witzelsucht

To Beginnings

2012-08-23T18:15:00.005-04:00

I despise change. My family purchased a new refrigerator when I was four, and I cried. I cried a year later when we upgraded to a new couch. And when we switched cars, and when I got a hair cut. All of these events are seemingly nice life occurrences (although I never did have luck with hair cuts, that would be the one exception). It's not like catastrophes brought on these changes, I didn't get gum stuck in my hair, our refrigerator didn't combust into flames and burn the house down, there was no car accident that brought on the switch in vehicles. The events were all just the products of a normal progression of events in life. But I did not adjust well to change. I would like to say that now, 15 years later, I have overcome this aversion towards change, but unfortunately that would not be completely true. While I am no longer crying over kitchen appliances, change can still be a difficult adjustment for me, especially in routine.

This is the second summer that I have spent on staff at Camp Lone Star, and wouldn't trade it for anything. I feel so blessed by the incredibly talented staff I have the opportunity to work with and learn from, and it's hard for me to think about the inevitable changes, whether good or bad, that next summer holds. Starting this summer was rough. There were people I missed, and new people I didn't know, and I finally had to adjust to the inevitable changes that each summer brings. And eventually, I did. One of the great changes about this summer was my increased involvement with video. I was able to work as videographer for some of the weeks this summer, and loved every minute of it. Clearly. ->

For years as a camper, and even as a staffer, I have been frustrated with my inability to accurately describe what a magical place camp was. Words will never do it justice. Filming allowed me to capture and show camp as the magical, liberating place that it is. I want kids to see more than the games they played, that they got to go canoeing or shoot archery. I want them to see the freedom they have in this place.

Race for the Kingdom 2012 - preview from Nicole Regan on Vimeo.

Race for the Kingdom is a day of competitions for a week where we have only teenagers on camp. The kids are placed onto one of two teams their first time at camp, and remain that for the rest of their life.

Sketchbook Mode

2012-01-27T12:43:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since the last time I posted, mostly because my life is nuts, but for a few extra reasons lately. I am enrolled in an online web design class for this spring semester, and for that class we needed to create a blog (specifically, a wordpress site), so for the first few weeks I've been busy tackling that project. I finally have a grip on things now, though!

Over break I got a new sketchbook. So stinkin' excited. It follows me everywhere. I've spent all of my free time (and a lot of time that wasn't really free) playing with it. I don't know what's so great about this sketchbook. I can't even count how many sketchbooks I've had before that I lost interested in quickly or never turned into much, but I can't stop thinking about this one. I'm constantly overwhelmed with things I want to draw, or write, and I never seem to have as much time as I have ideas.

I may have mentioned this before, but actually wanting to do art so constantly is still such a new idea to me, and I find I can't say "no" to myself when I have the itch to create something. The last time I actually craved creating was probably middle school, and I love rediscovering my former enthusiasm. It's been so refreshing to have a new view of creating, that I can't bring myself to squander it (only for a little bit) so that I can do other things. Like sleep. So here is some documentation of just a little bit of what I have been spending all my time on the past few weeks. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have loved creating them.

Also, I have a few more up on my blog for my web design class here!

MERRY (belated) CHRISTMAS!

2012-01-01T18:43:00.000-05:00

Going overboard seems to be a reoccurring theme in my life. So naturally, when presented with the task of wrapping the Christmas presents, I couldn't control my exhausting tendency. Wrapping presents became not just a way to conceal gifts from their intended recipients, but the wrapping became a part of the gift itself. In the time I spent creating and wrapping (mostly with the scraps I could find around the house) I began to think about how others viewed wrapping. Was it just a pretty way to present gifts, that consumed time, and countless pin boards on pinterest? (I also didn't sleep the night before Christmas, so my thoughts were slightly delusional as I wrapped at 3 in the morning). In my curiosity, and sleepless delusion, I decided to do a little bit of research on the art of gift wrapping.

