Author: Maria Benjamin

Last Lecture

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The Last Lecture is a book and lecture by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who has since passed away from cancer. It was founded on a tradition of professors being able to give on last lecture at the university on a topic of their choosing.

Randy wrote and spoke about how to accomplish your childhood dreams but it was also meant as a lasting legacy and lesson for his children.

For me this is my last post. I am graduating in December with a degree in communications and moving to Chicago for a new adventure. As I sit struggling through my last finals week there is a certain amount of satisfaction and enjoyment I have of this final finals week. I believe and have always believed I was meant to go to a large university and I was right, higher education isn’t for everyone, but it was for me. I look at all the things I’ve done but still question my expertise. I wonder if the work I’ve done in classes was really enough for a degree, to be universally acknowledged as having an amount of expertise in a subject matter.

That is that what I’ve learned here. Upon graduation or during school there are always things to learn and if you only learned the subject matter that is printed on your degree, your education is not whole. Being at the university has shown me what makes a friend for life and what a friend is that just passes through and to hold onto the people that will help you in life, not just for a day. There are people that are not worth keeping in your life and that’s okay. Everyone isn’t for everyone and energy should be focused on positive relationships not negative ones.

I have also learned you don’t have time you make time for the things you want in your life. If you want to be part of a club, have a social life or spend time on something outside of studying you have to make time for it. With the amount of work and readings classes handout you could spend time on little else. The University of Michigan has taught me so much about balance and prioritizing, because something will always try to take away time and we must make time for the things we love.

Lastly, I’ve learned failure is natural and it is how people cope with it that can define them. Coming here people told me it will be a hard adjustment to become “average,” because everyone is going to be smart and accomplished. The adjustment to being around other smart people was not difficult in the least. It was refreshing in all honesty. What was hard to adjust to wasn’t comparing myself to other people but comparing myself to the standards set by the university and the level you had to achieve at to get an okay grade. I failed classes, and many of my friends did poorly in classes that they needed to do well in. What people need to learn is to be okay with failure, to learn that it does not define everything but is a genuinely upsetting set back, but not something to be wallowed in. Roll around and be sad about it that’s fine but also learn to get up and figure out how to do better next time. Learning to be flexible and adjust to the wind so that a small problem stays small and don’t spiral has been one of my greatest lessons here. We all fall down sometimes and need to learn how to pick ourselves back up again but the staying down is what we need to fend off.

There is just so much to learn, and I hope your time at the university has been as magical and challenging as mine. Thanks for reading, Maria out.

No Other Art Forum Does What Video Games Do

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Video Games, unlike all other art forms, deny you access to the art form when you are bad at it. The below sketch certainly made me stop and think about it for a second.  (Warning! There are some crass terms/imagery in the video.)

I like video games but I am generally very bad at them unless it’s something like Simms where you just live the life of a person and the goals of the game are what the player decides.  Art does not deny the viewer in the same way video games do. Games in general produce this frustration for many. Dancing adequately for an album to continue or understanding a books metaphors is not necessary to finish or enjoy the content.

To me there is no doubting video games as art. I do wonder if the idea that gaming is the only art form that blocks certain people from joining it is true. People often talk about easter eggs and homages in content that others might not understand or notice. While a book may not spontaneously shut down on someone who can’t list the main themes, a particular reader might not fully appreciating a work because they lack the skill to think deeply about the content.

Perhaps this exclusion might be something that helps define art in comparison to crafty endeavors. Art not only needs a particular amount of skill to create it also needs a particular amount of skill to be understood. There are so many people who scoff at various modernist pieces and say that they could have made a piece or that it isn’t art. In a way there scorn might be something that helps define what art is.

This is not to say that all art is of the same quality and needs deep thinking to be understood but that many art styles may exclude viewers in the same way that video games do in a less obvious way.

Binge Watching Doctor Who

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This Thanksgiving and subsequent days off I decided to binge watch all the television I’ve wanted to watch because I either didn’t have time for it or don’t have a way to watch it.

