Muscling Through

This is the second blog that I promised to post this month. This one is a little less photographic and a little more verbal. If you have no interest in what is actually going on at Cranbrook, this isn't the blog for you.

First things first, this is the my mid term, semester critique, what ever you want to call it. I spent, in large part, my first two months working on this piece. I wrote an artist statement (.pdf) for the piece and Don Cameron, from painting, wrote a review (.doc) on the piece. I'm installing this piece at Wayne State University next week for the Exchange gallery show that Cranbrook participates in.

Aside from weekly critiques and reading group, we have a Critical Studies & Humanities lecture series on Size Matters: Perception at the Edge of Space. That is also a weekly event. We have had a handful of visiting artist just for our department. So far we've had Harmen Liemburg, Ed Fella, and Ali Madad and we are soon to have David Cabianca.

Ed Fella rolled in and threw down four carousels full of slides for a presentation on his work followed by a little Q & A. Behind him on the wall, our department had work up for the upcoming Fanfare event. Its this benefit the school throws every year so benefactors of the Academy can walk through studios and see what is coming out of the school. From left to right: Matt Walsh, Jan Olof Nygren, Amanda Yu, and Meredith Morrison.

Ed Fella showed us some slides of the design work he was doing in Detroit before he went to school at Cranbrook. He worked as a designer for 30 years before getting his MFA.

This is part of the conversations after the slide presentation. He is either telling us a story about how we should be pushing computers to the utmost limits and making the craziest designs from it, or he's telling a story about Massimo Vignelli's love of Miesian minimal design.

Kristin came out to visit the first weekend of November (also know as the last warm weekend of 2006). We wandered around and I took pictures of her wrestling the school's statues to the ground. This one turned out the best. Conclusively, SAIC has Lions, CAA has boars.

I caught a picture of her in the Michael Hall sculpture with the light peaking through the steel and hitting her right in the eyes. It kind of reminds me of how movies used to light just the eyes of an actress on extreme close-ups.

Eric Bintner from the 2D design department throws a roller skating video festival and then has Mixel Pixel come out from Brooklyn to play a show for us in the lounge.

Friends Christian and Sara come out for the event and chill in the back by the Cleon Petterson / Chris Williams / Mike Little mural.

Chris Williams is actually in town as we speak, he graduated last year from 2D design. We played in a 8 ball tournament last weekend and came in second. I was pretty happy we made the finals. Sorry no pictures of that. I get leery of mixing booze and my camera.