It's ALIVE!!!

"If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind."

~Victor Frankenstien, upon completion of his murderous monster.

...

What happens when one passion trumps another? Sacrifice is inevitable. Sometimes people can get really tunnel-visioned focusing on one particular goal or dream. I think that's dangerous thinking; what happens when things run off course? You sacrifice everything, you end up with nothing. Hold onto what's important.

I think Frankenstien learned his lesson a little too late. He poured himself into the creation of his monster with nothing but good intention. He loved it more than he loved his fiance, more than he loved his home. Victor lost everything chasing that dream- his credibility was eliminated, his entire family was murdered, his life was utterly destroyed.

Never let your goals "weaken your affections" for the little, important things in life; you could create a monster.

lyrics coming soon.

Off the Wall

Absolutely the best opening I have ever been to: Off The Wall, curated by Emily C-D at the Whole Gallery in the H&H Building. Here are a few pictures from the event, courtesy The Whole Gallery and There Were Ten Tigers.

Parachuting Rollerskates

Inside Alzaruba's plastic cave, furnished with sofas and chairs

The view of the outdoor courtyard from the Third Floor window: send your crafted "lost ideas" down below via clothesline and the monsters will surely take care of it for you.


This is actually me circled, wearing Alzaruba's foil dress. I was crawling through his cave, making lots of noise

Free kisses hello from Elisa Urtiaga! I had some lipstick on my cheek by the end of the evening :D

The show is up till May 17th, view by appointment (you need to be buzzed into the building), email Emily C-D at shout@emilycd.com. DO IT!

busy weekends

siento vivo otra vez

finally.

...

i saved a life:

He was trapped in the woodshop; he'd flown up in though the window, but couldn't find his way back out. He kept slamming into the glass, tweeting terrified. I caught him in a trashcan against the window, and he sat in my hand for a few contented minutes. I could pet him, he perched on my fingers, and he finally flew away in search of a french fry. It reminded me of catching snakes and lizards on hiking trips with my dad when I was little.

...

This weekend was amazing. Friday night I went to the Glitterama! burlesque at Load of Fun. I sat next to this man and he let me wear his top hat for a little while.

I think he owns the art shop next to Joe Squared on Howard. He had a snazzy red velvet cape, came by himself, and cheered for all the acts on stage along with all of us. I love nights like that, meeting people like this.

My favorite act from the show was Moira Lee' Aerial Aeronautics. I'd love to see her in a full length show- her one act blew me away. It was insane seeing these tumbles from three feet away in that tiny black box theatre!

Here's a video of one of her performances:

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Last night I went dancing with old and new friends. I was pulled up to dance on stage, and I had an amazingly good time. I fell asleep to the morning's birds chirping as the sun started creeping through my window, cuddled and satisfied.

To me, art goes beyond the act of object making. Art is a way of thinking- art is your lungs filled with air. It's the stories you tell (and especially the stories no one believes). Experience is everything to me- in the end, all you've got is the story of your life. Better make it a good one! Does art imitate life? I don't know... to me, there's no line between them.

Influenced

I saw this painting by Millais in art history- I immediately connected this painting with The Decemberists. This is the direction I want my music to go- lyrical illustration. I've made progress with The Wicked, illustrating Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique.

I will dress your eyelids

With dimes upon your eyes

Laying close to water

Green your grave will rise

Go to sleep now little ugly

Go to sleep now you little fool

Forty-winking in the belfry

You'll not feel the drowning

You'll not feel the drowning

Forget you once had sweethearts

They've forgotten you

Think you not on parents

They've forgotten too

Go to sleep now little ugly

Go to sleep now you little fool

Forty-winking in the belfry

You'll not feel the drowning

You'll not feel the drowning

Go to sleep now little ugly

Go to sleep now you little fool

Forty-winking in the belfry

You'll not feel the drowning

You'll not feel the drowning

Hear you now the captain

Heed his sorrowed cry

"Weight upon your eyelids

Is dimes laid on your eyes"

...
Now I'm thinking alot about Mary Shelley and her connection with Fuseli's The Nightmare... I think there's a damn good song there just waiting to be written. I'm writing my term paper on the Victorian occult, mostly on the connection between romantic painting and gothic literature.
"She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale distorted features half covered by her hair. Every where I turn I see the same figure - her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier... The windows of the room had been darkened, and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown back; and, with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure of the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife."(Frankenstein 189-190)
Shelley wrote that three years after seeing Fuseli's painting:

I think creative genres are meant to be mixed. Theatre should combine with fine art, fine art with music, music with literature- any number of combinations. The Baltimore vaudeville-style variety/burlesque scene is a good place to start- people like Amanda Palmer and Paco Fish and Little Dutch. Every kind of art influences every kind of artist- I'm trying hard not to be locked into a "fine arts sculpture" box.
~Let's do some cabaret~

good morning

everyday i am awake and gone before my roommate wakes up, and every night i am home after she is in bed. my teacher thought i had a shiner last night- it's just the circles under my eyes. three weeks left of school. time to cram.

i dunno why i do this to myself.

there's too much life to live. too much work to do.

not enough hours in the day.

wish me luck!

working hard/hardley working

i finally feel like i've made some progress on these sculptures that keep breaking. too many hours in the shop- not nearly enough.



the fiberglass cast isn't too bad! i've still got to patch up the seam, bondo the air bubbles, sand, grind, paint.... ugh 50+ hours left in this baby.

and the chemicals only mildly burned me :D i've got a nice red streak on my arm from reaching in that hole with resin.

this piece is an experimental painting; this view is from the back of the canvas. it will hang off the wall at an angle, so the viewer can look past the painting on the front and can discover the "monster" that has been growing behind. this is his ribcage, there will be an organ inside it, and it will all be textured with silicone and plaster. it's gonna look awesome (if i finish it on time!)

today, research. i'm gonna go read in the sun.

things fall apart

"It's funny how things feel the same, and even stranger how quickly they change into one another..." ~Lyrics from my song Collide

It's interesting how nothing turns out, but somehow manages to regenerate. This week has been a trying experience in this sort of unintentional reincarnation. Things fall apart, you bust your ass trying to glue them back together.

