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April 28, 2008

Posted by jodi at 10:19 AM | Comments (10) | categories:  school

April 26, 2008

while waiting to hear if i'd passed my oral examination

(I passed)

Posted by jodi at 10:15 PM | Comments (20) | categories:  school

April 21, 2008

in the business they call this a reversal

I said I'd be back to talk about yarn and stuff, but y'all should know by now that I can be a tad unreliable when the pressure's on. My thesis written report is due on Monday. It's coming along just fine, and I'm not too worried. But I have a tensor bandage on my right wrist right now (the old RSI, a movable feast that flits from one arm to the other) and want to save all of my typing for getting this document finished. My oral defense is on Friday afternoon. Even though I decided that I wasn't going to be able to do any of my own printing until I get home (because of the move to the new building our presses are being taken away early and our students are, quite understandably, freaking out) there is still quite a bit of obligation printing to finish up as well. I teach tomorrow, then again on Thursday, and that's it. Final critique for my students next week. I'll be back soon, I hope on the weekend but possibly not until next Thursday, to show you the yarns I've spun recently (some of which will be knit up by then, another thing I need to finish up before I leave here in order to fulfill a swap), a more than halfway finished Straight Outta Brompton sweater, studio pictures and some better slides of my exhibition. Until then, wish me productivity and pehaps a small time warp.

Posted by jodi at 06:55 PM | Comments (8) | categories:  dumbass : school

April 19, 2008

file under: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

There has been a lot of hot air floating around the blogosphere the last few days in response to Yale student Aliza Shvarts's senior art project, in which she performed a ritual, over the course of the last nine months, of artificially inseminating herself and then taking abortifacient herbs to induce miscarriage, documenting the process on film and collecting the resulting blood to be used in an installation. I first heard about the project over at Bitch, Ph.D., and have followed comment threads on the story in a few other places as well as on the Yale Daily News site where the story first appeared. Predictably, the discourse revolving around this piece mostly involves moral outrage (from pro-choicers and anti-abortionists alike) over the artist's seeming trivialization of abortion and miscarriage, a fixation on how the sperm was collected and whether or not it's actually possible for her to have been pregnant at all, declarations that she has "no right" to do such things to her body "for art" (hello, assume ownership over women's bodies much?) and an ignorant, broad dismissal of the validity of performance art in general. There's some intelligent debate going on, but you have to wade through a lot of stupidity and bullshit to get to it. In the meantime, Yale has announced that the whole project was a "hoax" and that Shvarts was never actually pregnant; Shvarts has responded to this by saying that she never in fact stated to Yale officials that she wasn't pregnant, and indeed that the uncertainty of whether she was pregnant or not is a vital part of the work. And that Yale is turning its back on her and selling her out in an attempt to bend to public pressure, which certainly appears to be the case. Here is a links page to some of the many, many blog posts on this subject, many of them rife with bullshit. And finally, Shvarts herself addresses the work in a statement to the Yale Daily News.

Now, I'm not opening myself up here to a debate about abortion. I'm sure you can all guess what my views are on reproductive rights, and if any diatribes appear in my comments I'm going to pull a how-dare-you-speak-to-me-like-that-in-my-living-room and hit delete. There are a lot of things about the responses to Shvarts's project that don't sit right with me, but the questions of bodily autonomy and when a cluster of cells becomes something not just a cluster of cells and what implications this might have on the abortion debate in the US are better left to others more thoughtful and eloquent than me. What disheartens me in this whole discussion is the attitude expressed by many commenters about artists and what their role is. Browse through some of those comment threads and you'll see the word art appear often inside quotation marks, which is just another way of putting the phrase "so-called" in front of something. Maybe I'm sensitive about this in part because I'm a few weeks away from being handed a piece of paper that says I am a Master of fine arts and after that I'll be unemployed and I'm scared for the future. But you don't call someone with a Ph.D. a "so-called doctor". My partner has a Masters degree in library and information science; he is not a "so-called librarian" and one wouldn't call him that because they didn't like something that he did. So what gives every Tom, Dick and Harry the right to decide that they get to define what art is, who is an artist and whether we're any good at it? A definition of art is only subjective if you think that art is a pretty picture for your wall (and if you think that then you are stupid). Art school is not all pot smoking and orgies and drizzling paint on the floor and trying to think up new ways to shock people, you know. WE WORK OUR ASSES OFF. Read Shvarts's statement and you'll see that she's got a solid conceptual basis for what she's doing, and she has thought deeply about the implications of her project. This is what she has learned to do during her studies in a rigourous, highly-respected art programme. She has created a heated public discourse, whatever one thinks of the nature of her work, and as an artist, THAT IS HER JOB. This young lady will have her pick of the best grad schools in the country and she deserves it.

