Breaking News!

Written by Amanda

Hey folks!  It has come to my attention that I've been somewhat neglectful of this site recently.  Some might shrug and think this is nothing unusual, but unlike all those other times when I'm not posting for months at a time, it's usually because I'm swamped in school or haven't been up to doing much art.  However, I really don't have an excuse this time.  It's summer, I've been doing art basically everyday, and I have so much exciting news!

Last semester I somehow managed to make a pretty big life decision.  And the amazing thing is, I barely even realized I was making said decision.  (If you know me at all, you'll know that decision-making, even in small amounts, is something I horribly dislike.)

I decided to switch my major.  To be honest, I'm not even sure how I made this decision.  One day I was just all "man, Studio Art is kind of boring, I don't want to keep taking those classes" and then I was like "hey, maybe I could talk to an Academic Advisor and some of the faculty from Illustration and see if I could do better over there".  Even at that point I don't think I had decided to switch, but all of a sudden I found myself scrambling to put together a portfolio and sketchbook.  As soon as that decision was made, I realized I wanted nothing else.  The thought of having to continue in Studio Art was paralyzing and suffocating.  Have no fear; I was accepted.

And just like that, I knew I was in the right place.  I'm sure things are going to be just as difficult in Illustration, perhaps even more so, but I have more passion for this kind of art.  I suddenly find myself wanting to draw at every moment.  I work on stories and characters with no more fear that I'm wasting my time.  I'm trying all sorts of new things and I'm incredibly excited to see what my future will now hold.

I don't regret my time in Studio Art.  I went on a Study Abroad that changed my life and had the most memorable experiences so far of my young adult life.  I made friends and I learned new ways of thinking about and looking at the world.  I gained a respect and appreciation for contemporary art as well as a distrust of Post-Modernism.  I like to think of the past year as a brief foray into an unknown part of the world.  I went, I discovered, I brought back artifacts, and now I'm ready for something new, something bigger.

That being said, I still don't exactly know what I'm doing with my life.  I'd like to tell stories, but there are a million ways to do that, all of which sound extremely fun and exciting to me.  I could be a costume designer for films and plays, I could be an illustrator for children's books, I could write webcomics, I could make doll houses.  The possibilities keep going.  Maybe I'll do them all.

At the moment I actually am working as a costume designer for a friend of mine.  I have this friend from high school who has a passion for film and storytelling and he recently recruited me to help with his current project.  It's a short film that's intended to develop into a sort of online miniseries.  The setting is post-apocalypse and from what I've read of the script, the story line is pretty awesome.  It follows the story of Lydia, a scavenger, and the young girl Annie whom she's caring for.  But strange events start to happen and Annie seems to be at the center of it all.

Anyways, it's pretty awesome and I've been pretty excited for the chance to be a part of this and challenge myself to step a little out of my comfort zone.  While I'm a fan of the grungy post-apocalyptic aesthetic, as well as the ethereal Sci-Fi look, I don't have much experience in designing, let alone making them.  However, as I began the design process I was pretty pleased with what my pencil was churning out.  Here's the first of my finished designs for a character named Miren:

I'm pretty stoked about the look of things and I really need to get around to finishing the other designs soon.  However, I do have the basic plan for the rest of the costumes and I even finished this piece of Lydia's outfit just this past week:

This was an absolute blast to make.  The material comes from two different shirts I got from an army surplus store along with the beautifully tarnished buckle.  All I did was take a seam ripper to the shirts and then pieced them back together in this cape shape.  Afterwards I had left a few holes which I went back to and closed up with various hand-stitching.  Personally, I think this is one of the coolest things I've created thus far.  I'm very excited to see it on the actor.

I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm thrilled to be working on this.  It's like a little glimpse of what my future could possibly be like.  Except I'd actually get paid to sit at home and draft patterns and cut fabric.

