Hillman Curtis rocks my socks. (So does Mark Romanek)

Hillman Curtis does a series of videos he calls "artist documentary series" which he posts on his site. I love these things. I watch them over and over again. He interviews some of the most brilliant designers and artists I've ever seen. And every time I rewatch them, I glean something new from what they're saying. Sometimes you're just 'ready' to hear something. Sometimes certain phrases will just stick with you better.

So I was watching the Mark Romanek one this morning, and, well, I just had to record what he was saying somehow, so I started to type:

"One of the secrets of it is having things not be complete. Or having a certain amount of it being inscrutable or inexplicable or something that makes sense in your subconscious. But I talk all the time that things are "too left brain." Meaning it just is what it is. It doesn't have that enigmatic quality to it. There isn't anything open-ended about it. It can be understood too easily. I find that the phrase "right brain" or "left brain" comes up a lot when I'm working with my crew about making decisions about what we're going to shoot and what goes in front of the camera. It's something to do with leaving the audience with a question. What that does is it engages the audience. It becomes interpretive for them. And as soon as it becomes interpretive, you're engaged. You're not just watching something that's laid out for you. You're being asked questions or posed riddles. If a broken chair has more latent, resonate, potential meaning than an unbroken chair, then break the chair."

"At the end of the day, the only thing that's really important is emotionally engaging the people. And then at a certain point, if you're at all wise, then you go, nothing matters but that. It doesn't matter what I went through to get the shot. It doesn't matter how beautiful the shot is. If you're leaving people cold, it's gotta go."
-Mark Romanek

That's not all of it. You should watch the whole thing here. In fact, you should watch all of Curtis' documentaries here.

GO TIME!

soo... i have to finish 3 credits worth of work in 2 days. haha. tonight i'm designing an entire magazine and tomorrow night i'll be designing an annual report. and in between those two monstrosities i'll be doing some event graphics, a storefront and finishing up a website. oh boy... lots to do, so i think i'll blog for a second. (logic just jumped out my window).

i should be massively panicked, and while i have moments, i'm surprisingly calm, or apathetic, can't be sure. anywho, that's what i'm up to until wednesday. then i've got to layout the anthology for my writing class (not too worried about that) and finish up my resume and promo pieces.

blarg, i know this isn't that interesting to read, it's more of a laundry list for myself more than anything. but, for your enjoyment, here's a little something something that happened while i was trying to come up with ideas for ads/event graphics for my poetry slam thing:

There's been a lack of visuals lately...

the current state of my dining room table. no eating allowed! it's production time! if you look closely you can actually see 5 different types of adhesives in this one photo.



although i've been frantic lately, i still manage to take a few pics every now and again.

(this was taken awhile ago) I asked Meg* to wake me up and she thought it was hilarious when she found me sleeping on my sketchbook. so, she took a photo ;)

I've been so caught up in work lately. I eat, sleep and breath with my dayplanner on one side and my sketchbook on the other. ARgh. I hate that I feel like I'm missing so many other opportunities because I'm consumed with design, but I comfort myself with the fact that it is going to be over soon. I have less than 2 weeks to finish my portfolio now. Today in office hours, Bob looked me in the eyes and asked, "You're getting stuff done, right? You're going to finish right?" I muttered yes, yes but did not look him back in the eyes. I am scared that I won't finish everything. But then again, there hasn't been a semester yet that I haven't been scared that I won't finish everything.

A friend had this quote in their IM profile for awhile and I liked it. I haven't been one for quotes lately, (I was in high school, Andrea knows that...) but this one has sort of been helping me to keep things in perspective:

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Funny stuff

I had this as an away message:

"I've decided this design stuff is a sham so I'm going to drop out of school and become a bare-knuckle boxer"

And I came back to this (see below). Made me laugh so hard, hope it has the same effect on someone else.
(Names are omitted to protect the innocent ;) )


M: you need a NAME, that's the ticket
M: like...Krazy Knuckles KAT
M: Smashin' Sampson
M: .....the Towering Typographer
M: "Serifin' up some PAIN!"
M: haha..okay..."the TOWERING TYPOGRAPHER...I'm gonna go comic SANS on your ass" (someone in the audience : 'ooo, that's ugly')
M: the PENSYLVANIAN
M: ...time to go Dutch-Colonial on your ass
M: haha..."I'm the horse...YOU're the BUGGY....and I'm gonna take you to town BITCH!"

HAHA.... oh boy. Humor is necessary at this point. Humor and coffee. Yes, that's it.

None of this is new

Saw a little worm on the sidewalk outside my apartment today and I picked it up to put it in the soil. Not a big deal, helps the little guy/gal/both simultaneously out and I get bonus karma points along w/ a little worm goo. But long after I'd held the worm in my fingers, I could still feel the energy of its wiggling in my fingertips. That feeling is really awe-inspiring. The worm and I are filled with this same life force, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. We're made from the same sorts of cells. The magical mechanization of it all... We sort of take that for granted when we touch another human being, but because this worm was such a simple being, it really struck me. He is alive.

googlin'

I think this is pretty funny. (Don't ask my why I was searching for "names of small towns," it was something for the writing piece I'm working on now.) It makes me think of some random magazine article (or short story or blog entry or something) where a father was describing how he and his daughter were trying to find the most disgusting thing where the google side bar would read: Find what you're looking for on ebay! They found that they could "Find 'rotting corpses' on ebay!" Bill, my current design professor, mentioned in class this week that there are people who, as a hobby, try to type in two unrelated words into google and get just *one* hit. I casually tried it myself, couldn't find anything of course.

