Present Joys

It was a short week because of sophomore review. In motion graphics on monday, I started a new project. One Show being all finished, everybody was a lot friendlier.

I spent most of tuesday and wednesday working on freelance projects at home. I also worked on drawing up final patterns for my Thesis sweaters. Wow! Graduation is approaching swiftly, and I’m not as far along with my sweater-making as I ought to be.

Thursday was a normal day. After a too-long crit during which nobody spoke, I used the rest of class time trying to make a successful resin cast (it didn’t work). La-Neka and I walked over to the fashion lab after jewelry, because I wanted to see her do a couple of things on the knitting machine. After that, we sat through a bunch of presentations in senior ad. I finished this very short week with history of 2-d: the teacher assigned a two-page paper, “due by may 1”; I went home and finished it that night.

We didn’t have motion graphics again on monday; our teacher was out of town. He recorded a video of his screen and made a short lesson for us. Even with no monday class, I was up working well into the night.

Tuesday morning, I messed around with casting resin in a silicone mold I’d made (it went terribly, but I’ll keep trying). I also spent some time readying some wax rings for casting.

Over my lunch hour, Mr. Mohr and I had a conference call with the owner of my favorite tea company to try and sell him on a hypothetical rebrand I’d done. He loved the work—so much that we’ve planned for me to fly out and visit over spring break. Such exciting news!

After that fun conference call, I got back to drudgery. Tay and I took our One Show work over to the Hills Market to try and make progress in a quieter, calmer space. After a few hours of that, a few hours of history of 2-d design, and a bunch of hours of work at home, I rewarded myself with a slightly earlier bedtime.

There was motion graphics on wednesday. Even so, One Show kept half the class from showing up. Thursday morning was spent in relative ease. I cast a couple rings in bronze and worked on fabricating some new stuff. After jewelry, Tay, Jen, and I spent an hour putting the finishing touches on our One Show project. We had a laid-back crit that took up most of class, and then we were done! After a celebratory drink with a few friends at the Grass Skirt, I (narrowly) made it to History of 2-d on time. We spent an hour and a half looking at Viennese Art Nouveau posters—a calming dénouement.

But I guess I can’t really call that a dénouement because that isn’t the end. I drove home, played accordion for a while, changed into my dinner suit, and headed back downtown for Columbus’ 2014 American Advertising Federation awards, where I received awards and partied hard. What a week!

After a wonderful weekend at camp, I had a hard time getting back into school. Thankfully, motion graphics was as laid back as always—I made an animated gif of Jim Johnson. Danielle showed me some cool eyeglasses she found, and I made John wear them for a photo.

Tuesday was great. After a close call in traffic, I spent all of jewelry carving wax, which is as pleasant as fabricating sheet metal is aggravating. None of the usual crowd showed up for friendship lunch, but I met up with Dana and we spent my break looking at stuff in school galleries. After that, I went to senior ad. Tay, Jen, and I met up with Jason to record a voiceover for a video we are making. He did a marvelous job. In History of 2-d, I got back the test which I hadn’t studied for. I needn’t have worried about it at all…

Motion graphics was cancelled on wednesday, but it was just as well. I had a lunch meeting with Esther Hall, Columbus fashion design luminary, to get some advice for my thesis, then worked on a bunch of freelance stuff.

I did more wax carving on thursday morning, then spent my lunch break in the CCAD Archives office talking to Leah, the woman in charge of it all, who I think will prove to be a very helpful resource.

For the first hour of senior ad, we were joined by Micah White, “visiting scholar” and “activist”, who spoke casually on a broad range of things, including Occupy Wall Street, the nature of truth, how “everyone knows deep down that our planet is dying”, how authenticity in advertising matters more than honesty, and a bunch of other utter nonsense. I was not impressed and was glad when he left. After a quick photo-op with Theresa and Mohr, I got back to work with Tay and Jen on our One Show project.

Monday morning, I met Jen and Tay at a coffee shop to talk about our One Show 2014 project. We went over different creative concepts and settled on a few solid ideas. Monday afternoon in motion graphics, I made another 2½-D animation, this time from a photo I took of John on our birthday.

Only Ian and I showed up to friendship lunch on tuesday. We had a nice meal and then went on a little trip to check out his work for senior thesis. After that, I worked hard senior ad wrestling on our One Show project. It was an exhausting, idea-heavy work session, but overall worthwhile. I took a test tuesday afternoon in History of 2-d Design. I hadn’t been expecting anything too challenging (I didn’t study), and it was even simpler than I expected—aggravatingly so! I finished up and left within a half hour.

I spent some time in the jewelry lab on wednesday afternoon, doing some tests with resin. So many colors! In motion graphics, we continued the same old project.

Thursday in jewelry, I worked on a personal project—this made for a pleasant and relaxed morning. After that, I met up with Dana for lunch at Katzinger’s, where I ate a delicious sandwich and three pickles. In senior ad, I pitched my thesis to the class, then went out in the hallway with Tay and Jen to keep working on One Show. In History of 2-d, we started a new unit on early modern graphic design and watched a video about the Linotype.

It was a short, weird school week. Monday afternoon, I went to motion graphics and started working on a silly video based on a short quotation. It was good; we stayed occupied the whole time and didn’t even break out my knitting.

Classes were canceled on tuesday because of the cold, so I slept in, played accordion longer than usual, and worked from home. I took some time to write about my nascent senior thesis project. Though it was nice to have extra time to rest, my schedule was thrown totally out-of-whack.

Wednesday afternoon, I went back to motion graphics and kept working on the silly little project I started monday. Thursday was, thankfully, back to normal! Jewelry was spent critiquing the first major project (a weird bit of déjà vu from last semester) and researching for the next one. I had lunch alone in the library then went to Senior ad, where Mr. Mohr played us the Naked Brand, a short documentary on contemporary advertising. In History of 2-d. And then the school week was over. It started out pretty light but by now I’m feeling very busy.

Friday afternoon, I picked up and paid for my knitting machine. I’ll write more about that in a forthcoming thesis update!