Which brings me to my final point.  Most of you have probably seen me post this several times already, but the deed must still be done.  My friend, the director/producer of this awesome project, has set up an IndieGoGo campaign.  Everyone who's working on this film is a volunteer and we're paying for everything we need (props, filming equipment, fabric, etc.) out of pocket.  Probably everyone involved with this project is doing it because it's what they love to do.  The money raised from the campaign isn't going into any cast or crew pockets, it's going to quality filming and editing equipment, food for the actors, and any other expenses involved in making a film.

The campaign only lasts for two more days and it would mean a lot to all of us for people to donate, even if it's only a dollar.  Or, if you can't (trust me, I understand being short on cash) then even just sharing the link on Facebook would really help.  So far we aren't very close to our goal, but that doesn't matter, because honestly we'll be happy with whatever we can get and we're all going to put in just as much energy and effort as we already have been.

Here's the link: Verona

Also, if this is something that would interest you, prints of my finished costume designs are being offered as one of the perks.  Just sayin'.

I may contribute a verse?

Written by Megan

When Amanda began this project, we sat in our old sunny room as she worked on ideas for the name of her blog.  Coming up with names for things is sort of like being a popcorn popper--you plug into your idea outlet (and hope, as always, that it doesn't short or blow you up) and begin warming up the kernels that are rattling around inside your brain.  They start popping.  Unfortunately, in this situation you're not just the popcorn popper, you're also the person who has to eat the popcorn, and your corn kernels didn't come from a factory with excellent quality control policies, you just found them on the side of the road mostly, so nearly all of them, as they pop into form, are really only fit for the garbage can--they're burnt or half-popped or they're dead bugs.

Anyway, she was working on popping a batch of idea-corn, looking for the one that was edible, and she came up with Create the Day, a more specified, less overtly violent version of seizing it.  The title fit the project, and yet the project has plenty of room to grow within the title.  For example, it suddenly finds itself fitting me as a co-creator (the aptness!).

In a not-so-strange coincidence (as far as coincidences go), only a few days before Amanda granted me the boon of joining her here, I was watching John Keating whisper "carpe....carpe....carpe...diem" in the ears of his students.  I had decided to re-watch Dead Poets Society in preparation for a lesson I was teaching on poetry.

Aside from reminding me of the bitter shortness of this sweet life, the movie reminded me of something about poetry, about words hunted and herded and strung so carefully in order to say something.  Not to be cute, as Keating says, but to express real human passion--love, beauty, romance, the things we stay alive for:  These things are not naturally occurring scientific phenomena.  As a friend of mine recently put it, "there is no atom of empathy, no base-pair sequence of beauty."  These things that we stay alive for won't just rain down on us, we can't buy them in the vitamin aisle, and we won't blunder into them in blind and howling wanderings.  These are the things, not that we take from life, but the things we create and contribute.  And that is why I love this project.  It sums up the whole point of being alive.

I will try to create and contribute everyday,  and relate the best and worst of those experiences on this blog every other week perhaps.  In parting, here is a black-out poem I created during that lesson on poetry, rewritten rather than photographed because I made a mess of the original and I like the look of it in quasi-stanzas.

Morocco

As this village retreats
amid bread ovens and the sounds of braying,

pay attention--

When the sun sets
the mountaintops drift to prayer.


P.S. For more on black-out poetry (or, you know, just something on black-out poetry) visit artist-author Austin Kleon's page here: black-out poetry.

A Tale from the Memoirs of the Person I Was Almost

The day after my 10th birthday I woke up with a funny taste in my mouth.  Like steamed broccoli, but without the melted cheese sauce.

At breakfast I spooned sugared cereal slowly and thoughtfully into my mouth, wondering if more sugar would dissolve the funny taste.  It didn't.

It wasn't until I had gotten dressed and pretended to brush my teeth and sat down to watch reruns of mine and my siblings' favorite cartoons that I finally realized it.

Nothing had changed.

Now that I was 10 I still slept in the same bed, wore the same t-shirts, ate the same sugared cereals, and watched all the same cartoons as I had done when I was 9.  The only thing that was different from the past year was that I now finally had all my adult teeth.  But it turns out those were always hiding up under my other teeth, so I don't think it really counts.