My main goal was to catch up on Doctor Who. For those who are unfamiliar, Doctor Who is a British series that currently holds the world record for longest running science fiction television series. I follows the adventures of The Doctor, an alien that can travel through time and space. His space ship is a blue police box (British phone booth) called the TARDIS.

I caught up on the latest series and it really reminded me of why I love the series so much. The Doctor is extravagant and otherworldly but manages to see the best in people. He is always trying to force people to see more and be more. He traditionally has a human companion who exemplifies how no one is just “ordinary.” That everyone has something to offer and that no one is unimportant.  My favorite quote from the series embodies how being plain isn’t a barrier unless you make it a barrier.

“D’you know in 900 years of time and space, I’ve never met someone who wasn’t important before.” – The Doctor

The series has alway had such good stories to tell and has been handed down to many different actors and writers and throughout all that time it’s held onto a core personality. It shows both almost nightmarish scenarios of the future or what people will do to survive but it will also show a core element of compassion and second chances.

Doctor Who has been so long running that many fans are for life. People have watched the series as a child and now can watch it with their children. David Tennant an actor who played the 9th Doctor was a fan of the series before he was cast and has mentioned in interviews how he watched the series as a child.  It’s amazing how a television series can inspire so many people and hang onto such a strong fanbase.

 

 

As a piece of art it inspire so many derivative works. Perhaps that is the key to it’s success that through the other worldly adventures shown in the series, it helps people see themselves and others in a different light. Where people try to think of “what the Doctor would think” and the strong belief in kindness that is showcased.

Painting a Coloring Book

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Coloring was one of those things you did as a child. Taking your favorite characters and either scribbling all over their faces in colors that made no sense or meticulously choosing the right color and shading in the characters in a somewhat accurate way.

I’ve recently come to poses “Lost Ocean” a coloring book created by Johanna Basford that has lots of difficult designs and intricate patterns for coloring.

This is not mean for beginners with poor motor control to color but for a more practiced audience. Throughout my years at UofM I have heard the benefits of coloring as a child and as an adult expounded again and again. It helps relax people, it practices fine motor skills, and is an activity that requires just enough concentration but allows the mind to wander. In a sense I think it might even be like meditation for those who don’t want to sit in pure silence.

I really enjoy the art style of the book and am considering getting some of other coloring books by the same creator. When picking out this book I’ve decided to make the book a painting project. I enjoy painting, and have really wanted to work on creating depth with the medium.

The front cover of the book also inspired me with random golden highlights. I am a huge fan of metallic paints and how they show up much more to my liking than metallic colored pencil.

One evening I decided to break out the paints and start working. I have not gotten very far in my attempt yet. I discovered that some of the lines are so fine and the designs so intricate that I do not have a brush tiny enough to fit.

Trying to paint in such a small space with my thinnest brush really exposed some problems I’d never encounter before in painting. Sometimes the bristles of the brush wouldn’t be perfectly aligned creating random streaks where I did not want them covering over the original lines. It’s also easy to get too much paint on the brush, making weird blobs where I didn’t want them.

I am going to continue with this project after I find a thinner brush. I really think little projects like this really help gain new skills or just more patience. Practice makes perfect and being able to complete the whole book in the the style I want will be rewarding with having it look pretty but also hopefully improve my other skills, like patience and design work.

Inspiration

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In conversation with a tattoo artist recently, and he had said something to the effect of not always having ideas. Which seemed odd to me as an artist I would think he would be overflowing with ideas all the time, but then I thought about it more and everyone is different in their creative process.

As for me I feel like inspiration comes from everything. It’s about looking at something and finding something that I want to interpret as my own.

I found inspiration for a found objects project from the Canadian flag. I liked the colors of the maple leaf and decided to construct a tree out of coke cans. There it was, I received second place in an art competition with it, and idea that started from something I’d seen a million times, I just at the time felt the urge to interpret it in a way that was me.

