Thursdays are by far, the hardest day of my week. Classes start at 8:30 and end at 4:30. I also have a weeks worth of drawing homework to catch up on and need to prepare for the scrutiny of Friday's studio.
Fridays are therefore mostly filled with the aftermath. It takes all of my logistical capabilities to comprehend that the week is over and that I should be happy. That is why I am pleased to report that today things went in such a way that made it much easier.
I had two classes, my analog (hand) drawing class and studio. In drawing class I was paid a great compliment. I was "successful" in attempting to convey the phenomenal and literal transparency of the spaces I chose. This is a great compliment because a majority of the time she finds at least something that is "unsuccessful," as in "I see what you were trying to do, but I think you were, um, unsuccessful."
In studio we met collectively to hear each other's ideas for drawing the dinner party. We each elaborated on our methods for documenting the party and our ideas for conveying that into a drawing. All I have to say is that part of Cornell's ticket price is definitely the caliber of your peers.
As you know, I sought to record motion in the room. I played around with how I was going to draw these time lapses and had come up with several compelling plans. Last night I spent some additional time in Photoshop to create a few photo collages and today, in between classes I had a breakthrough, from good idea to great idea.
The most important aspect of this project is to think of how our method of recording changes our perception of the room's architecture and how using a different method of drawing than orthogonal projection, we can convey this. My thought was to change the privileged view point, from a static to a dynamic one, what if instead of the person moving and room remaining constant the opposite were true.
Back to the presentations. There was one girl who had a method of recording similar to mine and as she presented Jim, through a series of observations and comments, came to suggest an idea akin to my revelation. At first I was a little dismayed, so much for originality. But then I thought, this is great news. In all of his experience and expertise he is putting forward exactly what I was thinking. He had not given anyone's idea a favorable review and I was almost assured success, he cannot disagree without countering his own idea.
I volunteered to go next.
I started with the evolution of my idea. This presentation was largely impromptu so luckily I had my laptop and could play a slide show of my collages. Jim was impressed and gave me another pat on the back. Ecstasy of approval. With soaring confidence I move forward. I express the bias of traditional drawing toward the static, I quote Einstein and move into philosophy, the truth of fixing the individual into a static position within a dynamic frame. I show my sketches.
Jim's response: "Now it is going to seem like I am contradicting myself but I'm really not..."
CRAP.
He is good. He is the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
It isn't all that bad though. He was so moved by my collages that he saw my approach as moving away from the lyrical and fluid aspects in them and wanted me to pursue that instead.
Wow, I can get into story telling. Sorry about that.
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