In Japan, gifts are given not only for traditional purposes like birthdays and Christmas, but are means of communication, "perceived as a statement from the giver to the recipient". The significant part of gifts in Japan is that the giver wishes to express something important to the recipient. Since the message is significant enough to be conveyed through a gift, the wrapping in Japan is a component of the gift, and is chosen and implemented with thought, care, and consideration. This doesn't just mean that the gifts are simply exquisitely wrapped. The wrapping reflects the content of the gift, and the emotions related to the giving. The design is important! Even important enough for this art form to have it's own name! Tsutsumi, or Japanese gift-wrapping, is not just important because they want the gift to look nice under the tree and not conflict with their meticulously decorated house (guilty), but because they believe the person to whom they are giving the gift, and the reason for which it is being given, is important and deserving of their careful thought and time. Ouch. Hello, wake up call.

The Washington Post did an excellent column on Japanese wrap artist Akiko Keene. Keene talks about different techniques and ranging complex folding patterns show the significance of the occasion, and how the way things are wrapped and the material used tells the gift recipient how the giver feels. From the ranging types of knots for ribbon, to the symbolism in trimmings and colors, it's pretty obvious immense thought and care goes into gifts. I could never do Tsutsumi justice explaining it here, so I would suggest just reading the column if you want to know more, or visit Keene's website for her Japanese Doll and Crafts School, where she covers the subject of Tsutsumi.

Unfortunately, in the end, the wrapping is still only the wrapping and must be removed, but reading about the care that the Japanese take in their gift giving process made me think about how pitiful most of us are at gift giving. How often do we give begrudgingly gifts out of obligation? How many times do we fret over the inconvenience of having to drive to get a gift card for someone? My wrapping certainly didn't incorporate the usage of symbolism, and they didn't have any occasional meanings or messages. The lack of symbolism may take away from a certain thoughtful aspect of the wrapping that the Japanese have, but I think that taking the care to make something beautiful for someone, even if it's just for the sake of beauty, can still be considered on a similar level of thoughtfulness. So of course I took tons of pictures to somewhat preserve my little works of art!

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Painting with a Typewriter: Tyree Callahan

2011-12-16T14:09:00.004-05:00

The other day, I came across this piece of brilliance on West Collects, which is the method the West Collection is using to acquire all artworks for the collection this year. Essentially, a competition where anyone from individual artists to galleries can enter their work that they want to be considered for the collection, and for the chance to win a $25,000 prize (voted as most popular by the public), aside from $100,000 going towards artists living in the Greater Philadelphia counties, and $175,000 to artists living anywhere in the world. $275,000 of the $300,000 acquisition prize goes to all the artworks that will be collected through West Collects 2012. Legit. Anyway, while I was looking through pieces, I found this Chromatic Typewriter by Washington-based painter, Tyree Callahan. Speechless. Let me explain. This is a 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter, modified by replacing the letters and keys with color pads and hued labels and turning key strokes into brush strokes to create a functional "painting" device. And if that was not enough, even if this vintage typewriter was not modified to function as a painting device, the piece itself is just beautiful to look at! Sometimes I have wished I could paint my thoughts instead of type them, and this just blew my mind. Unfortunately, I am still stuck in the 90's with a flip phone that can't even take pictures, BUT if you happen to have an iphone/ipad/ipod, don't let anything stop you from clicking here and downloading the West Collection app to browse around and vote! (You can vote on ~~the typewriter~~ whatever piece you want, once a day! Big stuff! So get your hinny in gear and start supporting some amazing artists! I will leave you now with the words of Tyree Callahan in his artist statement. I believe nature is our greatest inspiration because it was created by the greatest Artist. Every color palette, every design, every scene, comes from it, we just have to remember to open our eyes to see it.

"Nature is the best instructor an artist can have. I'm constantly amazed at the play of light over the landscape of the Northwest. I especially enjoy early light- that short interval of time just before the last of the fog burns of- and evening light, when the atmosphere itself is aglow with evening's hues. I live in an environment that can produce both vivid and somber landscapes, often both within an hour. Oils, my chosen medium, (when not constructing 3D art) are perfect for the task of capturing scenery in the mossy fourth corner."

