Smart Bar

I have found it! I have found new drum n bass, dubstep, house, industrial, and techno! 

This place is HUUUUGE! The lightning gets really wild, you can't really see in the picture but the walls light up green in the lounging areas. On Weds, Thurs, and Fri they stay open till 4, and Saturdays till 5! So nuts!

I got done with all my darkroom stuff last night, just making prints of my own stuff because I bought the wrong paper, and still have to shoot 2 rolls and make 6 prints before Wednesday. While I was walking out my teacher assistant was behind me, saying "Look at you, gettin a jump start." I told him I'd already done all of this before, and then we ended up sharing a cigarette and telling me a little about photography events at the school and then we exchanged numbers and he invited me to come out to this place. 

HOLY BALLLZZZZ 

I 

       WAS

                    SO

                               ECSTATIC! 

I saw Caspa + Timid, Whoa-B, and J Courage. Sadly, I didn't bring my camera to show pictures. I wanted to dance more! It was fucking incredible. Just what I needed! 

平和と愛

Nothin but good vibes

The past couple weeks I was feeling very blue, and out of touch from everyone and everything. I started to question my motives, my desires, my ambition, and my over all strength as a person. 

Up until a few days ago, I decided to stop.

Stop worrying.

Stop questioning.

Stop being self concious.

Stop being another student sitting in a classroom and not saying anything,

and BE someone more. 

Everyday I go to class, It gets a little better. I learn a little more, and I slowly make my mark. 

I've decided that I'm not going to post a

ny of my photographs until the end of the semester, or maybe when I make my own website. 

Today in my Photo class we t

alked a lot about light, what it does for the photograph, the mood it gives off, and the texture it creates. We looked at this photographer by the name of Elinor Carucci. We took a look at her series of photographs titled, "Closer." This series was essentially just everyday life of her family, mostly her parents, her husband, and her sister. Some of them so simple, yet they seem to make you look at the simple things in life differently. I think it's extraodinary how close she is with her parents, and how they are willing to let her photograph these nude pictures of them and portray them as how she sees him. They almost make you step back and look at your own family, how similar, or how different it may be to hers.  

You can check you her other work at http://www.elinorcarucci.com

On another note....

For my 2-D Design class we are starting on this outrageous project. Essentially we grabbed a box, and filled it with all kinds of arts and crafts, and random stuff he had for us, and we put it inside this box to create shape, and lines, and texture. WELL....this is literally a 24hr project. We are supposed to take and hour and half out of our day to sit down and draw this 3-D image, 2-dimensionally, on a 22x28 paper, WITH A PEN! This should be very interesting...

This is my totally absurd box that's going to be hard to draw. =/

Until next time kids.....

Anticipation

Photo 1

My teacher is awesome. I did some research on him and found some really great stuff. He's been in exhibits all over the world, mostly in New York, Philadelphia, The Netherlands, and of course, Chicago. He grew up in South Side Chicago and got a MFA & BA at Columbia. He really inspired me to live and breath photography. You can check out some of his work here. He's laid back, but particular about what he expects out of all of us. As most teachers do, he advised us to use the school, The Museum of Contemporary Photography (on campus), the Art Institute of Chicago, the library, and everything around us, to soak up every ounce of information that we can.  This class is going to be so awesome. It's kind of a refresher for me, but I have a feeling I am going to learn a lot. (Not to mention that it's on the 8th floor and I have an amazing view of Lake Michigan EVERYDAY!) It just blows my mind. Everyone in the class seems really cool, isn't from Chicago at all, it's crazy! 

Darkroom 1

I have the same people in this class as I do in my Photo 1, just a different teacher. My teacher seems really serious about everything, but very cool.  She's older and has been teaching at Columbia for awhile. One of the first things she told us was, "You can check out my work at karenglaserphotography.com" SERIOUS BUSINESS. She said as of recently she's been doing a lot of underwater photographs. I checked some of them out, and they are extraordinary. 

 

On the first day of class she showed us a 25 x 38 print of this. 

She also showed us the darkrooms (which are huge) and where to develop film, and then we got to see some work that was at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Upon walking in the students working there we're talking amongst themselves and saying, "Oh Karen's here you guys..Karen's here." I felt honored to even be in her presence. I didn't know this but, you can request to see an artists work anytime during certain hours. And everything is the original prints! How crazy is that?

2-D Design

Definitely not the class I thought it was. I thought we would be doing things on the computer, and designing using shapes and patterns and what not. Completely wrong. It's mostly drawing and painting. FUCK! I don't mind it, I just can't really do either of those things very well, so it'll be interesting to see how this class works out for me. Right when we started he gave us an assignment to pick out seven images for a scale and have one side be the good, and one side be the evil, what comes in the middle, and everything else in between. The first thing that came into my head was images of rich people, images of poor people, and images of the middle class, so I just went with that. Everyone in that class is mostly Art & Design majors, or Advertising majors. AND there was only 1 person in the class that was actually from Chicago. WILD! 

Art History 

My teacher is wild about art history, let me tell you. It's your typical lecture class, but he's so scatter-brained it's hard to keep up with him. It's almost as if he has too much information and he just wants to get it all out at once. I met a couple new people in the class, so hopefully that should make it better. 

School is amazing. It feels good to be back. 

31st Annual Chicago Jazz Festival

Fareed Haque & The Flat Earth Ensemble

Crazy Masks!

 

St Charles High School 

Such a nice day.

Columbia College!

Esperanza Spalding.

So many people...GODDAMN!

These dude's were just jammin. That guy's playing 2 saxophones at once! There was a good 10-15 people standing listening to them, and then they stopped and started preaching about God and throwing Jesus in our faces and only 5 people, (including myself) were left standing. After awhile it just became repetitive and I had to walk away. 

Sadly because of work, I was only able to attend on Friday, but it was incredible. I felt so at peace. I met a photographer there who took some pictures of me. His name was Jerry Goldner and he's a wildlife photographer. He just kept telling me about how he was really stoned and that he's just been going around freelancing and said he basically gives his photographs away for free. He said to me, "It's such a reward to not get paid to do what you love, but to simply just love what you do." You can check out his work here.

Until next time....