But this post will probably be more focused on what's been happening in school.
I will admit I was nervous about starting school again. With the timing of things I ended up missing four semesters or two years of school while serving and I was worried about picking up where I left off. But coming back has turned into one of the biggest (among plenty huge ones) blessings in the six months I've been home. It was an adjustment, and I will admit that the first week or so was hard feeling out of my comfort zone, but once I was into it again it's been gravy ever since. Still lots of hard work, but fulfilling and as much of a no-brainer as this is, educational.
Serving a mission was the best thing I could have ever done for my academic career. Taking some time to focus on others and gain experiences served so well to help me to focus and learn better who I am and who I want to be.
Anyway, so in my studio classes I feel like I've made great strides to discovering better who I am as an artist and what I'm interested in. I've been blessed with some fantastic teachers who, in different ways have taught me abstraction, which is something I've been interested in, yet intimidated by for years. So enough yammering, here are some photos of a few projects I've been working on.
This piece occupied a large amount of time, and I'm not even sure it comes across in the photos how truly enormous it is. Oddly enough it wasn't originally intended to be quite so large, but as the project wore on it just grew and grew.
So this is a paper based collage based on an idea I had combining a quilting technique my mother uses. I started with three large collage drawings then cut the drawings into strips, glued the strips onto a new large paper to make a new drawing, then cut again. I cut and pasted the strips together several different times to create the pattern and texture of the drawing. And I find myself really attracted to the chaos that erupted with the subtle reminder of the structure my methods of construction created.
And like what most of what I've done both pre and post mission, textile and quilts have been a common theme. I almost never enter a piece with a concrete end goal, image, or concept in mind. It just doesn't work that way for me. I have to start drawing or painting or just making and through process I'm able to discover or encounter the concept. So for this piece and others I love how something that in a quiet way served to shape me and my childhood has emerged multiple times in my work.
Since I can remember there has always been fabric and textiles in my home. My mother is a quilter and an artist in said medium, and I think in a lot of ways that love for creating things has shaped me. So it felt like a natural extension to find those same kind of inspirations and influences in what I do.
So for the sake of cutting short this already super long post I thought I'd just share one last little collage drawing I did following the super large one. I'm basically just in love with the medium and I am excited to explore more with it. I have been blessed immensely with a renewed sense of direction.