< /rant >
Okay, tomorrow I'll write about the frivolous things I was initially going to talk about today, like knitting and popularity contests and foreskins. Just kidding about the foreskins, don't hit unsubscribe!

Posted by jodi at 09:25 AM | Comments (15) | categories:  art stuff

April 17, 2008

for no reason other than to push that last entry down a bit on the page.

Dublin, Georgia. April 14, 2008.

Posted by jodi at 02:58 PM | Comments (6) | categories:  jet set

April 15, 2008

okay.

Peter says that the only thing that makes the foreskin dream funny is who the person is, so I'll tell you. It was Midge Ure.

The thirty-five to forty-five crowd are going, ugh! while the younguns are all like, who? And that one lone middle aged knitter who was, no still is, a huge Ultravox fan is furious. I'd apologize to her but she's already hit "unsubscribe". Ah well.

Posted by jodi at 11:50 AM | Comments (12) | categories:  dumbass

April 14, 2008

randomly assembled fragments

file under: firsts

Peter and I drove to Savannah for a much-needed weekend away from Athens (and all things grad school), and I finally popped my coastal cherry. My first ever trip to the ocean (any ocean) was all I imagined it would be and less: very large, very blue, very cold, very wet and the beach was completely free of dead fish, something I was very, very apprehensive about on the way there. Most of y'all probably know about my ichthyophobia (and for those who don't, please don't even ask, just look up "phobia" and laugh to yourselves if you must but before offering any advice about facing my fear, go re-read the part about unreasonable fear and then just don't say it). Anyway. It's only the third time in my adult life that I've even gone to any beach at all, having had a bit of a bad experience at Ipperwash when I was twenty that put me off the lakes pretty much for good (see above re: fish phobia) so it's nice that the time of year or the tides or the ocean deity or whatever made it all nice and clean and not-scary for me. I licked my foot back at the hotel later and to my childish delight, it tasted like salt.

The complete flickr set of our trip is right here (beware: it's mostly brick walls).

file under: home stretch

There are only two more weeks of school left, which means two weeks until my thesis (or rather, "written report", which while being more accurate also sounds far less scary) is due. Two. Weeks. Peter is leaving here on Wednesday and this will be the last time, ever, that he will leave me alone here. In two weeks he'll come back, this time with the kids and with a trailer hitch attached to the car, and we'll leave together. And the skies will open up and the birds will sing and the mice will prance around in adorable little waistcoats and the butterflies will tie ribbons in my hair (wait, that might be the birds) and all the kitties in the world will flop over in unison for belly rubs. Cue the children's choir.

file under: dreams you don't want to come true

Last night I dreamed that I was at the studio having sexual relations with a certain aging mostly forgotten former pop star. Doesn't matter who, it's not someone you younguns have ever heard of and certainly not someone I've really ever thought of at all, either as a sex object or as someone with a band worth listening to. As dream sex goes it wasn't in any way pleasurable but there's one distinct image that won't leave my mind: his penis was long and thin and even though it was fairly erect the foreskin still went pretty much all the way to the tip, and it was sparsely covered in lustrous brown hairs about three centimetres long that swooped down towards his body and curved out slightly at the end, sort of like little kids' drawings of pine trees, if you can picture that. I know, ugh, right? But I can't stop seeing it. Incidentally, the rest of his hair was silver and very long and thick, even though the last time I saw a picture of the guy (which was from more than twenty years ago) he was balding. And not gray, and he certainly didn't seem the sort to have any kind of remarkable foreskin.

file under: vanity

Speaking of gray hair, though: last Friday before the opening I went out and got my first ever fifty dollar haircut (Chala at Republic, whom I highly recommend if you're naturally curly and living in Athens, GA). I wanted to train my hair to part on the side instead of in the middle so she gave me a nice part on the right. Two days later I moved it to the left because that's where my little gray patch is, and I want it to show because I have it in my head that it's a streak even though it's really just about thirty or so gray hairs clustered. I'd appreciate it if y'all would just humour me and pretend it's turning into a streak, because I'm convinced that this streak, when it finally appears for real, is going to miraculously transform me into one of those sultry middle-aged women who get respect and also lots of boyfriends.

ps,

Posted by jodi at 08:56 PM | Comments (8) | categories:  self-absorbtion

April 11, 2008

great lakes basin baby

Thanks, everybody, for all of the kind words about my work. It's been a week of decompressing as best I can in amongst teaching class, cobbling together a first draft of a thesis, getting the studio ready to move into the new School of Art building and a day of events with a candidate for the position we're hiring in printmaking. Peter and I are off to Savannah GA this weekend and I don't plan to think about work or school for a single second. I'm going to be too busy walking around gaping like a tourist at mossy trees, fusty old graves and ALL the WATER because in all of my thirty-six years I have never, ever seen an ocean. Seriously.