My freshman year seminar, “The Science of Creativity” had us read a book about a lady who had very specific advice on how to be creative. You had to set aside a specific time to be creative every day hers was 6am in her dance studio (she was a professional dancer) and to me this seemed like good advice though perhaps misguided. This is the kind of creative experience that worked for her. She needed to have a specific time and place every day to be creative.

I believe creativity depending on the style does need planning but placing such a specific rigid format onto creativity doesn’t make sense. For me, sure having a class with a devoted time and place helps me produce art work consistently, but that is not the space for everyone.

For some it’s a random happenstance of events that inspires them and for others it is always a specific kind of space that leads to creativity. In my mind it’s sort of like paper writing. Some people really do take all two weeks to write a paper, but others write it 4hrs before it’s due and to be honest I fall into the latter group. I do not think that one or the other is a better way of doing things. Having a deadline and pushing that limit produces a unique headspace for me where connections make more sense and my grades would agree. There is no right time or way to do it so long as the paper is turned in on time, and I believe creativity and art works in a similar way.

You can ask as many people as you want what inspires them but that only gives insight into their process not how to be creative for yourself. The secret isn’t held in one method. The secret to finding inspiration and producing work is figuring out a personal plan, for isn’t that art to begin with? Using your own method to show the world how you see it and who you are.

Sewing is No Joke

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Fashion has a reputation for being a bit vapid and arbitrary. I mean how can something I wore last week become outdated this week? I will never understand that but I now have some understand of how difficult it is to make some of the things that come down the runway. I learned my lesson through practice. This past summer I worked for a Renaissance festival  and had to create my own pirate garb. It cost me much in the way of money and emotional turmoil. I was given a basic outline of what I’d need to do so that my costume looked period and was held responsible for its creation.

 

 

I have been involved in many different art disciplines including metal working, ceramics,and drawing, but I have never been so distraught as when I attempt to sew. Proportionally I have realized that when putting together clothing very little of your time is actually the sewing part. The better part of my time was spent in cutting my upholstery grade fabric. The fabric I was using cost $15 a yard, meaning any kind of mistake that ruined the fabric would be a costly one. I, of course, had a very slippery fabric which made every moment of cutting anxiety inducing as the fabric would try to slither away from my shears. This also required a lot of space, meaning I was laying on the floor with yards of fabric unrolled as I attempted to cut straight lines and not cut the carpet. The whole process didn’t get any easier once I’d finish cutting my pieces.

Then I got to the actual sewing part. Which took a lot of machine prep in treading the machine with the proper color while making sure the machine was clean and ready to use. Then came the actual sewing. Sewing is more a balancing act than I imagined. I had to guide the fabric I was sewing through the machine with my right hand, careful to keep everything even, while holding the weight of the fabric in my left hand. Because my project was so big the weight of the fabric would try to pull the fabric away from the needle making uneven edges. All while controlling the speed of the machine with my foot. On occasion I would have to rip out entire lines of work and redo them due to attaching the wrong sides, running out of thread, or just plane old sloppy lines that I wouldn’t be able to live with. What you might not know is that not all sewing can be done on a machine. I didn’t know this either. I had a few boarders of color that required me to hand sew all the finishing touches.

Now that I had the majority of the work done, I still had more finishings to do. For my bodice I had grommet the front so I would have a way to lace it closed. This involved cutting tiny holes in the fabric to then hammer down metal circles that would be used for lacing. Relatively speaking it didn’t take very long to do, but by that time I was so ready to be done with the project.

At the end of a very long few weeks I had completed my bodice for renaissance festival. The sad part was after all those hours of sewing, and poking myself with pins (I literally bled for this) my garb was a size too small. Somehow I had miscalculated my size creating a bodice that wouldn’t close. I tried for several times to wear it but ended up pulling the grommets out. I wanted to cry. Thankfully, my mother was able to salvage the piece by adding an extra panel to the front to finish it.

After  creating a relatively simple outfit from scratch I have a new found understanding and respect for fashion. It is not easy to get pieces to line up and execute a vision, I couldn’t even manage to make the right size, yet designers somehow do it time and time again.