Michaela on Art and Process

During the college application process, I wrote pieces that allowed me to discover my unique way of writing.  My tutor Sandy Charlap gave me words including "process," "time," "unbroken," "control," "tendrilling," and "memory" to describe freely. She also gave me questions, but once I felt comfortable I took control and continued this process on my own by asking myself questions. That’s where I found my voice with words and that voice interconnected with art. 

I’ve always had a feeling for art, but I never really experienced it. In the tenth grade, I learned art can be something bigger than what I expected.  I started by drawing boxes, learning about line, proportion, and value structure. I shifted from just making art to having an immense understanding and desire to be an artist. Exploring different ways of working, collaging, stamping, incorporating wallpaper, paint, pastel, and charcoal in unfamiliar ways.  I always ask myself, "What happens if I try this?" I am not afraid of the unknown. I actually think those moments of not knowing are the best ones. Not knowing where an unbreakable work of art will take me is fascinating. Some art work effects me and my passion for creating by transforming into the unknown. The experience of not knowing is awakening, an adventure I am willing to take. Every day is a process of transformation. I am becoming a strong artist by taking what I have learned into my voyage.  For me that evolution is tendriling. The light ahead of the tendril, uncoiling. I am the tendril, uncoiling into existence. My tendril is moving toward abstraction.

I have been forming a collective of artists who I am influenced by like Henri Matisse, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Brice Marden, Bonnard, and Judy Pfaff.  I have learned how to “steal like an artist” by taking ideas and making them part of my work. Judy Pfaff, as an artist, influenced my determination to move in new directions. Last year, I developed an installation called “Deep Space.” My interpretation of the universe. Having the freedom and space to create is meaningful.

I have the ability to want, have, or leave it.

And the last ingredient is time……
I process slowly, and it is not always easy to express myself in words. My art is my voice. I am quiet but my mind isn’t. My art speaks in ways my voice cannot. Being in the studio at my school and creating is my sanctuary. It is a place where I find my true self. Escaping in a world where I have power.

One piece of work for an eternity.
giving me the time and freedom to explore.
but my most precise and powerful work is shown when I am given time.

I take my time and present with my best effort. 
When I am creating, I am not worrying about time.
It flies by like a streak of wonder.
The urge and motivation to not stop creating.

I suffer displeasure leaving my work in a rush of swirling ideas. 

I have become independent, by making my own decisions in art by allowing my strength to come forward. I create my own choices with out having a specific ending in mind. My process reveals what comes next.

I applied to seven schools and got into every one of them with scholarships!

 

All photos (and the artwork presented therein) created and shared by Michaela.

Micki: An Installation Space Emerges

Micki is increasingly exploring the universe and cosmological entities (such as supernovae and black holes) according to her strengths:  visual art and poetry.  Her inquiries have provided her - and the IP community - with profound artistic representations of the unimaginable. Now she wishes to capture the same experience for Kildonan students, faculty, and community members.

Micki quickly realized that she needed a small room, a studio with which she could realize her vision of three-dimensional experiences.  After some initial inquiries, the IP faculty are happy to report that a space has been located!

Kildonan's administration has proven gracious by granting Micki exclusive access to a room that the IP community has affectionately termed "Room 9 3/​4" (a sly reference to Harry Potter).  This area is located next to Ms. Gross's Spanish class (Room 10) on the second floor of the Schoolhouse.  The pictures accompanying this post were taken during a recent exploration of the room by Micki, Ms. Charlap, and Mr. Bisson.

Do you have thoughts on Micki's space or research? Please post in the comments section below.

Misha: "Mending Wall," by Robert Frost

A dedicated and mature young man, Misha is pursuing an interview with an expert in the real estate industry.  In the meantime, he is not only reading a valuable how-to manual designed for novice agents but also has begun to explore Robert Frost's more poetic, philosophical perspective on land development.

(Robert Frost, pictured above.  This photo was located at biography.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above image.)

An American poet often exploring realism in rural settings, Frost offers a unique view of property in his poem "Mending Wall."

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Tell us what you think of the poem (and Tom O'Bedlam's reading) in the comments below.

"Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Bull's passage reminds me of a piece that Matthew Philipose introduced in the beginning of the year:  "Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I met a traveller from an antique land, 

Who said—'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; 

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Go, IPians.  Go.  Continue to strive as scholars and - in the process - surpass revered authorities and incarnations of Ozymandias.

For Shelley's poem, please follow the next link:  http:/​/​www.poetryfoundation.org/​learning/​poem/​175903.  Or, to hear Tom O'Bedlam's reading of the poem, please consult the video below:

(An illustration of Ozymandias.  Picture located at "Invisible Children" blogspot.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above image.)