i highly recommend going to see the books if you like them at all. they gave a great performance tonight.
okay, bye.
[ posted by talice at 04/11/2006 04:11:22 AM ] [ link ] [ 2 responses ]
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a strange july fourth
for july fourth this year i experienced something very strange and wonderful. . . the purity of an american holiday.
at 10:30 am i left boulder and rode with friends to jamestown, a small mountain town just 30 minutes up. We arrived in time to meet several others for a pancake breakfast (mine had blueberries) with the locals. afterwards we dipped our feet into the creek while waiting for the parade to start. the parade was very short and consisted of a kazoo band which a few of my friends participated in, some kids on bikes with some great homemade masks, and about 10 other "floats". afterwards, we made our way to the grounds nearby where there were numerous races, folk music, and food held all during the day. all in all there were probably 200-300 people, and that's a generous guess. the first races were kids events, like sack races, egg toss, that kind of stuff. there were never any winners, it was all just in the spirit of participating. i never once saw or heard a kid crying about it. soon after they had begun the bat spinning relay, the first anvil exploded. yup that's right, anvil. on the corner of the grounds is an anvil that the locals fill with gunpowder and light so that it spins up 20 feet in the air and falls. they do this sporadically during the day and it's quite an awesome sight. there were no police monitoring it, in fact absolutely no uniformed police in sight. just the volunteer firetruck around the corner to make sure no fires got started.
the weather was great as it often is out here- sunny but dry with cool breezes. my friends brought a hibachi grill and we set that up and soon had great food while we watched the log splitting contest. soon after were the sawing and pie eating contests. there was fresh grilled corn and a pie/cake judging. afterwards, you could buy pieces of homemade dessert goodness. i tried a piece of someone else's strawberry-rhubarb pie, which turned out to be the winner. but even for that contest no one seemed too concerned about who won. there was never any big announcement about that. everyone seemed just to be happy to be there, eating, enjoying it all. other things i realized that made the whole event so great. there were no sponsors, no signs or advertisements. there were events but no winners really, so then no losers. there was no mayor to trump his horn and not even anyone who claimed to be in charge of the event. just a day full of friendly folk, tons of dogs, and the sweetest children. we stayed for 6 hours out there in the sun but honestly i would have thought it was just two or three. the ride back down into town i lay my head back in the backseat, iron and wine coming out of the speakers and feeling tired only from the bright sun. i napped at home then later went out to see the fireworks which were shot from behind the football stadium- so you actually sit in the packed stadium on bleachers to see the show.
i am amazed by this fourth of july i had- how what i experienced was so incredibly simple but became this wonderful thing in it's absolutely purity. i was in an extremely democratic place that is untainted by commercialism. it was so much the picture of an old-fashioned idea of what is american, and i'm amazed by how much i loved it. if someone else had described this day to me, i probably wouldn't have found it to be so interesting. really, the exploding anvil was the thing that lured us there in the first place. all in all it turned out to be a really great day.
[ posted by talice at 07/05/2005 08:02:18 PM ] [ link ] [ 0 responses ]
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private or members only entry
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3 month update
in late august i entered the grad program in ceramics at University of Colorado in Boulder. i wanted very badly to study with the professors here. i was offered a fellowship and a job as a part-time instructor, so i had a couple of art shows to wrap up my b.r. stay, loaded the lovebird and cat in a rented minivan and came to study with the folks who made these things.
I teach foundations to 26 mostly freshmen art and art history students. it's a little bit of everything. i'm supposed to be teaching them line, color, shape, value, texture, space taught through 2d/3d/4d mediums as well as introduce them to the overall language and museum part of art (lots of papers). it's been pretty stressful to teach a class for the first time (not to mention by myself and with so many students) but i'm making it through. i'm starting to like it though sometimes i resent it for the times it takes away from my studio time.
there were times when i felt like i wasn't sure if i could take being in this strange city for so long. I mean, it's pretty, but it's a very transient city. . . almost too transient. what i mean by this is that there is a serious lack of identity here. there's lots of cu students (lots of californians and texans and football lovin), but then there's lots of naropa students as well (the hippie allen ginsberg started school). i know i'm not explaining it clearly, but that's the basic idea.
i bike on this creek path every morning to go to school. sometimes i feel like i'm already taking the beauty of this place for granted, but then i'll take a breath to pause and be in awe of my surroundings.
this is a sketch for an installation/performance i'm working on right now. my drawing has gotten a lot better, which has surprised me. i'm working on the figures right now which are 3 feet tall. the rest of the stuff i will begin working on when i have more of the figures done. but i hope to have it finished in about 3-4 months. i'm also working on a video of a performance i did earlier this year.
a few nights before halloween my super-awesome best roommate ever/fellow grad from minneapolis/seattle and i hosted a pumpkin carving party with sangria and all kinds of sweets. one of the results.
halloween night, the film series on campus hosted a double feature. ju-on the grudge (the japanese version) and gozu by takashi miike. and they were free! after ju-on we walked out to see that the first snow had arrived.
ju-on i thought was pretty good, but then it got completely blown away by gozu, which i think might be my favorite miike movie now. i enjoyed the pacing of it- it kept up the bizarre and surreal moments pretty continuously throughout the film without blowing the audience away with violence as in some of his other films. the absurdity kept me laughing hysterically at times.
on voting day i waited about an hour to color in rectangles with a ballpoint pen. on my way to vote, a woman with a group of about 12 children around the ages of 5-7 were holding up kerry signs. a five year old asked me if i had voted and who i was voting for and was thrilled when i told him what he wanted to hear. boulder county voted 70% kerry. i must admit it's kind of nice to live amongst people i am mostly in agreeance with when it comes to politics.
i made this cake last week for an mfa show reception.
you want some of this dontcha!
so now that i'm entering my fourth month here, i'm finally starting to feel settled. it's been interesting to see how i have reacted to going to a new place alone. i found that i am fine with it! of course it probably helps that it's quite easy to live here (besides the cost). it's pretty quiet and there's mostly cu and naropa students and older hippie folk roaming about on the the creek path on foot or on bicycle and downtown. i'm a fan of the vegetarian co-op grocery. i exercise regularly-riding bikes and doing yoga. last week i saw laurie anderson's performance "The End of the Moon" based on her artist residency at NASA. this past week i went to see le tigre, the gossip, phillip glass. next week will be blonde redhead, mf doom, and twine (which one of the professors here is vj-ing at). and for other things i can to to denver- which i can get to for free on the bus. but for the most part i work in the studio at school, doing what i can to make the things i want and trying to read up on art things. i can't imagine staying here when i'm done, but i'm minding it less and less for now.
[ posted by talice at 11/17/2004 01:49:31 AM ] [ link ] [ 18 responses ]
