Random Musings

So I'm sitting at work, we just finished finals last week, and we have a two and a half day week then we break for Thanksgiving. It was my assumption that the students would be relatively useless during that time and so thought that I would give the kids a break from the regular lecture and write routine. I decided that I would bring in three games that deal with language and foster interpersonal communication skills, but games that are supposed to be pretty fun none the less. I brought in Apples to Apples, Baulderdash, and Mad Gab. Each game, in my opinion deals with language in an interesting and fun manner, and I figured that the kids would enjoy the games and the break from regular instruction. Apparently I was wrong. The old adage is definitely true! You cannot please the masses.

What should have been a simple exercise has turned into an uphill struggle with a bunch of whiners! I had to make the activity of playing games AN ASSIGNMENT! I actually had to threaten kids with a ZERO in order to get them to play games for the three days! What is wrong with this generation when they refuse to even play! Even when I told them that playing was an assignment, they still complained and I had to threaten giving them a larger essay assignment if they refused to play games. He frustrating thing is that some kids were almost obstinate enough that they were on the fence of choosing the essay over PLAYING GAMES! I don't get it! When I was in school I would have killed to have three day of playing. Kids these days are a pain in my ass!

A couple of weeks ago I posted some pictures of the face that I was building out of clay. I was really proud of it because it was the first piece of art that I had seriously worked on in several years and I was feeling really good about how it was turning out! In the past few months I have somewhat rediscovered my latent artistic talents and have been enjoying sketching and modeling different characters and such. Well I finally finished the profile that I was working on about a week ago. I figure that in total it most likely took me around 16 to 20 hours from beginning to end and I was really really excited about how it turned out. It wasn't perfect, but for a beginners go, I was feeling really good about it. There were some definite changes that I would have made to it if i were to restart, but I was excited about where I was at and looking forward to drying, firing, glazing, and painting the project. The new art teacher at AF has been a great motivator in helping me along. Anyway, here is what it looked like then it was all done ...
I was especially proud of the Sideburns and the Pompadore hairdo.
Here is a sketch of what I had in my mind as I was working on the project.

Here are the images of the finished product. I was really excited by how everything turned out.I though that it all worked really well together and that I had accomplished a fairly impressive feat for never really having worked with clay that much.

Well I had finished the project, I was excited to get it to school where I could let it dry slowly and then fire the piece. After getting it to school and letting it dry for a few days I realized that I needed to do a bit of repair to some small portions that were starting to crack. I had driven Emmy down to the school so that I could deliver the empty futon frame that we have been carting around for the last few years to a co-worker who had purchased it. We are trying to sell everything we own because we are tired of the material world.

Anyway, after school I loaded my school work and the clay piece in the passenger side of the bus and drove to the co-workers house to drop off the futon frame. I was having a difficult time unlocking Emmy's side door and so I tried leaning over the passenger seat into the back to unlock the door from the inside (apparently a task that requires not just a small amout of being double-jointed, but a certain amount of divine inspiration as well). As I stepped up into the buss to reach around and unlock the door, my foot slipped off the door jam, and my forearm plumeted towards the clay.

BAM!!! (this is just for effect, there was actually no sound to accompany the connecting of my forearm with the cardboard holding the clay)



I broke it ...

I was really sad ... I'm still quite sad, but I will survive. I'm actually planning my next attempt at modeling with clay already. As you know, I am addicted to Mighty Muggs and this whole urban vinyl movement. I want my next attempt to be a more cartoony looking figure. I have a few sketches done and I'll post them as I start working on the actual piece, but until then I guess I'll just keep you in suspense.

If you want to see what I am trying for with this next attempt you can check out kidrobot.com. They are an urban vinyl toy company and they are very popular right now. I am attempting to work with them on a school wide project for this next term where we bring in several of their munny figures, hand them out to the kids, and have them design and write about thier experience. This is a project that the art teacher and I are working on together and I think that we will display the final products/pieces at ther studio up here is Pocatello.

Anyway, that is what I have going on; I will be posting more a little later regarding the entire family.

Cheers,
Price