Siena III

Today's class was the first time I really felt engaged. I guess I just need to dig in and play with materials instead of pencil drawings. I appreciate the importance of going step by step, but there is such a huge change when I'm finally able to advance in the creative process.
Yesterday I found the nub of an umbrella handle and pocketed it right away. When I was looking at my collected images and drawings, the umbrella handle seemed most interesting to me. I took it upon myself to make the rest of the umbrella out of the newspaper provided during class. It looked goofy and obviously impractical, but I think that's why I went in that direction. My themes have been about change, memory, self image over time, vulnerability, and some others. When given the assignment of making a short video, I knew that my little umbrella was ready for its closeup. The weather was perfectly dreary as I stepped out onto the street and paraded around catching double takes left and right. Luckily, the rain increased so that the umbrella completely flopped and fell apart, thus completing the cycle. I still carried around the stub as if the umbrella wasn't totally disintegrated and a man at the San Lorenzo market offered me an umbrella with a perplexed look on his face.
This weekend a lot of great things happened to me. I'm working on sifting through all the information.