No.  Something BIG needed to happen.  And fast.  Without really knowing how, I suddenly knew that if I didn't change something, I would never make it to 11.

My thoughts churned like ice cream in my gut until my parents asked me to get the mail after lunch.  And then there it was.  The answer to my dilemma.  A slick, yellow catalog of home listings.  I knew that was it.  I had to have my own place.

*  *  *

So, it's time for some explanations and a story about this other story.

First, the story.  For some odd reason I've developed a most frustrating sleeping problem this summer.  No matter the time or whether or not I've brushed my teeth, the moment I hit my bed, I can't sleep.  It's not that I'm wide awake, though, either.  I just lay there for who knows how long because all of a sudden my brain decides that it needs to figure out how much money I'll make this summer if I work an average of 20 hours/week for 13.5 weeks or how exactly I'm going to turn my grandmother's old cedar chest into a love-seat.  Originally, I was chalking it up to anxiety about my new job, but now that I've adjusted to the idea of putting my life on pause for 5 hours a day nearly every day, I don't know what the matter is.  Anywho, that was way too much info.  Basically, the other night, I was lying in bed, like I do, and I start thinking about how I was obsessed with the idea of living on my own when I was a wee, small bairn.  And then this happened.

Now for some explaining.  First of all, I want to explain a little about what I've just explained.  I don't want people to get the idea that I'm one of those types who keeps a notebook by their bed so they can write down all their genius ideas when they wake up with them in the middle of the night.  No, most of the stuff that occupies my mind at night are things I've already planned and written down, generally.  Things that I just need to get done, but can't because I'm lying in a bed, trying to sleep.  There was also no overpowering urge that forced me out of bed or violent muse that seized my mind until I penned these words.  I wrote this down because I liked it and because I wasn't asleep.

What I think I'm getting at is this.  I'm tired of the "artist" stereotype.  That creative people are simply born that way.  That ideas are more akin to spirits possessing the body than actual people using their actual brains.  I could keep going, but I'll stop there.  It's not that people place this stereotype on me, but I'm just tired of seeing it in the art world in general.  It's often made me feel like I can't measure up because I have no childhood trauma to inspire masterpieces or things like that.  And what's more, people who have a propensity for creativity are completely turned off, because they don't fit the culture.

Um, okay.  Why do I always let these "explanations" get so out there?  Moving on.

Another explanation.  Remember that resolution of mine?  The one about three posts a month?  Remember how my last post was in March?  And now it's half-way through May?  Yeah.  Turns out, I don't think resolutions are exactly the best idea for me.  When I make them, I'm so full of energy and feel like I can accomplish whatever task I set my mind to.  And I could, if only that energy would last.  Unfortunately, for me, that kind of energy doesn't last.  Sometimes I'll have it in spades for a decent amount of time, but other time I come crashing down and end up sleeping in my closet for a week or so while I hid from the world.  Well, when I finally emerge, I suddenly see all those things that I told myself I would do, and I see how I haven't done them, and then I get discouraged.  So, before I delve too deep into the incredibly pointless and boring ups and downs that construct my life at the mo', I come to you all with a solution to my resolution.  (A reresolution?)

I cannot take credit for this solution, as it wasn't even my idea.  My sister Megan and I love doing all sorts of projects together, but unfortunately we live too far apart to get together that often.  She suggested some type of combined summer project for the two of us, but I was perhaps a little too pessimistic and pointed out the statistical likelihood of its demise.  Eventually, she asked for a boon.  To join me on this blogging adventure.

I think it's a superb idea.  We both find a lot of fun a excitement from creating the day and double the authors means double the posts (and hopefully the frequency).

From now on, underneath each title, we'll put by Megan or by Amanda or some other mark of distinguishment so readers will know who they're reading from.  I think things are going to start turning up here, and I hope it will be enjoyed by all.

Ta!   