I've had many thoughts in the past week or so that I'd love to go on and on about, but I've got many miles to go... On the up side, this will all be over with very soon.

I'm missing ghosts

I miss the people I became so achingly close to, and never hear from.
I miss the people I became so achingly close to, and now we talk about the weather. I miss the ghosts I made for them.
Duration is irrelevant.
It matters how close we got.
I have countless stories. A gigantic heap of people who I became intensely connected to and who now, I rarely ever hear from. I comfort myself with the fact that I have countless stories to tell. But I don't want stories! I want friends! Real, meaningful, rich friendships.
So consider this a published call. If we ever knew one another tenderly, if we ever exchanged more than phone numbers and pleasantries, please come back into my life...

The start to some story in the future:

My feet were dark red with cold. I've had to sleep with socks on for the last few nights. The scary part is that it's not amazingly cold outside, as least given the fact that this is Syracuse New York and it's still only March. I'm not sure why my circulation is suddenly so poor. I crawled into bed and Sushi, my roommate's cat, leapt up to join me. As I set my alarm clock and the 3 additional alarms on my cell phone (I had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning) Sushi started chewing on my light blue fleece blanket. It smelled like my cat from back home, Ricky. I grabbed Sushi under his front paws and pulled him to me. “Stop it" I said squarely into his eyes. He blinked and licked his nose and I let go. I turned off the light and he padded down to the end of the bed and curled up near my cold red feet. I wish I could say I was grateful. That would make me a good person but instead I sighed at the thought that I would not be free to move my legs around for the rest of the night. This is the reason why I am bad at love.

remember me as a time of day

"If Kat were a time of day she would be early morning. Light blue and yellow, cold floors and silence."

Their stiletto heels seem to tap out
"I'm-more-so-phi-sti-cat-ed-than-you"
I'll take my silent sneakers.

Preference

It's funny (in the ironic sense more than the humorous sense) that what I look for in design is clarity. But in music I lean so heavily towards really orchestrated, lush music. Sometimes it seems that anything w/ only one guitarist is automatically out. ;)

Does that mean anything? Do I compensate for the sterility of the design I like with the complexity of the music I enjoy? Or is this all just preference anyway? Why do we like the things we do? And can our preferences in one aspect of our life affect our preferences in other areas? For example, do I love really meditative hobbies only because I feel so flustered by my work? Anyone else see this in their life?

Made Up Language

The other day I told my mom that I was really enjoying my writing class and she responded,
"Good, well, I hope it will teach you to stop making up words."
"Why? I like to make up words."
"I think you make up words because you can't think of a real one."
"Precisely!"


(ps: 15 minutes until it's my birthday. yay for 23.)

Our bodies are really well crafted...

Last night/this morning/whatever at 5 am I sliced open my middle finger with a utility blade. Deep cut too, the flesh on the right side of the top joint is just holding on. Anyway, so when it happened there was immediately a lot of blood. But, and here's the cool part and why this whole fiasco is worth blogging about, there wasn't any pain (at first). All the pain and the nausea from the blood (I know not everyone gets that, but I do) was delayed so that I could take care of the situation first. I wonder if that's just the adrenaline sort of covering it up so that I can just act instead. So it happened, I pudder around the apartment going "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." looking for gauze and bandages n' whatnot. And once I have it cleaned out and covered, only then did I actually go "FUCK! OW!" Now that's wonderful engineering.

Winter Cleaning

I went through and tried to clean up some dead links I had over to the right there. Sorry 'bout that. I also added some stuff that will hopefully inspire anyone who wanders over here. Take a gander.

I never thought a kiss could be... so cold

Wanna see something incredibly Hallmark? It practically looks fake.

I became one of those people! You know, the ones who start a blog and update devotedly and then... just... stop. ;) I'm going to try and pick up the pace again b/c while I was doing it before, I enjoyed it. Kept me thinking in different ways, ways other than just graphics.

Summary of the last month and a half: The last part of last semester was brutal. I was convinced I would fail my comm design course. Fortunately everything worked out in the end and while I'm not too proud of the work that I ended up submitting, I have this semester to clean it up for my final final portfolio (EEP!). Winter break was fantastic. I slept and did nothing for 3 weeks straight. After the 3rd week I woke up one day and felt human again. Also, it was wonderful to see my friends & family.

So there. That's that. While there's been plenty of personal drama going on I never wanted this to be a 'this-is-what-I-did-today/and-then-she-said' sort of thing so that's all I'll say about what's been going on.