'Tis the season to be TACKY

2011-12-10T14:30:00.005-05:00

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the attire, mainly, Christmas sweaters. They're just so fun! And cheap (hallelujah). So I was pretty ecstatic that our last club of the semester was themed "tacky sweater". In all of my excitement, I ended up making about 11 potential flyers for it. Yes, I got very carried away. Christmas does that to me. I will only post a couple though, to spare you from the Christmas madness that went down. With that, I found this genius idea on pintrest from Paper and Cake printable party ware. There's a whole lot of brilliant going down on that website. What caught my eye were the Holiday Printable Photo Booth Props:

Adorable, I know.

What better thing to add to our Christmas sweater club than a photo booth, complete with santa and reindeer props!? So we created our own version of this brilliant idea, and it was by far the highlight attraction! We set up our make shift photo booth in the garage, with a macbook propped on a trashcan and wrapping paper for a back drop. While I wish I could've done more for it, like had more wrapping paper for the back drop (apparently they don't put as much on one roll as we thought), used a better camera to take the pictures (we decided the mac was good since the kids could take their own pictures if we weren't there), and had better lighting overall, I am still super happy with the results! It really doesn't matter that the product was high-quality, just that it was enjoyed by the kids. Bring on the Christmas cheer!

Then Santa came and paid a visit for pictures!

Overall, it was a very merry, tacky Christmas club!

Oh, and here are the other flyers that didn't quite make the cut. The one on the right I never finished drawing in Illustrator (since I knew it wasn't going to be used this year) so it's really pixely, but you get the idea.

I "mustache" you a question...

2011-12-03T16:15:00.015-05:00

The shirts are in! Well, they came in about a month ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting pictures of them being worn. We took 6 stinkin' awesome girls to young life camp at Southwind in November, and they all sported their new Chiles young life shirts! And not only that, they were the envy of not only Tallahassee young life, but the rest of Florida. Booya. Obviously I can't hide my excitement, but I'm just beyond happy to have shirts they want to wear. I mentioned earlier about being worried no one would wear the tanks with cold weather coming, but Tallahassee has been blessed with warmer weather, and the tanks are still being worn! God is good.

Conveniently, right around the time of camp my digital professor let us know what our finals would be: to create a stop motion video and minute video of whatever we like, as long as we used final cut express to make it. What better opportunity to make a promotional video for camp?! Unfortunately the camera I had wanted to rent from the library for shooting at camp was checked out (thanks a lot, strozier), so the footage isn't quite the quality I wanted, not to mention blogger doesn't let me upload in high quality, but it works for our first one! I wanted this to be a video we could use to show kids when we were trying to get them to sign up for it next fall, but more importantly, I wanted to use it to show what they missed out on this fall. And it worked! I've never been more happy to hear "I'm so angry I didn't go!" or "I'm so sad that I missed this!" in my life. Looks like you just will have to not miss out next year, suckers :) So, to wrap it up, here is the final video (again, do not judge the video quality), and some pictures to summarize the awesome weekend!

"Your Love Lifted Me Higher" -Audio Adrenaline

oh yeah, I went to camp straight from the
Jacksonville TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT

Confession: I have a Pinterest

2011-11-25T14:26:00.011-05:00

For a very long time, I have been with-straining from creating something I knew would become a monster. A monster draped in lace and glitter that would suck the precious time right out of the day with it's recipes, crafts, DIY labels, and designs. As deviant as this monster may be, this one is way more dangerous than any flesh-tearing, sharp-toothed, hides-in-the-closet-at-night monster I've ever known, because this one I can't say "no" to. Or at least not yet. This isn't even a battle similar to the, "when I'm at the beach for spring break I never want to eat another cookie again, but then when I crash after a long week to watch Gilmore Girls, the plate of chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen seem like my best friend". Oh no, it's way worse than that. In fact, the battle over cookies is a piece of cake (hah) compared to this. Why? Because I can consider Pinterest studying. Seriously! Now you are thinking I am a hypocrite. Bear with me, I promise I still hold firm in my tirades that the art major is extremely under credited and requires far more work than people are willing to acknowledge, but what my mind tells me when I spend hours browsing through the thousands of collected (and wonderfully sorted) images on this monster site is that, "It's okay! You're doing image research!" or, "How many times do your professors tell you how important it is to be immersed in the art world? To be continually looking at what other artists are exploring, the processes they are using to beget new works? You're doing what you should be doing! You need to be aware! That's how you grow as an artist; you are influenced by others around you!". And yes, Everything my mind tells me is very true! Which is precisely what makes it so much harder to resist.

What my brain leaves out is the part about how none of that wonderful influence and research really matters if my current homework assignments do not get done, or are not finished well. This hasn't happened yet, I'm still working hard on my assignments in a timely (well, one mountain at a time) manner without any grades being affected, but it is my fear was that the other outcome seemed inevitable. Fortunately, I have self control: an OS X application which blocks access to websites of choice for a predetermined period of time. I may not have enough self control in my actions, but thank the Lord for people who have the brilliance and capability to make up for my deficit. So here's to graduating and guilty pleasures:

To the greatest meal of the day: YL BREAKFAST CLUB

2011-11-08T09:06:00.015-05:00

This coming Monday for young life we will be having BREAKFAST CLUB!! I'm pretty excited, because I love breakfast, and any excuse to wear pajama's out of their socially accepted time frame. What started out as being time efficient and making young life flyers for homework assignments, is now more defeating my original more studious intent and has quickly become more of another way for me to avoid other school work I would rather not deal with at the time..... but it's for the kids! At least that's what I've been telling myself whenever I remember my Italian test and figure drawing homework that are looming in not-as-far-as-I-remember-it-being future. Honestly, I've really just been enjoying designing. While, yes, sleep probably is significantly more important (here's to a shortened life span), and no, it really isn't wise of me to be spending so much time on posters and flyers that are no where near required, for the first time, I am pursuing art outside of class, and better yet, these are personal pursuits I'm exploring! Art advisors and professors are always talking about how employers, grad-schools, art programs and the like are interested in seeing "your personal explorations as an artist", not your homework. Which, they are right in being interested in that, but I've never had anything outside of my homework. My portfolio has always been solely based off school work. Say it's because I'm goal oriented and success driven, or I hold school as a high priority, my portfolio still didn't show my love and pursuit of art, no matter how true those statements are. For a while, I questioned whether art really was something I loved. It definitely didn't look like it was. Outside of class, I was always (and a lot of times still am) so burnt out from all my assigned homework and art projects that I really had no desire to do anything else. I had no personal interests or explorations. And that's pretty discouraging, to be burnt out of what will hopefully be my career one day, when it hasn't even begun. Luckily, I am starting to acquire a new appreciation and fondness towards my field. A metamorphosis is developing, a revival through young life flyers.

This semester I'm starting to realize that school doesn't matter quite as much as I thought it did. I am by no means trying to downplay the importance of an education, because an education and a desire for personal growth and learning in that I believe are some of the most important things in life. BUT in all honesty, when I'm graduated and looking for a job, are employers really going to care I received an A- in 2D design? Or that I challenged myself in the courses I took outside of the art field? Or even that I graduated with honors with a certain esteemed ranking in my class? Doubtful. They want to see my portfolio. Grade are important, I will always believe that. And I'm not sure I will ever be able to let go much of the nagging perfectionist perspective I have of them, but it does give me some peace (even if only a very meager amount) when I'm going 48 hours straight and still have yet to tackle my Italian homework, an art assignment, or whatever other seemingly pressing task awaits. I will only be where I am at in my life once. God has blessed me with so many opportunities; how many am I missing because exhausted eyes are tunneled in on the perfect transcript, or 4.0? In three years, my college career will be all but a sheet of paper. I can think of a few things that matter more than that.