Guy Laramee: Book Artist, Anthropologist, and this Month's Artist

I know what my watchers are thinking, tonight,
As happ'ly through Facebook they scroll.
The five or six of them smiling in smug delight,
They stare at my page and ponder.
Whenever that green dot shows their online
You can almost hear ev'ryone pine:
I wonder if Amanda is posting this month.
What resolutions could Amanda be breaking this month?
Her activity on her blog, it's never been so light (actually I'm pretty sure it has been)
I wonder if Amanda is posting tonight.
How goes this one last day
As she sees the month of May
Being one month closer than it was?
Well, I'll tell you what Amanda is doing tonight!
She's posting! Oh, she's posting!

10 points to anyone who gets the reference.

Anyways, yes, I'm posting!  And I might even write two more posts before tomorrow is over, but don't hold your breath.

Fortunately I had to make another presentation about an artist in one of my classes this past week.  (Yay for homework making posting to my blog a little bit easier!)  I'm not sure if I've mentioned the classes I'm taking this semester, but one of them is a Book Arts class, which is pretty awesome.  Last week we had to give a presentation to the rest of the class about a Book Artist of our choosing.  There are a lot of really cool ones out there, but the one I chose was Guy Laramee, Canadian book carver.

I chose him because I was somewhat familiar with his work (as in I'd seen it around the internet before) and also partly because my teacher made a comment about him in class that was something to the effect of him not having great concepts because the subjects of his books don't relate to what he carves into them and because he's an anthropologist.  It frustrated me, so I decided to do my own research and defend what I thought was some pretty cool work (and show that artists can be more than just artists).  And I don't think I failed.  (Guys, sometimes I don't think I have opinions until I start writing posts for this blog . . . and then I think I might be too opinionated.)

So, Guy Laramee.

In the realm of art he's both a landscape painter and a book carver.  And one can see that his book carvings are pretty similar to landscape paintings.

Before I get into his book arts, here's just a bit of background.  Other than "art" he's also done a lot with theatre arts - play writing, directing, composing, musical instrument construction, all sorts of stuff.  He's also an anthropologist!  Yes!  An anthropologist.  He got a double Masters in both art and anthropology and one of his main focuses is something he calls "ethnographic imagination".

Contrary to my teacher's opinion, I think the concept behind his work is very compelling.  It's hard to sum up, but essentially these sculptures are comments on the world's current obsession with information.  We accumulate knowledge through researching heavy tomes and reading lists of facts, but what does it all amount to?  What place does spending time in the natural world have in our information-centric culture?

Laramee proposes that erosion, getting back to basics, is more beneficial and gives us more than knowledge and information.

 

"Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains."

To find out more (and have better, more accurate descriptions of what he does) visit his website: http://www.guylaramee.com/ 

Artist of the Day: Norman Rockwell

I very nearly wasn't going to get three posts up this month.  In fact, if it weren't for a random idea that occurred to me while laying in bed one night last week, I probably wouldn't have even got  more than one. (For those of you who follow me from Facebook, I never posted a link to that post, but you can find it down below).

Anyways, I was getting kind of discouraged that I wouldn't have time to write an artist post this month, what with midterms and projects and my new/old early morning custodial job.  I was resigned to being a blogging failure, but then I remembered something.  I already had an artist I could feature that I'd already done all the research for.

Let me explain - I'm taking a class this semester called Exploring Teaching Art Education.  I randomly decided last semester to attempt to get my teaching license (in addition to my Anthropology minor and a BFA in Studio Art . . . pretty much, I'm never gonna make it out of college).  Anyways, we had to do this project last week where we researched an artist and created a presentation and activity that we'll have to teach to the class.  And so I decided that it really wouldn't be that much more work to turn my presentation into a blog post.

So, without any further huggermugger, hulabaloo, or frackus, I present to you (one of my all-time favorite artists/illustrators), Norman Rockwell.

Triple Self Portrait

I cannot pinpoint the exact time I first encountered his work (even today his illustrations still decorate myriads of Christmas cards, notebooks, and all sorts of ephemera), but I can tell you the first time I came face to face with one of his originals.

