Senior show fun.

Thursday I turned in my work for the senior show! Its was a bit late due to some unexpected time confusion and a meeting going on in the class room my stuff was in, but I got it in! Everyone was suposed to meet at 4pm to put everything up, and I needed my camera from dear Cody's apartment so i could print off a picture of how it was suposed to go up. The moment I left the school it started pouring down raining. As I ran into Cody's apartments Courtyard, i slipped on wet grass, landed on my left hand and hit my head on the concrete sidewalk.

Oh what fun that was, if hurt like the dickens, and my hand seemed like it was rather injured. Cody, being the sweet boy he is, rushed me around town looking for a walk-in clinic that accepted my insurence. It was a regular fiasco. I ended up finally getting in somewhere, and found out that i had "acute soft tissue damage in my left hand" but my head my fine, and I ended up with one hell of a bruise on my left theigh.

And while I was running around trying to recieve treatment, My teacher put up my senior show!
The recieption was great, i got alot of compliments on my work, and all in all, was very proud of myself. Its hard to believe I'm done with college.

Almost...theres still finals.

Its almost over

We had our Final cratique of our work the other day, and I put Allll my work up on the board. Its really a hell of alot of stuff.

All and all I was very happy with all my work, though our guest Cratiquer didnt have much to say to me in the way of weather or not he liked the work, just suggested I look into traveling. Then joel and I spent the rest of class figuring out how I would put up my stuff in the senior show which was due the next day. Heres what it should look like:
I'm not ready for school to be over.

Magnolia Village, trip 2

November 26th, Its family day at Magnolia village!
Children running around, playing games, families meditating and practicing Buddhism together. Piles of food layed out in the large Kitchen. What a day.

I dont get up as early as I did for trip 1, and get there around 11am, with my camera and drawing supplies. Its a beautiful and rather warm day, so i get to do planty of nice drawings of the children playing.

And Oh the food, so much yummy yummy food. White rice, vegatable soup, this green bean salad stuff that was delicously salty, fresh fruits, a yummy noodle mix, and these fruit jello squares that i cant even begin to describe how they tasted!

And it was someones anniversery, so there was cake, and the mood was just generally night and happy. My drawings turned out"spot on" according to Joel. Heres the best ones:

Color peices

Pretty much all my work this semester has been ink drawings, black ink drawings. One night i decided to change this up and work on come color ink drawings. The first one was great!

Joel incouraged me to do more, and although i didnt reach his mark of 10 more, the second was even more lovely then the first!

They are some of my favorate drawings this semester.

Magnolia Village, trip 1

I saw on the Dharma memphis website that once a month they have a sunday retreat day at this Buddhist retreat center called Magnolia Village. Magnolia Village is about an hour south of memphis in Mississippi, basically in the middle of nowhere. But it sounded like a really beautiful place, and the trip was suposed to include a whole day of activities. Activies I could potentailly draw!
So we were all suposed to meet at the Magnolia Village before 9am, meaning I needed to leave around 7:30am to give myself time not to get lost, which ment I was waking up around 6:30-7am. REALLY REALLY early. So make myself get up, start my drive south with a giant cup of coffee, spot a deer on my way there, and finally make it there about 15 min. until 9am.
Theres only one problem, I am the only person who shows up....

....But! This turns out to be just as good, i spend the day talking and drawing the daily activities of the Vietamese family that owns the grounds and runs the retreat center. They are possably some of the nicest people I have ever met, making sure i am comfortable the whole time I am there. It turns out to be a lovely day, I get a great home cooked vegitarian meal, and they gave me a book about the parrallels between the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. They also tell me that on Novenmber 26th, there will be a family day there, with lots of kids, and that i should definatly come. I certainly will!

Dragon seat meditation hall

After many attempts at finding this place, and getting confused with the temple which is not open at night, i finally figure out which building Dragon Seat meditation hall is. I am ever so glad I did too, because i met alot of really awsome people there!

Every thursday night, at 7pm, a group gets together to meditate and then hang out. I came early on this particular day to talk to some people. I met Lahma Kampou(I probably spelt that wrong) who was working on caligraphy, and we sat and had ourselves a chat about art and india and where he grew up.

