Brief post on the eve of the beginning of week two!

It's week two already!
It's quite late today. Today marks week one of Franklin and Marshall and Day one of my soon to be permanent schedule for Fall Semester. I spent the morning at Millersville helping students develop ideas with their first project. They are in the process of making maquettes in foil and scrap wood. It was nice to talk to them and get to know them better. My strategy has been to stake out a table and bring busy work or a sketchbook so I can work with them. I try to keep it light and conversational because I know that some personalities will shut down if I'm just another authority figure. I also don't want to outshine the professor. 

During my joint work time, I made a list of Spanish phrases gleaned from memory and from Esmeralda Santiago's book "When I Was Puerto Rican." It's a fantastic memoir about her experience moving from Puerto Rico to New York City in her teens. I love her writing. It's subtle and has a nice blend of fantastic realism and realism to it. She also expertly weaves spanish phrases and really captures the way bilingual speakers tend to move effortlessly in and out of spanish and english. I'm thinking of using the phrases I gleaned as transfers in some of my sculptures. 

After class I went to a brief artist talk. The ceramics professor (Zimra Beiner) gave an informal talk about his work that is currently on view in the Sykes Gallery. I enjoyed his work for it's interesting take on the relationship between the pedestal and the "sculpture" that stands on it. I also met some of the other EARs and had a nice talk with some of the other professors. I'm feeling more comfortable with the Millersville crowd. 
 
Below are some photos I snapped to capture the progress I'm making on my Atabeira sculpture. I found an old mask a friend of mine had cast in college and used it to make a solid mold that I can experiment on. I also managed to get into the woodshop and cut down some shapes to screenprint on. I also went out and bought some materials to use for other sculpture ideas I have. That's all for now!