Last night I wrote to Cari that it certainly won't be like any ocean experience I could have back home in Canada. And then I dreamed about Newfoundland (to which I've obviously never been, it being quite difficult to avoid ocean there); at least I think it was Newfoundland, the waves were rough and cold and I was standing on rock. Fortunately for me there were no hordes of capelin beaching themselves at my feet (something I heard about on CBC radio once and became convinced was unavoidable if one found oneself on the shore in Newfoundland). That would have been a nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares: I had a real doozy the other afternoon, napping after having fallen asleep working on my thesis. It wasn't scary, just horrible, involving a terrible person torturing a calf that I had befriended, and although it was actually kind of dumb in retrospect (leading up to the final horrible scene there was even a swell of melodramatic music that somehow reminded me of Michael Landon's wobbly chin whenever he cried) it had me sobbing out loud as I left the bed, throwing myself into Peter's lap and weeping, "that fucking asshole! that fucking asshole!" (about the guy who did evil deeds to my calf). Clearly I need a vacation, and BAD.

I finally posted photos of the graduation dress, which actually has printing on it although you couldn't really tell in the modelled photos. You can see it here, on the thesis blog. Because I know that most of y'all care more about the knitty stuff than the other, here's the wrap:

It's woodblock-printed Tokuatsu (a machine made paper of pure kozo fibre), cut into strips, spun on a wheel (thanks, Darilee, for the loaner) and knit on 6.5mm needles, six rows of garter and one row of drop stitch with a triple wraparound. I was afraid to wash it before the show and have it not dry in time, but I expect it'll soften up a lot when I do get around to wetting it. As it is, it's actually remarkably warm (although some of that warmth doubtless came from the thousand or so people who crammed into our opening).

Okay, leaving for Savannah in minutes and I'm not packed. Story of my life.

Posted by jodi at 08:09 AM | Comments (3) | categories:  self-absorbtion : sticks and string

April 06, 2008

the exhibition

Posted by jodi at 11:25 AM | Comments (11) | categories:  art stuff

April 04, 2008

georgia museum of art. tonight, y'all.

Having the show installed has certainly not meant much of a break in activity for me. The very next day after that was done, it was off to Richmond, VA for the Southern Graphics Council conference. It was fun but I'm a little too tired and too behind in my work to talk about it now; you can see a set of photos here, but it's mostly stuff from around Richmond rather than actual conference stuff. I did a bit of stealthy sweater idea research at the registration desk:

I loved this sweater-vest-tunic; it looks like it would be easy to make something similar by just adapting the length of Grumperina's Picovoli pattern, with perhaps slightly less curvy waist shaping and an a-line to the hem. I'm going to make myself finish one thing in the pile first (Alice/Bridie, Straight Outta Brompton, or the half-finished skirt I haven't even shown y'all yet) and then start on this for summer.

One of the major highlights was on Thursday night, when Mildred walked up to me at one of the gallery openings and said, "hi, Jodi, I read your blog". I asked, which blog? and she said, both! I was beyond excited to find another crossover between my knitting and my printmaking worlds. Later in the week we remembered to take the obligatory photographic proof for the blog:

What I've been working on since I got back:

Spinning prints, knitting a little wrap to wear to tonight's opening reception. TONIGHT'S! Opening reception! Can you believe it? After tonight, it's really going to feel like my time here is over (except for the one more month of work part, but the light at the end of the tunnel is so brignt now that it'll fly by like nothing). So, for anyone remotely close to Athens GA, y'all should come on over to the Georgia Museum of Art tonight at seven. We've got the best caterer in town, and the best MFA show in years. I just have to hem my dress, put a button on my little wrap and get a haircut and I am ready to graduate.

Also at SGC (my mind's all over the place today, can you tell?) I had a chance to hang out a bit with one of our new incoming grads for next fall, Janie Askew. This is the worst part about graduating and going home: seeing these talented and fun new grads coming in that I won't be here to work with (and seeing the School of Art move into a brand new facility whose construction has hung over our heads since we got here and we're leaving just at the right time not to get to enjoy it). I'm trading a print to Janey for this awesome drawing:

Posted by jodi at 09:02 AM | Comments (10) | categories:  art stuff : school : sticks and string