Young Life Shirts: A battle worth fighting

2011-11-03T06:54:00.007-04:00

left= front, right=back

T-shirts are my weakness. Really. There isn't much I wouldn't do for a t-shirt or tank, and I don't think much can compete with a really great shirt. It can be such a great promotional tool, and I think a lot of times our subconscious reaction to design, good or bad, is overlooked. So when it came to designing the Chiles young life shirts, I was very nervous about it. I spent a lot of time looking at fonts, choosing swatches, and figuring out an overall design that would be appealing and be that shirt that everyone wanted to have. You know those shirts, the shirts that you see everywhere on campus even though half the people wearing them have no idea what they are actually for (or attended whatever the shirt promotes just to get one- guilty). Well I wanted the Chiles young life shirt to be THAT shirt. After spending (probably far too much) time on multiple designs, I finally settled on two to share with the team. Everything was great! They went over well, I found a printer, who actually was a young life leader himself, to print them for us at an unbeatable price, and we were well on our way to what I thought would be T-shirt victory. That was in September. After quite a few roadblocks of funding problems (we're broke), distributer problems (apparently there are currently no small navy Gildan or Hanes tanks in the country..), and finally proof problems (I gave very specific instructions and designs for a reason, how hard is it to just put what I said I wanted on a shirt the first time?!), I am pleased to say THE SHIRTS ARE FINALLY IN! The navy design is my personal favorite and is a tank. Fortunately, we live in Florida and can get away with wearing tanks for a little bit longer, but unfortunately we are in Tallahassee, so not much longer. It has been consistently getting chillier outside as the weeks go on, and I really wish we could have had them sooner to give the kids more time to wear and promote them, but it's out of my hands and I'm just grateful we were able to get them (shout out to the Sinn family for their generous donation)!

The other design, the mustache one, is just a T-shirt though, so hopefully it will get some more use. Other clubs in our area have asked if they can use these designs for their shirts, but I am happy to turn them down because this year is Chiles' year. I want these shirts to be theirs. I want them to own them and be the envy of Tallahassee young life. Maybe next year, Leon, Lincoln and McClay, but right now, it's Chiles. God is moving at Chiles High School and I am beyond excited to see what he brings this year and in years to come. We will be having a T-shirt pick up on Sunday where kids can come and grab theirs and get their cars painted for All City Club on Monday, so hopefully they will be excited for their shirts!

On a more successful note

2011-11-01T11:00:00.007-04:00

It is a very good thing younglife club only falls on Halloween once every seven years. We had seven kids show up. Yes, seven. To really paint you the picture, that's about an 83% decrease from previous weeks. But numbers are not what matters! Kids matter! And last night was about those seven kids. Instead of holding the club we had planned (since, let's be honest, would have been a disaster with 7 kids), we were flexible, planned ahead (we were kind of expecting that sort of a turn out) and had a scavenger hunt! It was fun! So much fun that it's something I kind of hope continues each year. Everyone was dressed up, huge plus, and made the most out of what we had. Our team is pretty great, if you couldn't already tell from the pictures below. We had a broad spectrum of costumes, from Spaniard to Scooby doo. Thank the Lord for the prop closet. Aside from those Halloween festivities, my figure drawing teacher decided to spice things up a bit and give our model "spooky lighting" for our final head study. I'm not sure if mine really was successful in the spooky department, so maybe the title of this post is a bit misleading, but our teacher busted out some woodless colored pencils and black paper (my current favorite) to draw with! Happy November!

Two assignments, one project: Young Life Costume Club

2011-10-31T15:32:00.004-04:00

In my digital class our most recent assignment is to design a flyer, and being the time efficient enthusiast that I am, I decided to make flyers for our younglife club tonight! I love halloween and I love club, but both on the same day can get kind of tricky. Between kids having other plans for the holiday aside from club and the kids whose parents will not let them out on this evil day to ensure their child does not partake in any activity that may even hint at candy corn or costumes, we may be in for a rough club, so it's a good thing it only happens every seven years. Unfortunately, one of those years is this year. Today, specifically, which calls for more creative tactics to try and get kids to come to club before, after, or instead of other planned activities they may have for the holiday. Tactic 1: dogs dressed up as dinosaurs. At least I was amused by them. Happy Halloween and Happy Reformation Day!

