why, blood, why?

I am starting to get rather freaked out. In the past 3 days (t/w/th), I have had 4 nosebleeds of not insignificant time/amount. The last one was tonight after the Christmas service on campus. I blew my nose -lightly!- and suddenly teh bluddz attaked. It took 15 minutes for the bleeding to stop enough for me to even try pinching it. I am going to the campus clinic tomorrow during lunch (and have been told by Monkey that if I don't go, she'll "bash you over the head and take you myself, Mmhm-mhmm.") I tried a number of methods earlier in the days to get them to stop, but apparently to no avail. I hope it's not serious. I had a cold at the beginning of the week, and I know it's partially connected thereto, but this didn't happen last time I got sick!

We'll see tomorrow.

On a lighter and less bio-hazardous note, the annual Holiday Art Sale is tomorrow (Fri), and I have 35 pieces up for sale in it. I've also finally joined the Art Club, and am helping out with the sale for most of the afternoon. Already one piece has been put on reserve for purchase tomorrow, and another girl was very interested in another when we were unloading work earlier. I hope I sell a lot of stuff, and that I can get feedback on my work from buyers, not just teachers and fellow Ceramics students.

Finals next week. I am SO not ready! GAH!

Sleep now, and another layer on my reduction linoleum cut tomorrow morning. My Women Studies and French professor has been very kind and is showing a movie all this week instead of work. I have a paper to do for the former and a brief oral interview/evaluation for the latter next week, but otherwise I get to zone and watch the movies. We're watching "La Vie En Rose" in french, and "Iron Jawed Angels" in WST. Both fabulous.

'Night, au revoir, auf weidersehen, et cetera, et cetera.

~Brill

As promised...

...pictures from ATL Pride, in no particular order:

(I have 105 pictures, so this is simply a smattering.)

These guys and gals were marching with sings for "Save the Ta-Tas," "Domestic Partnerships/Benefits," "Gays in the Military," "Youth Pride," "Unity," and "Love." One of the signs has Trans-something on it, but I can't read my pic, and my memory fails.

(Sorry, I do not know how to do the wonderful "click to embiggen" that Java does so well.)

Fabulous rainbow peacock people. I did get a front shot, but this has the better view of the spectrum. (I am peeved that indigo is no longer in the rainbow. First no Pluto, now they're taking my colors away. grrrr)

...IDK. Seriously. But it was an interesting sight nonetheless.

More people with signs! Honestly, this section was one of my favorites.

These guys were with the same group as above.

Here's one of the better drag queens that was in the parade. There were 2 or 3 others with him, but this is the best shot.

Many, many drag queens, as well as some of whose gender of origin I was not certain. This made me happy.

The bar/club the Atlanta Eagle got raided less than a month before the parade. The manner of the officers towards the patrons was absolutely horrid, and their float focused on that.

Awesome rainbow skating super-dude! He was going back and forth from end to end of the parade the whole time.

I just realized this one is crooked. And I have no idea how to fix it on here. Oh, well, take a gander at (a sideways) St. Mark's United Methodist. Woot! The insie was decked out in rainbows as well, but my camera died before I could get a shot.

There are more, but "les devoirs et le deuxieme examen francais disent a moi, 'ETUDIE!'" ('my homework and the secon french exam say to me, 'STUDY!'" Review while blogging, probably not the best way, but useful!) It makes me sad that I can't get the accents on here with the same key combos as in Word.

Enjoy the pride-tastic pics.

Laters,

~Brill

Reconnecting

I am a Ceramics III student this semester, the only level III student in a class of II, III, and IV. There are only 4 assignments for the entire semester, and Mr. Sir does not grade until the final day, so I have the whole semester to complete the requirements. The assignments are:

-Mix a glaze (he shows how, and then I mix another from the dry chemicals in the studio)

-One dinnerware set for two that matches/goes together. This includes 2 large plates, 2 small plates, 2 bowls, 2 cups, 2 saucers, and 1 or 2 something else (i.e. a casserole dish, a gravy boat, 2 tumblers, etc.)

-A sculptural series of four

-A choice series, number determined individually (I am doing 4)

Of these, I have completed the glaze mixing. Keep in mind that there are 1.5 weeks left of school, and I have 4 other classes to work on as well.

