I'm working on a manifesto.

What is it with being hungry at 2:30pm? I ate breakfast around 9 AM and bumped up my afternoon espresso to 11:15 AM. Wasn’t that enough? This business of scarfing down pop tarts as soon as I get home has got to stop.

Last semester, my key broke off and I couldn't get a working replacement key for around 8 weeks. Every Saturday, I tried to have faith that the replacement key would be in my mailbox or that it would be the right key, but no. I was locked out of the prop room, my classroom and my office until I walked over to campus police and requested they unlock the doors. And not to make light of people who don’t have another solution, but it tuned out the locksmith committed suicide shortly after my dilemma began, which might explain the wait. I was patient.

This semester, it’s the lights. More than half the lights in my classroom don’t work. I just hope the electrician isn’t burnt out too.

Enough of my gallows humor and bad puns.

Tomorrow is a holiday. Yay! My studio time is suffering from being broken up into teeny chunks of time before class and after class. Who am I kidding? There were no chunks this week at all. I did walk into the studio and stare at a painting. That counts for something. And this is how spaced I've been this week-I showed up an hour early today for office hours and didn't realize until 5:15 as I was leaving class, that it was Wednesday and that I had already held my 2 hours of office time on Monday and Tuesday.

I am going to work in the studio all day tomorrow. Chores be damned.

Oh right, the manifesto. It's a work in progress, so I'll piecemeal it out at the end or beginning of the upcoming posts. I'm still considering the purpose of my manifesto, but I think it's heading in the direction of how to rein in some of the chaos in my life and live a more peaceful, purposeful and prosperous life as an artist.
Beginning with:

All work made from this date on must fit in the trunk of my car.

I am like a trained surgeon

It crushed me to leave a painting in such a disastrous state overnight in the studio, but since my studio time is broken up into mornings and evenings for now, I do what I do and have to let go abruptly in order to be at class or go to bed. Working through the night to fix a painting is not a solution; they need breathing time. So rather than putz around and take a coffee break etc. I simply wash up and hope that leaving them alone will allow me to get a fresh perspective. And it does. My role as Modern Prometheus, although questionable, has prepared me for these near death experiences and I'm happy to report I pulled another one back to life.

I'm tired. It's been a long day.

Fun vs. Hard Work and the Modern Prometheus

Summer session. Day 2. I've already lost one student because supplies were expensive and because I could not guarantee him an "A" for showing up and trying. And even though he's in college, his mom said that she thought basic supplies like pencils, sketchbook, drawing pads and portfolios should be furnished. Plus all the supplies were going to be too much to carry around. In the end, it was "too much just to take for fun."

It would never occur to me to take a drawing class for fun. When I was in college, I took Emerson and Thoreau for fun, along with a ROTC riflery class.

I was willing to work with him on the supplies. I suggested a shoebox instead of a fancy art bin and told him how to make a portfolio from sturdy cardboard or poster board. I stopped short of suggesting he dig up some graphite or char his own wood.

Report from the studio-
Dammit, they are kicking my ass again. I thought one of the paintings was headed in a "too precious" direction and I totally f*cked with it. I feel awful. I really should stop anthropomorphizing them. I don't imagine any one else feels guilty for harassing a painting.