Wrapping up

Last Wednesday was the closest thing to our sketching final, which was basically an installation piece somewhere in the architecture building. I chose a display case on the third floor and used the glass to reflect sketches I'd done so it looked as though the sketch and the viewer were floating in space. It was a neat trick and the reviewers loved it. You can't underestimate the value of that little trick, the bit of dazzle. How can they see with sequins in thier eyes? Anyway, the only thing left for that class is the sketchbook which I'm supposed to fill. Our instructor tells us that its about "quality" but also that he wants us to fill the sketchbook. What it will really come down to is a balance, and he'll compare sketchbooks, probably weighting a person who did a bunch of mediocre drawings the same as one who did half as many drawings at twice the quality. I'm actually in really good shape, as I think I've got halfway decent drawings and already over 200 drawings done.

Friday night, Saori and I went to the Senior Graphic Design show at PURL downtown. Saori actually spent a year in the graphic program before switching over, so she knew a lot of those people. Overall it was very impressive, interesting work.

In studio, my professor asked me to put my project up in the gallery downstairs for Design Excellence. Design Excellence is a little competition held by the college of architecture and landscape architecture, where three projects are selected from each studio and then an outside panel of visitors comes to review it and award a winner and a runner up from each year. I had my group's Buenos Aires project put up (probably because it was one of the most finished), but this is the first time I've ever been selected personally for nomination. The reason this time: graphic appeal. My boards have some sexy images. The other two nominees from my class have okay projects but really well done boards, boards that make mine look really bad by comparison. I already am 99% sure I am not going to win (my project is just not that coherant and they always get people from different fields to judge), so it is a bit of a hassle. But I'll take it anyway. I realized at the graduation dinner that I've become extremely jaded about competitions and awards. Theres a great bit of advice I got from one studio instructor that the best project always gets second or third place: the winner is something everyone can agree on. I am also looking more now at who is doing the awarding, and why, and typically, it is very pointed.

Got my final grades from Systems: didn't do as well on the final as I'd thought, so I ended up with a B+. Not terrible, but not great either. At this point I'm predicting an A- to an A in studio, a A to B+ in Human Behavior, and probably an A in sketching, although the teacher is a bit hard to read sometimes.

Last night, we went to my old History of Architecture professor's house for dinner. Actually, it was a reunion dinner for those students who went with him to Rome for summer study program (like Saori), but she got special permission to bring me. It was an interesting dinner, it was a very interesting group of people who went on the trip. We arrived early to help prepare everything. I brought fresh tomatoes and imported mozzarella, and Saori baked a creme custard. At his apartment we made delicious mushroom and italian sausage risotto with all kinds of appetizers and desserts.

Right now I'm over at Saori's place working on my sketchbook. I'm took a break since the Mexican families behind her apartment were having a huge party and blasting thier corrida (mariachi music) at volume level 11. Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, anyhow.

Interesting Fact for the day: Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexican Independance, but marks a key victory against the French.

Uploading:

Uploaded some of the sketches and mixed media drawings I've done for my sketching class. I'm really glad I took it.



sketchbook

And here's a little movie of my final project for architecture:

Sketch class

Sketching class is difficult, but I'm glad I'm taking it. In a way, its the most challenging class I have right now. The sketchbook is not quite halfway done, which is incredible. I just need to keep on working on it nightly. Its a hardbound book, so I'll always have it which is cool.

The project we're working on now is an exercise in mixed media in concept exploration, especially if you have a site you don't know what to do with. We started with a photo of an alley, I didn't see any cool alleys here so I used a photo from Buenos Aires.

















Then we lay a piece of tracing paper over it, and cut out pieces covering what we thought were the most significant parts of the photo. Then we outlined the cuts with pencil, and added lines where we saw them in the photo.


















Next, we flipped the image to get a different reading of space, and added magazine cutouts to create a collage which described either a space or a series of spaces. We photocopied this to flatten the image.
























Then we mounted this image to a board and following the lines in the images, cut and folded the board to create a "gadget," a scale model of ambiguously programed spaces where gravity was relative to every plane and there was no clear orientation. This gadget we then photographed with scale people in it.