I was at the BYU Museum of Art (a year or so ago, I don't exactly remember why . . .) and I was wandering the galleries, somewhat bored to be honest.  Then I stumbled upon a Norman Rockwell exhibition (which, by the way, I just discovered is still going on).  I looked at the paintings and realized they were very familiar to me, though I wasn't really sure why.  When I read the name "Norman Rockwell," something clicked in my head.  I knew this artist, I recognized this artist, I liked this artist.  It sounds really ridiculous now that I'm trying to explain it, but I connected with Rockwell's art and I've always remembered that feeling.  Since then (even more so in the last week) I've learned more about Rockwell and his art and he's become one of my artist heroes.

Born in New York in 1894, Rockwell began his artistic training at 14 in a fine arts high school.  He finished his schooling while still in his teens and was practically immediately hired to illustrate Boy's Life magazine.  At 20, Rockwell was commissioned to create a number of covers for the magazine he's now most often associated with - The Saturday Evening Post.  Rockwell created over 300 covers for the magazine during the next 47 years.

It was during this time that Rockwell painted one of his most famous series: The Four Freedoms.  They were created in response to a speech given by Franklin D Roosevelt during the Second World War.  They appeared first as covers of The Saturday Evening Post, and then they toured the United States in effort to raise money and sell war bonds.

Left to Right: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want

Later in life, Rockwell worked for Look magazine, and his work focused more and more on controversial issues of the time - civil rights, poverty, etc.  He died in 1978 in Stockbridge, MA, where there's now a museum dedicated to his life and works.

While researching Rockwell's life for this presentation I have to do, I came across two quotes that sort of encapsulate the reasons I like Norman Rockwell so much.

"Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed."

 and

"Maybe as I grew up and found the world wasn't the perfect place I had thought it to be, I unconsciously decided that if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be, and so painted only the ideal aspects of it."

I think some people I know in the art program would be somewhat disgusted with that last quote, or at least a little condescending of such an attitude.  It seems that many artists (and just people in general) would say an attitude like that is cowardly or unintelligent.  They might say Rockwell is ignoring life as it is.  I don't think that's true, though.  From looking at Rockwell's illustrations I'd say he knows very well what life is, for everyone.  His illustrations aren't about being rich or powerful, that isn't the ideal world he's depicting.  His illustrations celebrate the everyday, the comical, the peaceful, the exciting, the disappointing.  They celebrate life.

To me, Norman Rockwell was the perfect patriotic.  He isn't the kind of person who shows their patriotism by posting hateful articles about the state of the government or education or foreign relations to your facebook wall,  He focused on the good things that were happening.  And that doesn't mean he ignored the bad.  Rockwell often depicted New York slums and the escapades of immigrant children and their families.  One of his most famous paintings was of Ruby Bridges, one of the first African Americans integrated into an all-white school.

Yes, the painting is about racism in America and how it's a bad thing.  You can see offensive words scrawled on the wall behind her and tomatoes that have been thrown, but the sentiment is about moving forward.  Nowadays, I feel like people think that anger is the only motivation that will actually inspire change in the world, but I feel like Norman Rockwell focused on inspiring people in more happy ways.  By informing his audience and showing the progress that is being made and that can be made.  Anger might be an effective tool to stir someone's emotions, but what does one do with those emotions?  Cause more violence?  Add more hate to the world?

I didn't really intend for this post to take this direction, but I'm glad that it did, because I've just made a connection.  I think people like Norman Rockwell are difficult to find nowadays, but there is one person that I know of who I think does something very similar.

