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Made off of this collage.

I was second-guessing the text at first, but now I think it looks fine.

I’d post several postcard images and let people vote but 1) comments are broked still, 2) there isn’t much time left for playing around, and 3) even with a 100% voter turnout of all my readership, three votes doesn’t make for a very interesting poll.

This past week my project was to combine all my small display boards (which are really just rectangles of pink insulation foam that have been painted white on one side) into one huge board. The goal is to approximate the size of the display cases I’ll be showing in because I’m not even sure if the works fit okay into such a large space. Here’s how it looks:

Not too too bad. The works fit about as well as I could’ve hoped for—but I need to cut into the space a little with some kind of border.

It’s happening for realsies this time with the dates set and everything. I’m going to be showing at the Wallace Library at RIT. It’s not my first choice of locale, but that didn’t work out.

It’s hard not to feel a little disappointed with this. I think it’s partly because I’m showing on campus and so it feels like less of an accomplishment. It’s also because I’ve greatly lowered my hopes and expectations in order to get this thing done and over with.

Here are some images of the space:

I’ll be occupying the three display cases in the photos. I’m positive they’ll clean up nice. This is on the second floor of the library directly opposite the doors to the main stairs and it’s nice and public.

Jonathan,

Unfortunately, I must tell you that the Lower Link Gallery at the Central Library is not available for one-person exhibitions. I wish you luck in your search for a location and with your exhibition.

Sincerely,

(name removed)
Assistant Library Director

Well, back to the drawing board.

Holy Balls! Two posts in the same day? I’d better stop this before people think I must be feeling better.

Today I was feeling gutsier than usual (which… is pretty much any time I feel I have any guts at all) so I went to the Central Library at took some initial steps towards having my show there.

Ideally I’d like to show in the Lower Link Gallery, which is the hallway connecting the old library building to the new one that runs under the street.

It’s not a gallery in any formal sense, though. Having spent several hours searching the library’s web site, I couldn’t find any information on it other than the occasional post about what’s happening there. Today, the first librarian I asked about it had no clue what it was, despite the fact her desk was right outside it. Then I was directed to the information desk on the first floor where I was given contact info for the lady who is probably in charge of it. Heh.

Anyways, before I left I snapped a couple pictures of the space. This was actually more anxiety-inducing than anything else because it felt like I was breaking some kind of rule somewhere. And there were several signs stating that the place was being monitored by security cameras.

There are two sections to the gallery, separated by some double doors. This half is likely part of the original building. Cold and harsh, this isn’t the part I’m interested in. (Pardon the slight fisheye effect. My camera does that when zoomed all the way out.)

Currently on the walls is a show aptly titled “On My Own Time,” an exhibition of staff artworks.

This picture gets bigger when you click on it.

This is what I’m talking about. A small reading area and soft lighting (which is maybe too soft for my intentions). There’s a brassy-looking sculpture on the table that’s cut off on the left there, which seems to be a permanent fixture. The opposite end was walled off by black plastic to hide some remodelling of some sort.

Some concerns: Is the space too large for my work? I’m only planning on showing 20 or so of the 41 collages I’ve made for this thesis. Also, since this is a public place, how would that affect the opening reception and the requisite food and beverage I’ll need to provide? And where should I plan on telling people to park? There’s a parking garage around the corner but making people pay seems tacky somehow.

I’m getting way ahead of myself here.

All y’all take care now.

Lately my approach to thesis writing has been to just sit and write—just get whatever is in my head out and into the computer. I usually start a new document each time I go to write so I won’t have to deal with what I wrote previously. (Before this, when I was working in the same document, I’d compulsively start at the beginning making revisions and corrections throughout before actually composing anything new.)

But yesterday, as I started tap tap tapping away it occurred to me that all I’d been repeatedly covering the same sections—just a small part of what I intend the whole paper to cover.

So I decided that I should aggregate all my material, to turn something solid out of the mess so my mind could move on. I also decided to print everything out since I find it difficult to manage so many documents on my one little computer screen.

My “Thesis” folder on my computer has a little sub-folder inside labeled “Old Drafts,” for, well, stuff I thought was crap. But now I wondered if there might be anything worthwhile amongst those documents, especially now that I have some chronological and emotional distance from when they were first written—some of the files are more than a year old.

I was taken aback when I tallied all the files together: How can there possible be forty documents here?

Not all of them were drafts, mind you. There were also several outlines, several proposal drafts, a few starts of bibliographies, and etc. But even though I didn’t print any of these I was still shocked to see that I’d printed out over seventy pages.

Seventy—that’s a “7″ followed by a “0″. The finished thesis is only supposed to be twenty-five pages.

I haven’t started looking through the pile yet. Honestly, I think I’m a little afraid to. There’s so much—something must come out of all that… Right? Right?

Wish me luck, y’all.