I've been thinking a lot about my anxiety levels. I have always had some weird ticks (crane folding, eyebrow picking) that are probably just manifestations of anxiety, but all of them have been sort of intensified lately. Last night Julia and I went to a house show down the block from my apartment. Now I've always known I don't particularly like crowds, but I think that's a rather common dislike. Especially when the crowd brings to mind visions of sardines. To be honest I don't know where I was going with this, perhaps to muse whether or not I had a true anxiety problem since I feel so uncomfortable around people anymore. It's so difficult to tell. Am I blaming my anti-social tendencies on a mental disorder because I am unwilling to admit that ... what? I was never shy when I was younger. Why am I so awkward now? Or do I hide behind awkwardness because it protects me from getting to know anyone (i.e. getting hurt)? To be honest I feel like I'm an outgoing person who dislikes being outgoing. I feel that tug of obligation ("I should be talking to someone. There's a room full of people to talk to.") but I don't want to act on it. Is that just what it's like to be shy?

Another issue raised by last night's show. Indie rock show dancing; ugh. Ok, before someone jumps on my throat with either A) you dance at shows or B) (*said in some breathy voice*) but dancing is so immediate/wonderful and I really get to *feel* the music. Please. I admit, yeah, I've been into dancing at shows, sure. But last night I stopped dancing and was just watching people do it. People have begun to dance at shows for all the wrong reasons. Now here I'm obligated to admit that yes, I am inferring people's intentions simply on the way they move. But body language is a powerful thing and we infer a great deal about most people we meet by the way they move. So, moving on. Argument Numero Uno: People are dancing for themselves. It doesn't matter what the music is anymore, they'd dance anyway. They don't move around in those ever so perfectly apathetic motions because they're really *feeling* the music. T h e y d o n ' t c a r e about the music. They're just dancing for themselves. All they care is that there's a steady beat to move to. Which makes me wonder why there even needs to be a live band. Are all these hipsters really club go-ers in different costumes? Argument Numero Dos: People are dancing for other people. When I looked around what I saw were girls grinding with other girls or their boys. And I couldn't help but thinking about bird's mating dances. Are they just dancing to attract attention? Peacock's tail feathers, a blue footed boobie's intricate dance, the hipster's bop. Dancing with someone *is* an intimate act and for sure it has been utilized in the matingimeandating process. But don't you dare go and tell me you're dancing because you're into the music.

I feel like I'm going to catch a lot of shit for those last few comments. Whatever. Rant over. Hehe, I sound so bitter. Just to clarify: I have nothing against dancing. Just A) dance because you're into the music or B) dance for whatever reason you like, just don't *pretend* that you're into the music. Be aware of why you're really dancing.

Everything is anything because of intention.

Strange Bedfellows

This is Flack.
I know a lot of people don't know what the hell "comm design" is. I'm still not really sure what it can be... but what it is right now is museum design, product/package design, magazine/website/publication design, corporate id, posters, ads, etc.... My professors cop out of the question by saying "we design anything that communicates a message", which might be the closest answer I can give too.
Anywho, this is Flack. I designed a line of stuffed animals for adults that double as sleep aids (they're filled with aromatherapy stuff). This is one of them. The others' names are Aven, Miles and Nori. They're all pretty "cute".
Anywho, thought it was neat.
Back to work.
-k.
ps: comm design doesn't mean just drawing them. i sewed the stuffed animals (for real), and will (in the next few days) design and built all their packages and a point of purchuse display. sorry, a little defensive there. didn't want ppl thinking all i did was sketch some critters.

Breakfast Conversations with Meg*

Meg said (while we were on the topic of small children):
"Of course they're cute! They're designed to be cute so we don't kill them!"

Hehe, it's good to find people who are the the same page ;)
Back to work. -k.

"announcement"

i'm sick! blarck... (that was the closest spelling to the noise i just made) also, as the end the semester is right on top of me, i am going to be a horrible friend. so if i seem to disappear until dec 20th or so it's because i'm holed up in my room or at studio. although i'm going to be awful at correspondence, please send good vibes/well wishes/random phone calls my way b/c i'll need them desperately. i love you all (i feel okey saying that since only my close friends bother to read this).
*buckles down for two weeks of intense comm design*
-k.

Long Drives

For the last three days, I've gone out driving to do a simple errand. And every time I end up not accomplishing the errand, but driving around for hours instead. It's terribly frustrating because I feel like I don't have control over it anymore. I really left intending only to do this one small task, but when I get to an intersection where I've never turned left I find myself in the left-hand lane. Almost like it's not my choice or something. I wish I knew what desire this was satisfying: the time alone, the sense of exploration, the need to "leave" or what.
Today, on what's quickly becoming my daily drive, I saw a boy raking leaves at a hardware store. The way he was moving with the rake was so graceful, almost like dancing. He moved his whole body. Anywho, I was turning around in the hardware store's parking lot and for a split second the boy and I locked eyes. And I started to wonder, what constitutes a "connection" between two people? Because this boy and I have a connection now, even if it was a fraction of a second, like brushing shoulders in an elevator. But did I have a connection with him before? when I noticed him dancing with the rake? Or is a connection only sealed when both parties acknowledge the other's existence? Is that what connection is? Noticing one another? Accepting the fact that, yes, you exist.