If you have a Facebook account you've likely heard of the page Humans of New York.  It's run by a photographer who takes photos of people he meets on the streets of New York (and sometimes around the world).  Along with the photo he adds quotes from the people.  Sometimes they're funny one-liners, but sometimes they're life stories that are sad or inspiring or just plain interesting.  Brandon, the photographer, never adds in his own opinions or things other than maybe supplying a little context for the photo or quote.  He shows people as they are, or as they want to be, and he's been able to do some amazing things because of that.  Just this past week he met a kid in Brownsville, New York who talked about his principal.  The next day, Brandon met with the principal and photographed her.  Now, social media has exploded in support for this school.  They've raised over a million dollars in less than a week to send the sixth graders of this school on a trip to Harvard and to establish a scholarship fund.  It's a really inspiring story from a seedy part of New York city that isn't about hate or violence or crime that started with a photograph, a piece of art, and is making a difference.  Here's a link to their fundraiser: "Let's Send Kids to Harvard"

People are good, guys.  And that's what we should be focused on.  That's what I want to focus on, and that's why I love Norman Rockwell.

Hope your January was great (I'm feeling pretty accomplished) and here's to a fantastic February!

A Metaphor

Ideas in Art (and probably in general) are like dates.

You can't just sit on your couch waiting for some dashing idea to sweep you off your feet and carry you away.  He won't know where to find you.  He may not even know you exist.

I've heard (and used) all the excuses before:
 

My hair isn't quite long enough yet for an idea to be able to climb my tower.

All the good ideas have already been taken.

I have too much cleaning up to do before I can go to the ball and dance with an idea.

Even if I had an idea, I wouldn't know what to do with it.

I've been cursed to live as a sheep.

All tried and true, but the fact remains they're still excuses.

An idea isn't something you wait around for.  You have to go looking for it.  You have to be bold and courageous.  You need to try.

Sure, there might be ideas that look very spiffy in a cravat and spats, and then turn out to be dead ends in the end.  But there will also be other ones with nerdy t-shirts and distracted expressions that turn out to be fantastic friends that lead you on adventures to whole universes full of ideas.

Sure, you might get bumped and bruised from time to time, but you'll also learn things about the world and about yourself.

And in the end, you might finally come across an idea that never ends, an idea you love and that loves you back.  An idea that was worth all the searching.

But you'll never know until you try.

A Note on Art and My Religion

While I was in Germany I remember having this revelation one evening spent alone in my apartment.  There I was, sitting at our ridiculously tiny table, thinking very hard over my bowl of fancy European Ramen.  I was surrounded by artists and people who had known they were going to be artists since before I even gave up on my dreams of being an astronaut because I thought you had to go through the army first.  As my Ramen began to cool, I began to stew, and I decided to start looking at my life like a puzzle.

I try to avoid lame metaphors, especially when they liken themself to life in general.  But this one's actually stuck with me for longer than 10 minutes.  So maybe it's a good one.

The only problem with my puzzle, though, is that mine is not even close to being put together yet.  I just have a giant box of random pieces.  I don't even have a lid for the box to see what it's supposed to look like, or how many pieces it is.  I have some bits put together.  The really large and especially well-put-together looking bits are the ones I wish everyone would see, but there aren't many of those and they often get buried in piles of more pieces while I try to sort through things.  I don't like people knowing that I have an unfinished puzzle because I'm worried they're going to judge me and stare over my shoulder while I try to put two pieces together that clearly don't seem to belong together.  However, I also really enjoy puzzles.  There's an excitement to connecting dots and slowly seeing how things might turn out.  When I was younger, I always wanted to be the person to put the last piece in.  But, as I've gotten older, I've developed a fear of endings - putting the last piece in means no more excitement of hunting through the box to find that one piece with the funny swoopy corner, or methodically arranging each piece first by shape and then by color.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I've come to grips with the fact that my puzzle isn't put together.  I'm enjoying putting it together and I'm okay with people seeing my progress (for the most part).  Of course I'm still scared of the snooty stares and I'm still trying to shove the wrong pieces together, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Recently, I have put a few more pieces into my puzzle and connected two rather large sections.  I had a hard time believing that they would ever connect.  At times I was worried they'd come from two separate puzzles, but as soon as I put one piece in, dozens more seemed to fit obviously into place.

And that brings me to the actual, real-life subject of this post (which is no longer a metaphor).

Ta-Dah!  I made a painting.

