy White in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion") voice, in a whimsical, inspired tone.)

"Okay, so this is my favorite piece. This is me, of course, and I actually sketched this a long time ago, but when I started taking this class I was like, hmm, this would actually be, like, a great painting. Anyway, this is *REALLY IMPORTANT* to me, because I'm a Buddhist, and the sun is eclipsing my heart, because it's like it's saying the universe wastes nothing, and I'm really into quantum physics, so I put some of that in there, like, symbolically, and I'm a Libra, so I put that in there too. It's also from a dream I had that was really meaningful to me, like, wow."

I have also created a handy map (see below).


She went on quite a bit longer than that, but it was basically more of the same drivel and a lot of stuff about dreams and emotions and haunting, so I'll spare you, but this part here is important: she flat-out admitted that this was a sketch she had done years ago, that she slapped some paint on to complete a grade. And she thinks it is her best work.

Crindy is, in one big douchey ripped-jeans-over-ripped-nylons-wearing two-tone-haired package, essentially why I, as a general rule, hate people who go out of their way to label themselves as "artists", who have been told all their lives that they're the best artist in their class, and who slap stupid crap together in an attempt to seem deep and interesting while also maintaining a passing grade. These people are intolerable assholes. I am embarrassed every time the limitations of the English language force me to refer to myself as an 'artist', and it's because of people like Crindy.

Do I draw weird, nonsensical shit sometimes? Absolutely. It's fun. Am I going to tell you it's for any other reason than because I want to draw weird, nonsensical shit and it's fun? Absolutely not.

Are some of them talented? Again, absolutely. I would even go so far as to say many of them are talented. But an artist who knows they're talented is like an insanely attractive person that knows they're beautiful and uses it to be a douchebag to everyone around them, and oddly enough, I have never actually heard of anyone who was a talented and accomplished artist ever referring to themselves as an artist.

I don't generally refer to myself as an 'artist' because I'm fully aware that there are a lot of people out there who are better and far more deserving of the title. I've never had a gallery show, or won a contest, or anything like that. I've also never suffered for anything I would call "my art". I haven't accomplished anything; I'm still learning. I'm a kid enrolled in a two-year liberal arts program at a community college. I'm no artist.

I'm not saying I hate all artists. I admire people like my teacher, who is a wonderful painter, and Phil Parks, a spectacular illustrator. I applaud truly talented people who put hard work into something they really believe in. They are true artists.

But people who have everything handed to them, spend all their money on piercings and PBR and ripped skinny jeans, go to school on their parents' dime and wax on about being "starving artists", and glue circuitboards to a watercolor painting in order to fulfill a mixed media requirement, are not artists. They're assholes. Pure and simple.

If you disagree, please feel free to say so. It's just an opinion.

A really, really strong opinion about people who are an embarrassment to me and everyone else who actually takes art seriously.

But again. Just an opinion.