kathryn b

Here we go. Can I get a goddamn timpani roll to start this goddamn song? Tonight it is a goddamn song, for all you goddamn people:

Well, the animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness. A baby cries hard in an apartment complex, as I pass in a car buried under the influence. The city’s driving me out of my mind. I’ve seen a child, he’s caught in the sad trap of gravity. He falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree and lands in the grass and weeps for his dignity. Next time he will not aim so high. Yeah, next time, neither will I. Now, a mother takes loans out, sends her kids off to colleges. Her family’s reduced to names on a shopping list. While, a coroner kneels beneath a great, wooden crucifix. He knows there’s worse things than being alone. I’ve learned to retreat at the first sign of danger. I mean, why wait around, if it’s just to surrender? An ambition, I’ve found, can lead only to failure. I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.

Well, I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well. And I would throw my whole billfold if I thought it would help. With all these wishes I make, I should buy something real, at least a telephone call home. Well, My teachers, they built this retaining wall memory, all those multiple choices I answered so quickly. And got my grades back and forgot just as easily, but at least I got an A. And so I don’t have them to blame. Well, I should stop pointing fingers; reserve my judgment of all those public action figures, the cowboy presidents. So loud behind the bullhorn so proud they can’t admit when they’ve made a mistake. While poison ink spews from a speechwriter’s pen, he knows he don’t have to say it, so it, it don’t bother him. “Honesty” “Accuracy” is just “Popular Opinion.” And the approval rating is high, and so someone’s gonna die. Well, ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit. They give us fact or fiction? I guess an even split. And each new act of war is tonight’s entertainment. We’re still the pawns in their game. As they take eye for an eye until no one can see, we must stumble blindly forward, repeating history. Well, I guess we all fit into your slogan on that fast food marquee: Red blooded, White skinned oh and the Blues. Oh and the Blues! I got the Blues! That’s me! That’s me!

Well, I awoke in relief. My sheets and tubes were all tangled weak from whiskey and pills, in a Chicago hospital. And my father was there, in a chair by the window, staring so far away. I tried talking, just whispered, “…so sorry…so selfish..” He stopped me and said, “Child I love you regardless and there is nothing you could do that would ever change this. I’m not angry. It happens. But you just can’t do it again.” And so now I try to keep up, I’ve been exchanging my currency. While a million objects pass through my periphery. Now I’m rubbing my eyes cause they’re starting to bother me. I’ve been staring too long at the screen. But where was it when I first heard that sweet sound of humility? It came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody. How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery, to love and to be loved. Let’s just hope that is enough.

7-8 years later this still makes my day.  It rarely makes me sentimental, like most music I listened to in high school does. Those who know me well know I live in nostalgia, I feed off old songs, letters, photos- they force me to tears, and somehow I crave it.  It is a part of why I am a photographer, holding the power to keep things still, to compose reality in the way I wish to order it.  But this song man, it just makes me feel alright.

Senior Workshop/Spring 2010 Outlined Proposal

Goals/Concepts:

- To refine last semester’s stronger pieces, whether it meaning to rework them or simply polish for presentation

- To create two large-scale mixed media pieces, created primarily with transparency, acrylic, and type.

- To create 1-2 smaller pieces that either accompany the larger works or address a different concept (i.e.: a book or a small series of acrylic lifts)

- Themes of the work remain in the realm of perpetual exhaustion, drowning, and the limits of the body. Ideas of triumph, solace, and different spatial relationships may be explored

- New shoots may experiment more with painting with light and alternative process

- Framing and/or presentation will depend on the how the pieces will ultimately look and what they are made of.  If a frame is appropriate, it would not include glass to expose three-dimensional elements

Tentative Schedule:

Feb 3: work in progress large piece #1, printing, sketching

Feb 10: smaller piece, idea developed and/or finished

Feb 17: large piece 1# done

Feb 24: begin large piece #2, keeping with side project/ideas

March 3: planning, work in progress

March 10: spring break, framing/presentation, work on refining last semester’s pieces.

March 17: work in progress

March 24: large piece #2 done

March 31: all pieces, including last semesters, ready for exhibition, document work on copy stand.

Projected Materials:

(Materials subject to change, cost does not include framing/presentation)

Pictorico Transparency sheets 17 x 22, 20 sheets $85/Projected 3 packs = $255

Epson Enhanced Matte paper, 13 x19, 100 sheets, $65

Blick Acrylic Gloss Medium, gallon, $30

Foam brushes, 5 total, $10

Plexi-glass sheets, custom sizes, $40

Arches textured watercolor paper, 300 lb $12/sheet, 12 sheets = $144

Various other papers (tracing, construction, handmade, bristol, etc) estimated $60

Canvas panels, estimated $40

Foam core, 16 x 20 sheet $5

Extra paint, estimated $30

#2 X-Acto Blades, package of 15, $8

Drafting tape,1in/60 yards, $10

Gaffer’s tape, $15

3m Double-Sided tissue tape, 36 yards, $20

Paste and adhesive, estimated  $25

Typewriter tape, $15

Faber-Castell and Micron superfine tip pens, $2/each, 4 = $8

Total = $780

Philadelphia Inquirer write up on Supergirl! exhibition

woo name drop:

The show is also this winter’s iteration of the annual December/ January nonmember “centerpiece” show that the artists’ cooperative Nexus mounts to give members - in this case, Jennie Thwing, Blaine Seigel, Jody Sweizter, and gallery intern Kate Borbas - a chance to exercise their curatorial talents.

The closing party for Supergirl! is February 5th at Nexus.  Its going to be sad to take it down.  If you haven’t seen it yet, drop in soon!