I have not been lazy. I have only the "something else" to do for my dinnerware set before it is complete. That life-sucking project has consumed the bulk of my class time since the second week of classes. I have accomplished a lot to that end, but at the expense of my other 2 projects. I started working on my sculptural series, trees, just after midterms, trying to use combined wheel-thrown forms that I then altered. It failed. At life. Repeatedly. I talked with a classmate from the IV class yesterday, and she suggested I try coil or slab methods of hand-building. (She's doing practically nothing but hand-building for her individual objectives, and has some fabulous stuff. I can't wait for the shows this year!)

I decided to give it a try; I've been doing nothing but wheel work for the last year, though I really enjoyed building things by hand. I tried a tree done with coil method, and Joy! Elation! SUCCESS! Something that vaguely resembles an arboreal entity! Not only that, but I really felt closer to what I was doing than I have for a while. Though I am focusing in both drawing and ceramics, recently I have felt a kind of malaise in ceramics class, closely linked with not producing anything I really felt "in to" or anything that could go towards my show next Spring. Working with the clay tonight, not trying to force it around on the wheel, I felt that start to dissipate; I felt excited and connected to what I was doing.

I hope I can keep this up, and finish my projects, but mostly keep that connection to my work that I seem to have strayed from. I knew the other methods were there, I just had spent so much time on the wheel that my brain wasn't processing anything else. I need to keep the cerebral cortex firing on ALL cylinders, and connecting thoughts. D'oh.

Night.

~Brilliance and Light

A very Proud Halloween, and religious sadness (but mostly rambling)

Last weekend was Atlanta Gay Pride, and I had the opportunity to go. It was an absolute blast. Ally went as an organization event, and we stayed at the home church of one of the members and former officers. We arrived Saturday evening and got settled in, then everyone else went out to party a bit. I had some very interesting reading, was very tired, and had the suspicion -confirmed- that the security system might not be generous enough to let them in if they got back after midnight, so I stayed at the church. We all went to church there (Saint Mark's United Methodist) Sunday morning and then watched the parade. The route leads right in front of the church, so we got seats on the curb facing the church and had an excellent view of the parade.

Although I had a full battery when it started, my camera died right before the end of the march, so I missed a few good shots, including a man who'd painted himself into a rainbow and donned a suit of bubble wrap--JUST a suit of bubble wrap. I did get a picture on a friend's camera, though.

After the parade we went down to the park and walked the booths for a bit before heading back to school. All around, pride was amazing, hilarious, inspiring, and kind of sad in some ways. St. Mark's was very welcoming and open, had rainbows all over the chapel and had a speaker from the Human Rights Campaign. Even though the woman whose church it was had told us it was a welcoming and accepting church, I felt anxious before the service over wearing my "gay tag," a rainbow dog tag on a chain.

I am a gay/bisexual, trans-spectrum human being, predominately identifying as a female. I am a Christian. I feel that God loves me, and He/She will always love me and I should strive to live as morally straight a life as possible. Jesus said,

³⁰And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (with your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. This is the first and principal commandment.

^{³¹The second is like it and is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31)}

And I try. And I often fail, because I am human, and I am a fallen creature. But He/She loves me anyway. Knowing that, I get little love from The Church. I felt honest surprise -joy, elation, relief, giddiness, a real sense of rightness, but also surprise- when the actions and words of everyone I heard in that church actually matched the professed acceptance. That church made me happy, but my surprise makes me that much more aware of how far I feel I have been pushed or have willingly retracted myself from the established church.

I loved church as a child, and still do to some extent. Though not by any stretch of the imagination a singer, my most earnest form of worship has always been through music. Whenever I have attended a church without a good music program, I have felt that my communion with God has been stifled or limited in some way. While I am not currently attending regularly, I make a point in my personal worship to listen and sing songs that seem to have a deeper spirituality. It helps.

{{This is where the pictures are supposed to be, but We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. My camera would let me look at the pics, then it gave me generic icon images, then it died, so we'll see how generous it's feeling after a recharge and a stern talking to.}}

You'll just have to make do with pictures of protesters from another march/ pride/ something. I found this on Pundit Kitchen and it made me happy.

see more Political Pictures

This post was a lot more rambling than I intended, and didn't focus on what I'd originally planned on posting, but I've been meaning to do a post or two on religion (Cameron got a bug in my ear for that), so here you go. Deal with it, oh three people who read my blog.

