BOLDLY GO

(Was originally supposed to be finished on June 27th- I finished it today)
Today was truly amazing. I've had the privilege over the past 6 weeks of participating in the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art and it has been a straight up amazing experience. The people here are all awesome, from the students, to the TA's, to the instructors. There's a refreshing seriousness and rigor combined with fun, with which this entire program has been conducted. We just finished our final critiques, and it was borderline riveting to quote my friend RJ. I'm amazed by the infinite nature of art yet the ability to engage with this infinity. The range in art work here is crazy and it all so fun to be seeing. We got abstract expressionists, installation artist, performers, and even good ole' woodsmiths
My crit went awesome, for some reason, especially since, for most of this program I was feelin kinda queesy and genuinely scared about my work. I had some ideas but I wasn't really sure what I wanted to. To be more honest, I came into this program thinking that I knew exactly what I wanted to do but soon realized that my ideas kinda stunk. I'm just glad I figured that out before before the year started.

I was also kinda jealous of my classmates and their really admirable ability to produce work. My boy Joel, who, crazily, it turns out is roommates with one of my good friends from High School, was knockin out paintings. And my studio neighbor Clare was already kickin but on like 3 HUGE portraits after like one week!
I didn't start my first painting til the third week; a little portrait of Halle Berry.

Turning away from what I had been thinking of as my masterpiece body of work I looked back to some work I had done at the end of last semester
I had done this drawing called "Space" which was this charcoal drawing of space evoking graffiti, on top of which I spray painted a little and silked screened a picture of Barack Obama and Neil Armstrong on top; kinda comparing Obama's journey and courage (and possible achievement) to that of Armstrong's, while also commenting on graffiti's goal of claiming space and a voice for marginalized peoples. From this I got the idea to do a painting of me and Barack Obama in space taking on space evil. In hindsight I can see how God was leading me to this. I had this underarmor stretchy shirt that I had been taking photos of myself in cause it looks like futuristic space clothing and I have always been a certified sci-fi geek. We also, as a group, up in Norfolk watched Barack Obama's exceptance speech of the Democratic nomination. IT WAS AMAZING! I felt like I was watching Rocky II.

He's the MAN!

I have always been a huge Obama fan so it just made sense. The painting turned out great! I had to have it done by 4pm for out final show- I finished it at 3:40
Most people seemed to enjoy it- which was great! At my crit people said I should keep going with it and see how much I can get done in this season. It's so cool that this is going on. I feel so privileged to be livin and makin art right now.
I don't have images of it yet but when I get them I will put them up asap