It was a very enjoyable time, I did lots of drawing, met lots of local buddhists who didnt mind at all that I am Agnostic, and drank some good tea. Good stuff. Now with the Dragon seat drawings!

Monday night Community Meeting

On monday nights, at Quan Am Monestary, their is an english Buddhist community meeting. Usally I cannot attend these because i have class on monday nights, and the meeting is at 7pm. However one monday, I decided to skip and check it out. I'm very glad i did, because it was not only a very great drawing oppertunity, but the people were very nice and very informative. I got their early and hung out with the dogs, when A man named Leanard arrived. He is the one who organized these meetings, and it turns out is a graduite of MCA. So we talked about the school for awhile while he set up the chanting papers and meditation coushins and i set up my drawing supplies and paper. Two other women arrived, both in their 50's. Everyone was very nice, and I enjoyed my time there.

They started off with some meditation, then spent some time chanting, and instead of partaking in some walking meditation, we watched this rather long video about love and kindness.

They also informed me of the best night to go the Dragon seat medition hall, so that i could actually meet people. They also invited me to dinner with them that friday, though I concluded i didnt have the money to go.

Now here are the drawings!

Dragon seat meditation center.

So i caught wind of a neato Buddhist temple and Meditation center in north Memphis, so i naturally went to check it out. Its about 20. min. from midtown, and fairly easy to get to! Almost every night the meditation center is open for anyone who may want to meditate, and they have a very beautiful temple. My first visit was sorta in the middle of the day, and i did not expect to see many people. Though it turned out that i saw absolutly nobody! The grounds were as quiet as a sleeping lamb. So i tooke some pictures and did some drawings of the lovely statures they have there. They have 5 stature areas all together, including an outside Quan Am alter area, with little mini Lotas ponds, a big fat happy buddha statue, and a beautiful statue scene of Buddhas birth.

On my second trip I braught some large paper, and my supplies and this drawing of the Buddha's birth scene, and spend some time talking to the stay cats handing around the temple. Still no sign of human life.

More Buddhist studies

As i said in my previous post, i have been spending a good deal of time looking at Buddhist art and doing studies. Especailly on weeks where i cant seem to get in touch with the Buddhist cumminity. It gave me a chance to further learn about the Buddhist tradition, while keeping my ink skills sharp. I posted all the male buddhas here, which are not many. I supose that is because I am a female, so naturally i see the Buddha within myself as female which in turn makes alot of my buddhist figures females.

Gr to my schools staff.

Well, I have to admit, i am very disappointed. Latly I have been doing these ink drawing based on buddhist art i have looked at, and everyone in my class and my teacher agree's that I have been getting some really nice results. One of my peices(seen below) was based on the legend of how buddha's mother became pregnant with him. She dreamed one night about a white elephant who touched her tummy, and at the moment she became pregrnant.
Not long after I did this peice, my teacher told us of a show that was going up, and was kinda last minute, so if anyone had anywork with them, if they turned it in, it would probably be shown. I showed him some of the stuff I was doing, and he picked out my white elaphent peice to put in the show.

But to my disappointment, it did not make it in the show, and I lost my chance to add the show to my resume. Oh sadness...

I supose there is always next time.

My my my...those are some enlightened ladies.

As I have said in previous entries, I have been looking at a good bit of buddhist are for this project, and since I was going through something of a dry spell in finding the Buddhist hot spots here in memphis, I was keeping myself busy by emulating some of the art I have found. But of my favorate stuff has been nice expressive ink work, usaly using black ink. One see's this sort of thing often in the Sumi-e ink drawing technique, which is often practiced by Buddhist monks as a form of meditation. This technique is a great way to warm up for actual on site drawing, because it uses quick and precise brush strokes to paint a picture. The outcome is both beautiful and expressive.

So as I while not drawing Memphis buddhists, I have been letting myself become inspired by classic and contemporary buddhist art. In this post I shall post my female subjects. beautiful Buddhist ladies.

No pictures this time.

