Lately it’s been all about pushing the boundaries of the unknown. The untapped. The untried. Clarity and the like can come from such bold moves, but so can calamity. Reaching for the stars, skirting disaster. Beds of roses and brimstone, baby! Guess I had better start making some sense instead of talking in overly idealistic tones, huh?
The political landscape is changing. We’re now in the think of debate season and after one presidential and one vice-presidential round I’ve got renewed hope that we might just dodge the bullet of four more years of Bush. Kerry’s performance made George look like a deer in headlights and killed the post-Republican convention bounce, making this race a dead heat once again. If only G.W. could have taken some of Cheney’s talent for that affair, even though he took some stiff shots from Edwards on things like Halliburton and Bremer’s quote earlier in the day that “we never had enough troops on the ground” in Iraq.
The natural landscape is changing, as Mount St. Helens continues to rumbling and belch out steam and ash. Something is coming, but what exactly we’re not sure of. Unless the whole mountain goes boom I highly doubt it will be as spectacular as the blast from 1980, but it should be spectacular to see never the less.
The boundaries of space are changing. What used to be a realm for superpower governments has now ben kissed by the private sector, as SpaceShipOne has claimed the Ansari X Prize. While we’re not all living on cities floating in space with our rocket cars and our time shares on the moon, this is the first step that will make all that come to pass. The space tourists are already lining up to spend hand over fist for the opportunity to experience the thrill.
Even on a personal level, change abounds. I’m into week three of classes at the School of Visual Arts in their continuing education course, and enjoying the stimulation. The two disciplines: Flash and Illustration Basics.
So far, Flash has been all I expected of it: boring and repetitive for the first two weeks as we review the application and the tools, but interesting once we got into actual methods of animation, linking, actions and the like. While I probably could have learned this all from a book or two with some solo practice time, the structure and lecture parts are why I’m paying to learn. The assignment structure won’t hurt this scatterbrain, either.
As for Illustration Basics, everything about the class has exceeded my expectations to this point, and I don’t see that going downhill anytime soon. While I was under the assumption that this would involve sketching with pencil and paper, instead I’m now investing time in doing collages, working with acrylics and being heavily engrossed in our class discussions. My teacher has had works grace the cover of Time and Newsweek, so he knows what he’s talking about and I sit like the eager sponge to sop up all this insight and information.
The group of people in the class itself are the portrait of diversity: in race, in ethnicity, in backgrounds we are as dissimilar as you can possibly get. Yet, there is the common bond of our artistic interests and I’ve got the feeling that there is more in common with us that what separates us on the surface.
Times of change can be good times.
Tags: National, Personal, Politics, Science and Technology
Classes at SVA? Andy’s all growed up!