Figure Drawing: Structure

2011-10-21T11:06:00.006-04:00

In class we've been focusing on structure the past few weeks: where the hips and rib cage rest, and how that affects the placement and weight of the rest of the body. I still feel very inexperienced and new, like I'm still learning how the body is structured... which I am. Every day there are things I see in the figure that I never saw before, planes that are formed, and shapes that are made. It's exciting! But at the same time frustrating. I just wish I could soak up all the information in a day, and then transfer it to my hands. In the mean time though, I'll settle for the knowledge that my inexperienced sketches are giving me.

Figure Drawing: Gestures

2011-10-17T08:43:00.015-04:00

My favorite class by far this semester has been my figure drawing class. I love my teacher, and the material itself. I love seeing how light plays off and describes the surfaces of the figure, and how physical attributes vary from person to person. And even more than that, I love seeing everyones drawings of the same person. Looking at a persons drawing is like looking at a persons thoughts, and I can't get enough of it. I love seeing each persons different marks used to describe the object. Each class we start off with a minimum of 20 twenty minutes of gestural studies. I'm not very good at them, but they are one of my favorite things to look at when I see other peoples drawings. They start out at 2-5 second intervals, and then move to 10-15 seconds, and finally to one minute. Often I get caught up in the amount of information in the figure and trying to show that, instead of just focusing on capturing the pose, weight distribution, structure, and movement. Here are a few I saved from class.

Photoshop Collage: Texture

2011-10-12T02:01:00.008-04:00

For my digital foundations class our assignment due tomorrow is to create two 8.5"x11" collages in Photoshop using materials we choose to scan. It's just an introductory assignment to Photoshop so the required tools to use in the assignment are very minimal (selection tools, transformations, layers, transparency, color adjustments blah bah blah). Anyway, this is one of the compositions I've created so far. I don't feel like it's done, but I haven't decided what it's missing yet or what needs to be changed, so it's still a work in progress.

I have been really fascinated by doodles and elephants lately. I love how doodles are so unique and distinctive to the artist and his or her personality. And elephants are just beautiful.

Elephantidae is the family to which these mammals belong to. Trust me, I didn't just misspell elephant.

The second composition also is unfinished. I wasn't able to finish in time before I left for school, so this will have to suffice for the assignment, but I will finish it later. Aside from elephants and doodles (my more recent fascinations), watercolor and dancers have always really intrigued me. If I could be anything in the world, it would be a dancer, but, I was not gifted with such coordination. So now I just make art about it.

I made a third one that I will post eventually when I'm satisfied with it. Which I guess could potentially be never.

*All seemingly drawn elements were drawn by hand and scanned, including the elephantidae font. Paper elements (excluding said drawings), were scanned, but also rendered on computer, not hand cut. The water color was hand painted splotches, then scanned and made into photoshop brushes.

"A feeble attempt at humor"

2011-10-11T21:26:00.008-04:00

This blog is actually not a recent creation. I created it a year ago, as a means to document my studies as an art student, and other crafty moments of my life that I cannot turn into a professor for a grade. Don't get me wrong, this blog was not sitting and collecting dust for a year out in cyberspace, I did use it as a means to follow other crafty people, but I never got around to executing it's originally intended purpose. While part of this delayed commencement stemmed from my lack of time, and also lack of a camera, the real road block came from the lack of a title. I am convinced there is some chasm in my brain where all the witty, concise, and eloquent blog titles are supposed to be, so I will have to settle for a less-than-majestic title than originally intended. That and I needed something to distract me from an art project due tomorrow. I give you witzelsucht, literally meaning "a feeble attempt at humor". Why try and mask what this blog may contain with a clever (but deceiving) title? It's not desperate, it's openly forewarning.