~Brill

Art First

I am an artist. I do things like stop in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at the spaces between tree branches. Yesterday I spent three hours in the early morning printing my lithograph with my professor for Print I, and, as I am a messy person, needed a bath after classes ended. In the shower I noticed that my arm had 2 intersecting lines of ink that had smudged in a very interesting way. Thinking it was a noteworthy design that I could probably recreate to good effect in a monotype, I automatically washed everything but that area so I could reference it later.

Then realized what I'd done, and nearly hurt myself laughing.

I am an artist, and I think the fumes are getting to me.

A brief note

I scooted my chair forward and heard a clink. I checked the floor around my desk and lo and behold there were coins on the floor! I am now 56 cents richer. Go me.

Enh...and stuff

Long time no blog, and all that. School hit me upside the watch like a ton of bricks, and what little time I have left is devoted to an intensive study of Lolcats. A flash-thru of my last few weeks:

--We've had midterms, and I have mostly Bs, though there's a possibility that I have an A in Women Studies and either an A- or B+ in French III, depending on what grades went in and how they were weighted.

--I like Printmaking. I feel as if I should do some kind of penance for uttering such blasphemy, but I like it. Mainly the monotypes, but the lithograph was its own brand of fun, even if I didn't sleep any time near the turn-in date. I want to take Print II next year. (Still feels blasphemous, mostly because the teacher is a taskmaster of epic proportions. Interesting, but assignment overload.)

--I have lots of work to do in Ceramics in the next 5 weeks. Most of a dinnerware set for two, a sculptural series involving the tree forms I've been developing for a few years, and a "choice series." A doodle carving I did on a pot out of frustration ended up pretty good, and Mr. Sir suggested working that theme into my set. I have started carving the cups, and already know that I'm going to have to let the other pieces I want to carve dry to bone dry before doing much if not all of the carving. It is too difficult to remove carving refuse on even a moderately damp pot, whereas I can simply blow it off of the dried pieces as I did on the sketch pot. Whee for process development!

--We have had advisement for the next 2 terms (January and Spring). I will have 6 classes and a lab, 17 hours, and somehow only one class M/F. This still confuses me, and I'm the one who did the schedule.

--The good news (is it good? idk) is that after this year, I will have only one more requirement that is not a studio class or is not directly related to my senior show/year (e.g. Senior Seminar classes), and that class is yoga. I finally got into a science class, though I'll be doing half my 4th Ceramics course as a sort-of independent study- leaving Ceramics half way thru to go to Astronomy, then coming back during free time to complete the 3-hour class time.

--In non-school related news, I'm going to Atlanta Pride for Halloween! Our magnificent, excellent, and never-sufficiently-praised Ally secretary got us free lodging, some meals, and possibly gas money. I love her.

--It was before BS/LS week when last I blogged, so I shall say this: I have awesome littles! The week was a bitch, and if I had it to do over again I would do some things different (like getting sick. Not very, but wouldn't do that again), but the awesome, amazing gals I now have as Little Sisters made it SO worth it.

--I spent the first half of Fall break at Cameron and Dream Weaver's house. We went to Pagan Pride in Clemson on Saturday and froze nigh to death, but it was very fun overall. I got to learn about a new (to me) clay body from another vendor. She uses paper fibers mixed into her clay, and it gives the clay an airiness that shocked me the first time I picked a piece up. And the second time. And the next. I really need to look into this for future reference. Getting to visit with Cameron and Dream Weaver was wonderful, as was communing with cats (though not having one bite my neck).

--Da visited yesterday. It was a good visit, tho not very long. He was on his way home from a business meeting, and stopped in. It was very good to see him. He was the happiest I've seen him in months.

--I get songs in my sleep. Usually I can't remember them by the time I wake up, but some days I remember some. Today, I actually managed to recall or reconstruct 2 verses. It's things like this that make my morning. I just wish I knew enough music to write down the tunes.

Brain wants to go do something else now, so au revoir.

~Brill