It was for a semester-long project I had to do in my New Testament class.  We each had to come up with some sort of creative project and work on it for an hour each week.  This painting in and of itself, isn't really all that great or special, but as an object it kind of represents the connections and things I discovered this past semester because of that class.

Again, this story has it's beginnings in Germany.  I thought harder about art while I was on that trip than I ever have before and I think I had my first major life crisis.  I knew I enjoyed art and that it was what seemed like the only form of communication I was somewhat good at.  However, at the same time I also felt incredibly selfish.  As many of you know, I'm Mormon, and I love my religion.  But I suddenly couldn't figure out how art would fit into the grand scheme of things.  I don't make religious art and personally I don't even really like it.  (I'm not saying it's bad, it just doesn't do much for me).  But I couldn't help but feel like if I wasn't creating blatantly religious art, then there was no use to being an artist.  This sort of feeling had manifested itself before in my life when I struggle with the amount of space finished art takes up and not having anything to do with it.  I feel like I'm being wasteful and unproductive.

After many wonderful and heartening late-night conversations with roommates I found myself reading Matthew 25 one night, wherein the parable of the talents can be found.  I took a lot of encouragement from this parable.  If art was a talent that the Lord had given to me, then it was my duty to find ways to increase it and put it to good use.

For the time being, this satisfied me, but it came back to my mind the following semester when my teacher explained this creative project assignment.  I decided I wanted to study more deeply the parables of the New Testament and create illustrations for them.  I only ended up with time to do this one painting but the project and this class helped me better resolve this block I have between religion and art.

I started with studying the parable of the sower.  To be honest, I didn't get much further than this in my personal study, as the rest of my time I spent on the illustration.  But I did gain a lot more appreciation for the parables in the New Testament from studying this.  I had always been confused by why Christ taught in parables and in Sunday School classes they always seemed to make it sound like parables were more like tricky riddles that only really smart people could figure out, but I realized that wasn't the case.  Christ taught in parables because those who had a desire to understand would apply themselves and be able to understand the meanings, while those who chose to harden their hearts (and be like the stony ground) wouldn't allow the seed of faith to take root and grow.

Thus began the second part of my project.  I wanted to do these illustrations not just because I'm an art major and that's what art majors do, but because I wanted to see if I could actually make religious art.

Well, while I don't necessarily regard this painting as a failure, I didn't really have the same connection to it while working on it that I do with other works.  I still don't think religious art is for me.  However, over the course of the semester, many small insights and little verses here and there helped me realize that I can still be religious and have a firm faith in Christ and God while creating art that doesn't portray religious events or themes.  It's cliche, but one of those verses that helped was Matthew 5:16

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

Nowhere in the verse does it say that you can only let your light shine by doing a, b, and c.  I want my art to make people happy and to connect with them and I think that is a good work.

While I was feeling much better about my life choices at this point, I still also had this fear that this life would be the only time I had to create art, and such things would be obsolete in heaven.  However things were rounded off pretty nicely when we had a class discussion about the parable of the talents.  Most of the things we talked about were insights I'd heard before and things I'd found in my own studies, but one thing stood out to me.  When the lord returns and inquires what the servants have done with their talents, he gives to the "good and faithful" servants the money that they made.  I hadn't noticed before, but the servants were expected to return all the money to the lord.  This isn't doctrine or anything, but for me I felt like it was saying that my talents and the things I enjoy doing will continue with me after this life if I use them to help build the kingdom of God in this life.  It was a very comforting thought.

Anyways, I'm sorry if this all sounds corny and poorly-written.  I don't usually write about religious things, but as it is a big part of my life I really wanted to try.

I do believe in God and Jesus Christ.  I know that they love all of us and really do want us to be happy.

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I'm sorry for my month-long hiatus in December, but I'm ready to start this year off right and hope to continue with my three-posts-a-month plan.

In the meantime, my sister and I created our own vlog over on Youtube.  It's about books and stuff.  Check it out, like, subscribe, all that good stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC157ivjEm5HC_vDupNP0YVQ