bright

The sun rose this morning

and I was up to see it.

communication

Just returned from Spanish. I am sooo enjoying absorbing new words with familiar meanings. Spanish sounds much more musical and well organized than English. Even having four classes by the time I went to Chile would have been immensely beneficial. Learning another language requires a receptive mind, play, observation. In fact, the more present I am, the more comes and stays. An added value of learning a new language is just that: the presence required. Interesting how I pick up some words right away, while other ones click for the first time in the fourth class. Being able to speak another language is obviously so valuable. Provides an understanding of and appreciation for those who can speak English in addition to their mother tongue. The process of learning and using mind in such a different way than accustomed to aids in maintaining play in design. 

Wish learning a language could count for credit. On the other hand, informal classes at instructor's abode in Travis Heights allows for meeting people outside academia. Two elderly judges give me rides back and forth to class. One, S, told me about her difficult hearing today. The hearing regarded a massage therapist whose ex-husband charged her with offering sexual favors to clients. S's job is to judge circumstances like that. Two nights a week, S and I learn Spanish together. S's motivation to learn is Anyyi (pronounced Ahn-gee), an 11 year old Columbian girl who speaks no English, whom she will adopt in January.

recognition

My aunt is a hair stylist in Austin and she recently relocated salons. The point is, she gave me a stack of magazine's she'd had lying around for her clients. I came across an advertizement in national geographic  which rearranges plastic bags into a new image, in this case a flower, to make the point about eco-friendly plastic. A conceptual response to an object. Then, I came across a magazine spread in The New York Times Magazine which clearly draws on the concept from A Humument and illustrates ideas about health with sentence/word fragments and collaged image. Recognition is fun. If I had not checked out A Humument this semester, I would not have known.

curating

I went to half of the informal talk about curating at the Blanton last night (before heading back to school to TA). A lot more people showed up than I expected. Some things I learned from the curators (Jade Walker of the CRL, Risa Puleo & Christina Hiett):

Christina: I like doing alternative showes where artists are working with non-traditional media that I don't know anything about—particularly computers. I also like curating shows that are collaborations between two very different artists.

Finding space is key.

There are process based shows and project based shows.

Risa: When coming up with a new exhibit, I think primarily about Who do I want to work with? Whose work am I most excited about? What do do I want to read about right now?

There are so many different ways of curating...different perspectives come from curators with studio art backgrounds vs. art history backgrounds vs. curatorial backgrounds or museum studies backgrounds. Curators have to be a little bit of everything...a lot of behind the scenes politics, licenses, budgets, technicalities to deal with.

 

Thoughts on discovery

I'm realizing, I am following a bigger condition than exists only in the out of place or only in the study of shadows or only in what is always here, but not always noticed. The condition is discovery. Focusing too specifically on one thing can limit discovery by resulting in too much planning and thinking. Changing the focus continually, or changing it when it looses its newness, illicits a fresher, rawer response in many cases. Its about having a curiosity to find out what a thought will look like, feel like, manifest and not just as an idea. I am interested in that new experience where discovery lies and expectations don't exist yet. So, responding to the same thing as long as the results are fresh and than moving on, when they aren't. Sometimes discovery also lies in returning to the old after having a series of new discoveries elsewhere. In life, this just happened to me when I returned to D.C. In design, this can happen when I take a break from a subject for a while and do other studies, then return to the old study -  How do I keep responding like new to the same thing? Is that even possible?