Well, the project is coming along agian, as i am starting to find out the best times to find the english speaking buddhists here in memphis. I never thought it would be so hard to find them, but it seems the very best times to go to the temples are those times while I am in web design...or when i want to sleep. Like sunday mornings! But Today i skipped webdesign class and went to a community meeting at Quan Am. this proved to be a successful trip and I got to do some drawings of the locals, all three of them. yes, there were only three in attendance, not including myself. But hey, its better then drawing statues and gardens. Plus i got some good info on other good times to find people, and got invited out to dinner this friday at a local chinese place that should be really good.

But as you may notice there wont be any pictures in this update, but there will be some soon. Latly all my work has been getting to big for my own scanner, so wednesday i will scan much of the work I have been doing. And i think i have been doing a good bit of work recently, most onsight drawings. I also starting doing some very nice naturalistic color ink drawings. Perhaps my senior show pictures may look like that.

So yeah...I promice to udate agian this week with freshly scanned art! and thurday i shall be off to the Meditation hall for more ink drawings!

Until then.....blessing from the Kitty goddess!

This week in memphis...

This was not the ost eventful week for my project. The main reason is that my mom was in town for the weekend and its midterms. And what can I say, My parents never visit me here in memphis, so I thought the visit deserved my attention. And the fact that she visited right at midterms does not help with how busy I shall be this week, but i was able to squeeze in a trip to the Buddhist temple on cleveland, and i did some talking to Debra Halstead about it. It turns out that it is closed to the public, but its in very good condition because the people who live around there keep up its garden and still visit. And it does have a beautiful garden!

I have also started the art for my portfolio presentation idea. You see i'm making something of a map, like an old fashioned treasure map or ship map. And I'm going to use it to display thumbnails of my art, then it will be folded up like a road map. The side without the map will have all my info on it like my artist statement and other projects I have worked on and so fourth. It should be fun!

And not for some art I scanned on my teachers giant scanner!

10am- Quan Am

Today was a very good day for my project. I got myself up in time to attend the english ceremonys at Quan Am monestary today, and got quite a treat! When i arrived a young man names Quartney gave me a tour of the inside of the monestary, and explained to me what everything was and who Quan Am is, it was very insightful. After that there was a 15 min. meditation fallowed by a question and awnser session with A Monk. There were about 5 americans there including myself. We discussed things like the difference between rebirth and reincarnation and the problems that our modern technologies pose upon us. It was all very interesting, and i got a chance to meet some american buddhist here in memphis.

After that there was a delicous vegitarian lunch of bean sprout salad, sticky rice, fried eggplant and pumpkin soup! The soup was very sweet and good. While we ate there was even more talking about how to be a mindful buddhist and about spreading love. I got to do even more sketching and writting.

I will definatly keep going there every sunday morning.

Last wednesday we had our first critique. Here are just a few peices I showed:
I guess i had a posative response for the most part, though Joel did say I needed to do even more, and start using a larger veriety of tools while drawing. Also that i needed to start going bigger. Our quest cratiquer asked alot of questing, and didnt give me a posative or negative resonse really, just sugested to maybe get some sumi ink, and perhaps look into studying some chinese caligraphy. He also said to make sure not to enter out of the realm of anthropology and into the realm of tourism, but i dont think I need to worry about that.

I want to go into the pen drawings i did today with some ink, and then scan them on the schools scanner. So those will be coming soon!

As always, Blessings from the Kitty Goddess!

I'm Alive!

Oh Blogger, I have been lazy haven't I?

I'm sorry, but I am happy to report that my Buddhist project is well on its way! I've found a temple very near to where I live, a place called the Quan Am monastery. I think that will be my main place of research. I found plenty of other places to visit, but its rather hard to find some of them. One of the temples is located in a rather shadey part of town, and although I had to trouble finding it, I don't feel comfortable going there alone. But that what boyfriends are for!

This Sunday I plan on going to Quan Am for their 10am Buddhist service, then I shall hand around and see if I can get anyone to talk to be and to do some more drawing. I have found that its been kinda hard to get people to talk to me, since I don't think many of the people at Quan Am speak English. But we'll see how it goes.

Now, as promised, I shall post some stuff from my Hindu project from last semester. I'll start with some sketchbook work, and then some of the paper I was making and them a few pieces of my paper.

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So there we Go. Either later tonight, or perhaps tomorrow I will upload some stiff I have been working on so far and tell the world how my first Critique went. Until The, Blessings from the Kitty Goddess!