V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!

...all I ever wanted!

I must say that mine has been treating me well. I have been in Rhode Island at the parental units for 3 days now and love having them make me dinner and pour me homemade eggnog as I finish my application to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As you have read in past posts, I am applying to SAIC this year. I visited the campus back in October and fell in love, after attending an Open House in Boston the Admissions Director as well as a painting faculty member encouraged me to apply this year. The school is tough to get in to, and painting and drawing is the toughest department to be admitted to within the school, due to the number of applications they receive each year. I am willing to do what it takes: I love Chicago, I love the museum, and I love the interdisciplinary approach of the school. It's tough going, but wish me luck!

On another note, I have been doing small drawings (a lot of which have been given as presents over the past few days) but have not had a chance to photograph them. So to satisfy the visual aspect of this post I will show you a few of the wonderful gifts my family bestowed on me as we celebrated yet another wonderful year.

First on the list is a Matthew Ritchie book I have been eyeing. It is a beautiful hardcover with wonderful visuals of his installations, drawings and paintings as well as text from Ritchie, friends and critics. I love reading about his work as much as I do looking at it! I relate to his work in the sense that he creates overwhelming spaces, something I am working to achieve. He has become very literal with his space and his scale only in that he is working with installation, again, something I hope to do one day (maybe while at my residency in Georgia?) I love that he maintains abstraction while creating forms we can relate to, and create a plethora of associations with.

An installation shot showing one of Ritchies installations a the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Reminds me a lot of Sarah Sze (who I blogged about here) in the way they play with and exaggerate space and in the lyrical lines that they both create.

Another wonderful gift that I recieved from my mother was a promise for the two of us to go see The Lion King on Broadway in New York!!! I love seeing musicals and plays, and Broadway is the place to do it! This has become somewhat of a tradition, since my mom brought me to see Sunday in the Park with George a while back, a play about the creation and story behind George Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.



I also received some beautiful paper from my father that I have never used before. It is called Wallis Paper and is supposed to be THE paper to use for pastel. It boasts being able to hold up to 25 layers of pastel, something almost all of my drawings have! Dad (and some of you) have listened to me complain about the point when the paper just can't take any more pastel and I have to relinquish control, so I am excited to use the paper and give it all I've got. My thoughtful brother and sister rounded out the day with a rice maker (from the brother who just returned from three years in Japan) and a beautiful journal of bound Tibetan papers (my sister will be doing an away rotation as part of medical school in Tibet next February.)

Hope you have had a good holiday season so far and that you too, have some time off! I'm hoping to get new work up soon, sit tight!