Welcome to Spring Break

I think I've found a good solution to how to get to work. I'm going to buy a car.

But in the meantime. I've discovered a great alternative. ASU president Michael Crow drives me downtown.

The way this works is that Crow saw through the establishment of a downtown campus for ASU. This campus has classes used by regular students at the Tempe campus, who really did not want to A) Fight traffic, or B) Pay for downtown parking. So part of the deal is a free shuttle bus which runs from ASU's tempe campus straight to downtown.

Friday morning, I biked to the shuttle stop on ASU in less than ten minutes. The shuttle bus left at 6:30 AM. I was the only one on it, which feels a little strange, but ok. The bus dropped me at Polk and First st, which was another ten minute bike ride to work. So I got my workplace at 7:05. I had time to bike around the neighborhood, and pop into a Jack in the Box for breakfast.
Next time, I'll take the 7 AM shuttle and get another half an hour of sleep in the morning.

Work was good, simple tasks to do, so I filled in the rest of the time really getting everything right in the programs, and doing some areal photography work over the site. I rode home with a bunch of chittering, giggling, Devil's Advocates, the peppy student guides and salespeople who give tours of ASU to graduating kids with thier parents. It's hard to believe there was so much enthusiasm for ASU. They were like evangleist youth groups spreading the Good Word, so pure was thier faith in ASU.

I got my two other books in the mail. One was Images of the City by Lynch, and the other was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. I love Vonnegut. His books are like tinted glasses to look at your world. Some books are good at drawing you in and making you forget the world around you. Others are good for making you look at the world around you. I like the book so far, Cat's Cradle was better, Vonnegut seems more resigned and embittered by the world around him in this one. Image of the City was recommended to me by my old history of architecture professor and friend Dr. Morton, while he was reviewing my project.

Listen: Friday was also my mid-semester review. Five of us pinned up in the hall outside our classroom at a time. One person got the board, and the other four shared two huge movable whiteboards which we pinned up on both sides. We completely took over the corridor and clogged it up. Our reviewers in the early part were actually two thirds of the Argentine faculty. Milagros, a faculty from southern Argentina, and Professor Claudio Vekstein, whom we all know from our many adventures south of the equator.

I went late in the day, but the reviewers really liked my work. The idea of putting up a facade of another building on the old mill was a really controvercial decision which made my studio teacher (art and theory background) nearly come to blows with Milagos (brutalist modernism background). It's fun when reviewers fight. Especially since they'll typically give you ammunition for later development. Everybody loved the patio on top of the grainery. That shot with the silhouette and the sunset nailed it. That was the money shot, even if it was completely fabricated. It's the idea of what they could see rather than the precise angle or height (I shot the sunset from on top of A mountain, a good several hundred feet above where the top of the grainery is).

Saori's studio was not so fortunate. Her studio all looked really unhappy leaving friday. Seems like Professor Spellman wasn't too happy with the state of things, or the amount of work. So there's lots of work for them over spring break. Our studio teacher told us that she didn't want us to worry about working over spring break.

After studio, Saori and I and Jamie (old roomate) met up with a bunch of grad student girls from our Buenos Aires trip, and we sat ate mexican food and drank margaritas and talked for about two hours. One of them summed up the problem with all our of studios/thesises. "We're halfway through the semester, but we're not halfway done yet."

So that was friday. Today I picked up Sally and Jonathan's van at thier apartment and took it in for an oil change which was part of the deal that I made with them to borrow it over spring break. Better, really since Sally left me money for it too. Anyway, after the oil change, I watched a movie, relaxed, read about half of Breakfast of Champions and then worked on my sketchbook.

My sketchbook, incidently, has about 320 more pages that I have to fill with drawings and sketches. This sketchbook when I turn it in will consititute most of my grade for my sketching class. So there is some serious work to do, especially considering that I have five weeks.

Five weeks. I have five weeks of school before graduation. I need to get on the ball with figuring out all the finalities and nicieties of the graduation ceremony and protocalls. And I need to figure out a place to live too, as the lease here is up in mid may.