CCA Confidential

Finals week proved to be harder than I thought, main because Dr. Connor assigned a take home exam for Into To The Modern Arts, which amounted to a 10 page paper.

But its all over now. And I think I did well over all. I don’t know my grades yet, but as soon as I do, I will post them.

I am also going to do a post describing my views and experience of each class and teacher, now that the term is over. So look for Part II.

Over the break I hope to work an a number of design projects, including giving this site it’s first redesign. If you have any ideas or suggestions. Leave a comment.

Finals week starts next Monday. But for me it feels like they are already done. Last week proved to be the most difficult this semester, and all my teachers have lightened the load for these two last weeks.

My two art history classes both have assigned take home exams. And my 3D-Visual Dymanics class isn’t requiring a polished product for our last assignment. The only stipulation is that we play with the new materials (sticks and wire) attentively and inventively.

The only serious project I have for these last 8 days comes from my annimic 4D Class. I am not too stressed about this project either. Natalie and I have been working on it for a two weeks and we should be done by Monday or Tuesday, if all goes well.

I’ve gotten many grades back this week.

• Recycled Slide Group Project - A for group and A personally
• Learning To Love You More - A
• Comparison Paper on Brauner and Dali - A
• Adoration Of The Shepherds Paper - A

The paper on Brauner and Dali was the most important out of the four. I needed an A on the paper to pull me out of the B I had in the class. Dr. Connor wrote me a very nice note at the top of my paper: “Very well thought out, researched, and presented. You have the makings of a good visual studies writer/critic.”

This is a scary story I just found in the San Francisco Chronicle (link), apparently one of the female German exchange students attending CCA was walking to the local 7-Eleven in the Outer Sunset and was attached and stabbed several times by a homeless person. After spending a week in the hospital, she is ok, and going back to school.

I also live in the Outer Sunset, and I consider it to be one of the safer places to live in San Francisco. But everyone needs to be a little careful when walking alone in a city at night.

What is really sad is that the German girl was trying to give the guy a free meal.

I have been killing myself on my class projects over the last week. Everyday has been a 12 or 14 hour work day. I am exhausted. The two art history papers, each 5 pages long, weren’t that bad. But I have been spending 6 to 12 hours a day in the 3D studio building my favorite piece of this term, a box I call “Looking Lantern I.”

Keep in mind I have never worked in a woodshop in my life. This box was constructed completely by hand. The side panels are joined together with miter cut. One of these pannels opens along the length, so I had to set hinges into the miter, which was very difficult.

The top ends are butt jointed and reinforced with copper rod, which I cut and set by hand. I think this was one of most difficult parts. I miss aligned the end cap with the midsection several times. So I had to fill the whole with dowel and glue and start over again. The box is smooth. The color comes for mixing my own proportions of different leather dyes, and finishing the wood with wax sealant.

Inside are six horizontal slats perfectly cut into the four sizes. Five of the slats hold Plexiglases on which I have placed five parts of a three-dimensional collage I created on transparency paper. The sixth slat holds a semi-transparent sheet to prevent he view from seeing the mirror at the base which reflects light in through an opening on the bottom side. This opening is also covered with a semi-transparent sheet.

The the box can be opened and new slides added, a feature I worked very hard on so that I could continue to build new environments.

The critique for this project went very well. There were no negative comments, though I know of a few imperfections in my construction. Here are a few things people said:

• Inventive, like a weird science project.
• Unique, unlike any of the other work in the class
• Interactive, people want to come up and look into it

You can see larger photos and pictures looking through the oculus at my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccaconfidential/. Unfortunately the three-dimensional effect of the collage is lost in photographs.