My cousin Crow is getting her shit together. She's approaching 50, but her spirit and drive is now much, much younger. For the past year and a half she's been drug free, attending meetings, applying to jobs and going on interviews. And when fall was ushered in a few weeks back, she said hello to a new school year at Southwest Community College.
As is the case with most classes, once the attendance was taken and the syllabus was reviewed the time had come for, you guessed it, an assignment. I am still not sure what this particular assignment dealt with per se, but it involved roots and values, and something about a tree. Now since I am fresh out of college I am the go to man when it comes to helping Crow with her homework and the like and for this assignment she wanted to get off on the right foot and asked me to craft a tree and some roots for her.
Not a big deal right? Anyone can draw a tree on a posterboard. But for some reason it became a grand art project that I handled dutifully. I skectched out a tree on a small sheet before transfering it to the giant posterboard. I drew it in pencil and then went over it with markers. I utilized the art of smudging. And enjoyed the icing on the cake that was adding actual leaves to the finished product, giving it a 3-D shine. In other words I took this community college posterboard tree assignment way too seriously.
But by doing so, I took myself back to my high school days as a Visual Arts Magnet Student. Testing my imagination, working against my limitations, writing poetry, and gaining inspiration from the littlest things, from a song lyric to an editorial in the California section of the Los Angeles Times. This was all something I discarded completely once I got to college and became a showboatin' song and dance man.
I was reminded of all this after I purchased Beck's new album today, The Information. Ever the artist, Beck's new album is literally a blank slate, a grid like cd booklet that comes with a large sheet of stickers for you, the consumer to utilize and craft your own album art. How cool is that? One of the reasons why I buy albums [aside from the music contained within it] is to have that booklet, that cover and back cover; to see someone else's creativity at work, and now, thanks to Beck that power is all mine. And boy did I have fun. So much fun that I broke the mechanism that holds the dvd and cd in place. Sometimes I never know how to curb my enthusiasm.
Check it out:
1 comment:
Meddies are starting Debrah in the next few weeks.
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