Gingersnap

It is the end of January. I'm twelve weeks away from the untitled senior show and was ill-advised to stop with the self-portraits and chocolate syrup paintings on paper. Since my thesis paper is solely on appropriations of romance novels and soap opera obsession, I am going to continue my drawings (maybe some paintings)of those and creating a 45th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine for Days of Our Lives - it will contain stories, drawings, pictures from the fan event, and an essay. So it's back to the drawing board peoples!!!! :D

First was the watching television self-portrait and now here is the in-progress reading one. I am planning on making strawberry syrup paintings to coincide with the television portrait because those chocolate syrup drawings are supposed to be with this reading one. The chocolate syrup is about making fictional characters brown in the historical romance context and the strawberry syrup (they don't sell vanilla syrup, lol!) is about capturing the TV actors who though play a role, they are real people. There are only three African Americans on Days of Our Lives and so there will not be any use for chocolate syrup. Plus, they aren't front burner stories either. I just have to figure out what this all means in the long run!!!!

I have been doing a lot of work for the upcoming senior thesis show. It happens to be the week of April 19th-23rd. That's just 13 weeks away!!!! I've retained my interest in romantic themes and appropriating romance novel covers. My idea is that there will be small litho crayon drawings of woman (no longer will there be portrayed female/male relationships) on a digital background of different African landscapes. The idea is that there is a lure about my unrequited love about traveling to Africa and making art that centers on that fixation. These pieces are about my own wanting to go into the unknown, explore an innocent, untested passion and not listening to the terrifying fears of my brain, but the longing in my heart. Africa is the male and I am the pure, unadulterated woman. Plus I will be working on a two large scale self-portrait drawings installation about the engaging in the act of enjoying the genre- one is watching television and the other is reading a novel. These sel...

"In my current art work, I wanted to not only address and undermine stereotypes which have hounded me my whole life, but I also felt the need to express concerns about women’s attachments to escapist romantic fantasy. Up until age 17, I had lived in the “bad part of town” alongside hoodlums, drug dealers, and promiscuous young girls. At my predominantly African-American high school, one in every three girls were pregnant or often engaging in sexual activity by graduation. The few students I had any relationship with at all had referred to virginity as a vile disease that needed to be given away to the first availably interested man. It’s also strange that these same students viewed Africa in as a region that is the source of the world’s ugliness and ignorance. Immediately, I knew that I had to break away from these negative associations to find my own identity. Other African-American artists convinced me that Africa was a place to treasure. By making art about the fantasy of actua...

I was thinking about the pros and cons of 2009 today, on the end of the year of course. I guess what I am thinking about mostly are the cons. Right now, I realize that I haven't done much work since the semester ended or started rewriting thesis draft number 3. It's due in mid January anyways, but still... it would have been beneficial to start writing or at least making some work to gather ideas about what the writing IS about. But the problem is that I am spending much time at Tien''s house and it's all fun and games here. I've been mostly watching TV, movies (we saw "Avatar" in 3D today), playing Wii Fit, eating to my heart's content (how much pumpkin pie have I eaten so far?), Internet surfing (my laptop has since crashed and burned! At home, I am computerless until school starts), and reading a lot of romance novels! (Hell, I have a new favorite author, Julianne MacLean, having just read just two of her books in 4 1/2 hours each!) I guess it i...

Lol!!! Tien was like, "I got you this, but I know you have all of these songs!" Not "3" though!!!!! I got the set with the blue soap and yellow rubber duckie inspired Hello Kitty of course!!!! :D It's so compact this dryer turns into a mini case with handle!!!!! Something Tan gave me!!!!! So sweet!!!! I As well as attending my first Vo family Christmas Dinner yesterday. It was more fun than I had anticipated. They had red lobster on every plate, but Tien's mom made a delicious veggie noodle stir fry, fresh asparagus, and red and golden potatoes. Lol, I had some of those leftovers with my Christmas dinner of macaroni & cheese with soy ground and a side of broccoli-carrot medley. Today I spent the morning with Tien having eaten a wonderfully prepared breakfast and opening wonderful presents. I gave him some little, humorous gifts and of course, he has to be bigger and better than last year. He always outdoes himself every year in the gift de...

Damn! My Life is Only Worth 26 Cents! Bad things happen to people. Pennies are supposedly worthless, one cent wonders that no one cares about. Sometimes I see people toss them to the ground or keep walking as a penny sits on the street, waiting for someone to pick it up for their savings bank. I even tell the cashiers to keep that one extra cent because I personally feel like I don't need it. I constructed this acrylic painting and collected pennies from the date of my birth to last year. Memories in a way are like pennies. We wanna forget that the awful memories are there, but we can't help but remember. They are supposed to be just as worthless, but it's those events that make us feel that way. I have the worse short term memory ever, I forget where my keys are almost everyday!!!! So for each year, I wrote something good or bad that occurred in Sharpie marker. Like the beginning for October 7th, 1983, "I was born in a USAF Air Force Base Hospital in South Carolina, f...