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Art Works

This haven't been going great for me recently, what with LLMs destroying the job market, the creeping waters of fascism getting ever higher, and for more personal reasons that I'm not ready to talk about yet. I've been putting off writing this post, but at this point I need to get it out of my head.

I've been taking classes at a local art club1Shout out to the Fleisher Art Memorial here in Philly! for the past couple of years, just one per semester that I can get tuition assistance for. I generally sign up for sessions during the workday, so most of my fellow students are retired old ladies, which is fun. I've found that whenever I'm taking these classes, my mental health improves, no matter what else is going on in my life. It's not a cure-all, but making art and working with my hands is better than nothing. I'm not always the best at remembering that when things are bad, but I want to get better.

One of my recent classes was a ink painting course2Since then I actually also took a week-long frame-making workshop where I brought in art (including one of my own pieces!) and cut wood, glass, and mats to assemble into a custom framed piece. That was also an amazing experience, and they turned out incredible and professional looking., and we got deep into working with gradations of light and shadow in a way that has transformed how I view objects out in the world. This was my final project in that class, and while I can notice and point out flaws or areas where I could have kept working at it, I'm genuinely proud of how it turned out.

A femme bird figurine wearing a sun hat, glasses, and a hand bag standing beside a patterned glass containing two tulips null

On the back of this and other work that you can find over at my new art page, I applied and got accepted to an artist residency program this fall where I'll be spending a week in the Poconos, probably trying to capture the leaves changing colors. I hope that, wherever you are, you're able to disconnect and spend some time making something with your hands. Who knows, you might like it.

Footnotes

  1. Shout out to the Fleisher Art Memorial here in Philly! ↩

  2. Since then I actually also took a week-long frame-making workshop where I brought in art (including one of my own pieces!) and cut wood, glass, and mats to assemble into a custom framed piece. That was also an amazing experience, and they turned out incredible and professional looking. ↩

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