I've been working on two self-portrait busts in ceramic for a few months now. They have certainly been ignored for too long, and the clay was nearly bone dry when I tried to work on them again. So, I foolishly soaked them in water to make them softer, and they simply crumbled in my hands. Luckily, the busts were based on a press mold I have, so I spent the rest of the night making a second pair of heads. Each will probably need around 40 hours of work in detailing and kiln prepping...

I have a large plaster waste mold that I've been trying to fiberglass for weeks now- the resin never catalyzes. The first cast failed, and it took two weeks to scrub the mold clean. I replaced the catalyst. The second cast failed, but this time I immediately cleaned the resin out. I replaced the resin I had been using. Finally, last night, I cast a third time with fresh mats, and it kicked!! The resin set up beautifully, and I FINALLY have two halves of my mold totally fiberglassed. Now I just have to fuse them together and break the mold off. Home stretch...

Tuesday I was supposed to fly to L.A. I had an incredible opportunity to fly there for only $150 with my friend, see a live taping of the Ellen Show, and stop in Dallas to see my mom. An hour before the flight, my ticket price unexpectedly increased to $250. What a great opportunity that just slipped through my fingers. But, by not going, I have much more money left over for art supplies. I need to buy plywood and paint today, and it's gonna set me back quite a bit.

Last night I ended my 2 1/2 year relationship. I know it'll be for the best in the long run, but it doesn't mean it hurts any less. Two weeks ago we were about to take the next step foreword, and then all of a sudden things seemed to crumble entirely. We're different people headed in different directions, and sometimes love just isn't enough to make something good last.

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I guess the thesis of this blog would be that no matter what crumbles, it will be rebuilt again. It might take new materials, or maybe new perspective, but good can still come out of whatever bad luck you might encounter. Seeing the good through these rough times is really what keeps me happy.

And I am happy.

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band practice

it's been too long since we'd jammed, so we just had fun with covers. this is our first run through of Naked as We Came by Iron and Wine. no capo, since i lost it, which means it's about 5 keys out of my normal vocal range haha. anyway, enjoy

http://www.myspace.com/divingbelle

Quoted in the Paper

From the school newspaper The Towerlight concerning a show called "Art for the Earth," where I hung a piece:

"Junior art major, sculpture track Savanna Leigh built “What Goes Up...” to make use of something personal to her. About a year ago, she had a major fall while rock-climbing. She taped her x-rays to her old boots and tied them to her retired rock-climbing gear, hanging the piece from an easel at the show. “It was a really traumatic event for me, so it’s about the healing process and the pain I went through,” she said."

It was a really good show, there were a few experimental bands and Shelly Blake-Plock did an awesome performance involving broken bottles and bare feet.

funeral for a familiar

a poem i wrote about a year ago

On a cold rainy day in the heat of last May,

A crowd gathered round on the lawn.

Their heads were hung heavy, their breathing was steady,

Their faces were long, red, and drawn.

Among them a teacher, a wise learned preacher,

Stepped up to the hole in the ground.

His face weakly showing the tears that kept flowing,

He said, "Friends, let us gather round:

Here lies my clear conscience,

A martyr of its circumstance,

A traitor to my dissonance

To whom it denied appeal.

In eleventh grade it ran away

In light of some sick display

Of Hope once held but then betrayed

In search of something real;

It took with it my empathy

But it survived such apathy

Whose children weep the entropy

Of their, now late, ideal."

So now I pray for resurrection

To grant me peace of clear correction

Of my perceived good intention

That I will chase with zeal.

ellen durkan

A few weeks ago, I helped Ellen out with her MFA Thesis show called "Blindheaded." She presented her large-scale drawings and forged-steel dresses. I love Ellen's work, and I was really glad that I was able to assist with her show. Se has taught me so much about sculpting; I dunno where I would be without her help. Anyway, some pictures of the exhibit just turned up:

For the opening and reception, Ellen had nude models stand in her gowns as the audience walked around the room. Our jobs as assistants was to help the ladies in and out of the complicated dresses, and to stand by them while they held their 45 minute pose. It all went pretty well, except that the woman in the center dress passed out about 30 minutes in. It was really scary to see her sort of melt through the self-supported steel, her limbs limp and her eyes still open. It took about eight people to support her and remove her from the dress, but she recovered fully.

There was a videographer taping the pre-show, so whenever I find the video he made I'll post it here (I'll be in it!) Ellen's show will be up till the end of the month in the Towson MFA Gallery... Definitely go see it!

sketchbook

i'm slowly getting better at drawing from life

Fair Carmilla

padre nuestro

it needs a ton more work....

someday this sugar skull will be fired and painted with the Our Father in Spanish.

feliz dia del muerte

fail!

My resin didn't set in the mold for my bust. Damnit. I had to peel up wet Bondo and fiberglass, and now my mold needs some serious cleaning before my next casting attempt. Ugh.

My next project focuses on painting- well, experimental painting. Alzaruba prompted me with the question "What is painterly?" and I answered "Carved strokes." So, I'll be painting with a chisel. I've got a rectangle mold ready to pour- I'm mixing plaster with powder pigment and iron oxide to marbleize the color. When I carve into the block, colors and shapes will be revealed like veins through an organ. It's gonna kick ass (if it all works out...)

Wish me luck