honeyblogmoon

off-topic of cranbrook, which is far away: stefano and i have some photographs of our in-progress honeymoon at honeyblogmoon.blogspot.com

i've decided that this will be the end of this blog. don't worry, i'll start another one! i can't wait to start another one. i will post with the new blog address when i make one.

in the meantime, thank you so much to anyone who has visited--just to know i have a reader has at times felt like the diference between quitting in loneliness or going on because someone cares--sometimes only one person cares, the reader, when i feel lost.

i would love to know who is reading this blog--if you haven't made yourself known, feel free to email me: courtneymandryk@hotmail.com.

love,
courtney.

nearing the end

i've begun work on my master's statement, and my blog is the largest chunk of it. i wasn't sure until yesterday if i would make it a part of my statement. i think this week this blog will end and i will begin a new one.

i started to blog simply to help my fellow classmates keep track of me, but they didn't visit. instead, friends and family from far away visited. and probably i was the most frequent visitor to my own blog--i found myself needing it to understand what i had accomplished in a day and a week and to better understand my work, its themes, my feelings on it, and what it looked like in the remove of an online photographic documentation. what i thought would be a more personal account of my studio life became a mix of private and public--i never could fully write as if no one were watching, and yet i wrote to no one in particular.

while the writing in my blogger isn't literary and the images aren't professional, the account is to me, overall, fascinating. in the spirit of Anne Truitt's "Daybook," it takes the mystery out of the role of the artist--and i'm not one for mystery. i think it shows the ups and downs inherent in any artist's days, and it allowed me to see the depths of doubt and despair into which i could fall and the sudden turns toward inspiration. charting that mountain chain, it gave me peace about the future as i was entering despair and gave me a reality check if i felt at my apex.

another reason to include the blog in my master's statement is because the form of the blog became a theme inside my work: daily accounting of the wabi-sabi in one life. how to make personal details that are of importance to only you be important to other people, too? how desperately i need to document the relatively insignificant details of my life--and what a contemporary scrapbooking/blogging/myspacing/youtubing impulse that is. what a persona we all make for ourselves and how true to the flesh can it be?

and so, for better or worse, this blog, raw as it is, will be copied and pasted onto archival paper and bound--then placed in the basement of the library for no one to have to read.

some pictures (compliments of my parents):

dorky pic of me and steve
my dad looking at my drawings
someone else looking at my drawings
people talking in front of someone else's drawings
katie hinton's majestic installation

i can't find the cord that connects my camera to my computer, and though i see cords all around me, they're all so specific. why? why can't we have one cord that connects everything to everything? what's the use of all these different heads and tails?

but the point is the gallery opening was a huge high. i didn't feel my feet hurt until much too late, so lit i felt. it made me want to have more shows, just to get this feeling again. i doubt humans a little too much sometimes, and last night they came through. people looked at my work and came back to look at it again. they put their glasses on and toured the wall more thoroughly than even i did. they were complimentary to each other and to my face. and it was just so fun to get dressed up and drink wine and eat cheese and celebrate. it felt authentic. it's hard to tell when i'm in that high space if compliments are real or not, but they felt real, which is all i care at the moment. and there were a thousand people there, so it was loud and overwhelming and hot, and a lot of the people were artists who were more interesting to look at than the art and standing in front of the art anyway. time disappeared. and everyone drank too much and spoke so freely. i tend to enter big events like this and get caught up in the beauty of the moment and then the next day regret this or that, but this morning no regrets.

i was busy and steve was downtown last week and decided to buy me some dresses i could try on (yes, it's true, he's that good), and the one we chose was this greenish dress i wore last night with a brown necklace. the color is chamomile, and that word fits the color perfectly. i look like i should spout italian when i put it on, but no, only english. nevermind, i'll wear it in italy as soon as i graduate and fly there and never come back and have babies there who grow up speaking italian in lavender fields.

my dream day. i woke late, went on a walk with s. and dear moby and moby played for so long that any other dog would have been sleeping all day. then i walked downtown to s's office and worked on editing the manuscript until 5 nonstop, which for some reason is what makes me happy, especially compared to installing artwork, which i'm learning i dislike--having to be such a perfectionist about details like levels and rulers that i don't care about, vs. being a perfectionist about commas, which for some reason i find (usually) interesting. then walked home, went to trader joe's to buy $250 worth of food, then to a fancy restaurant with s. for a quick and delicious pasta dinner.

the door i painted yesterday is not the perfect color, but i fixed it a little today and now, even though it's not perfect, i love it so much more than before. we're really getting this house in order, amazingly, week by week. it costs like $5 to paint a door but oh what a difference it makes. now to paint the other door tonight, and fold laundry, and hang artwork in my house for my parents to see, and finish the veil.

things at school are winding down. i feel like i've been posting so many pics of this series of drawings that it feels useless to post one of the drawing in its entirety in the museum space, but if i get a good picture tomorrow then i'll do that. i really want to post pictures of other peoples' work, which to me is often more interesting than mine. i'll do that probably tomorrow. the opening's on saturday--900 art people in one museum and a lot of high heels and wine, i can't wait.