aSoSS 28 | Assumption

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

You don’t need to be working when you’re not getting paid. Don’t make a habit of it, because when you leave college, people will take advantage of it.

Central Campus Classroom Building, 10:00AM, 8/25/2024

the lighthouse beckons. why do you listen? you’ve seen the scars: salmon slashes, tally marks against a dungeon. you call them bruises of honor, a spirit lived in pitcher and storm, throat muddy from screaming in the rain. bow, says the wind, and you do, with your knees in the sand and your face in the bowl of your hands. prayer or punishment? stop trying. the lighthouse blinks once, twice, and then winks out.

Summer reading for engineers? Summer reading??

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 10:30AM, 8/27/2024

the seasons flit past–flecks of paint, a crumbling castle, an anchor in an empty sea. i drag my feet against the asphalt; i find solace all the insufficient ways in the way only a prisoner can. time dilates from within, a scrap the size of a single breath. a flattened lung, once composed of its consumptions, carving out my chest from the inside. i watch, delirious, as my name is etched into a headstone. they will throw my body out into the desert, a skull to be labeled an ancient and nameless king.

Is he really that short? I mean, he’s short but not short short. I guess five four.

Cancer Center Inbound, 3:00PM, 10/17/2024

we must be accepting of the things we cannot control. like two leaves skating the upward draft, we drive each other dizzy with our tongues (straight and sharp as quartz, a lesson in diffraction–light and feeling, are they really separate?) is it man versus man or me versus you? there’s a difference, even if you don’t admit it. i stare at the mirror, at the figure that plays with my hair and presses falsities into my mouth and avoids my eyes, and i know that no amount of time will turn it into a friend.

Witness the Small Life – Blue (Da Ba Dee) ’98

Mia Lambert Leave a comment

Blue! A color we know all so well. From skies to clues to moons, it’s everywhere around us. Did I deliberately make this entry blue or did I just decide on the spot and based the entire post around it? The world will never know…

I wanted to try out a new style for the graphic and I had a lot of fun messing around in Photoshop and finding random scans I took of items in my backpack. I also decided to bring back out the reason why I started digital art at my peak artistic era (middle school fan art), aka my first Wacom drawing tablet. Although the cord has wires sticking out of hack-jobbed tape (desperately needs to be replace) and I have no clue what bindings I have on the buttons, I had a really fun time relearning and using this first baby of mine. When I was a kid I got so very into My Little Pony speedpaints that I started to make my own with MS Paint, my laptop’s trackpad, and a dream. Eventually I got frustrated with the limitations of the curve tool and the tedious nature of the fidgety trackpad so one Christmas I asked for a simple Wacom tablet. When I got it, I immediately jumped on my grandparents’ old Dell computer and downloaded the first free and reputable drawing program I could find (shout out FireAlpaca). From there, I entered the world of digital art and its expansive realm headfirst and I got completely lost in the endless experimentation. I grew from my fan artistic roots and started creating my own worlds and my own characters, drenched in ultra saturated colors and terrible proportions. Digital art is what really launched my love of storytelling in my artwork and what pushed my idea of what art could be. During the pandemic, due to so much technology fatigue, I started to revert back to the traditional mediums I knew or wanted to become better at so then my Wacom got put on the shelf and forgotten. Over the years I got new tablets or laptops that replaced the use of my Wacom and I generally gravitated away from digital art as a whole. In the past year, for both this blog and for personal pieces, I’ve picked back up the practice of digital work but wanting to find a way to combine my deep love for physical media and mediums. Through bringing back my Wacom and exploring the use of digital collage of my real life objects I feel like I’ve been able to explore the ways in which I can try to find this balance I’m longing for. It’s also been encouraging to feel like I’m able to connect with my digital-passionate younger self again and feel the same kind of giddiness she felt when she got to use this tablet for the first time. I feel like we think of progress as a shedding of the past for a blank slate of a future. I think in some cases this is the truth, but I’ve come to recognize how so much of my own personal growth and artistic progress is rooted in building upon the work I made and person I was and recognizing the ways in which I still carry those things into my future. It’s exciting to me when I get to bring pieces of my past into my present actions, and my Wacom tablet has been a most recent example of this. I’d like to see the ways in which I can continue to experiment and explore these old and nostalgic pieces of my artistic life in my growing future, especially within my work as an art student.

To take into our next week:

Ins: Fluffy socks, ink stamp pads, linear burn blending mode, RPG maker games, blue jeans, obnoxious scarves, clothes hangers.

Outs: Dry skin and not doing anything about it, pretending you don’t know people you’re acquaintances with even though you both know you know each other, the word “belch”, sleeping an extra 10 minutes, unpainted nails.

Enjoy the sun while we still can and I hope you all can find the pieces of your childhood in your present and how they shift colors and take new shapes!

A Side of Sketching – Signs of Fall

Kendelyne Leave a comment

Hello! The past few weeks have been full of traveling for me, so this spread was drawn in the car. It’s a synthesis of some of the most notable changes and symbols that I associate with the month of October: falling leaves, warmer clothes, pumpkin spice lattes (although I’ve never actually had one .ᴖ.), wool hats, digital cameras/retro technology, and pumpkin carving! Dressing in layers and wearing puffy coats is one of my favorite parts of this time of year, and I’m really enjoying meandering through campus as the leaves change and fall.

Bursley Bucaneer: Jada “Barbie” Smith

Arushi Singh Leave a comment
PIRATE SHIP FACT reference: The one room
Jada “Barbie” Smith

PIRATE SHIP FACT: Captains and higher-ranking members had private sleeping quarters, while common sailors slept in one room.

Friday, October 9th – 2:30 a.m.

The CLC was intended to be a space for community learning, so it was aptly named the “Community Learning Center” of Bursley. Yet, sometime around 12 a.m., the room transforms into what is essentially a medieval tavern. The congregation of computers, whiteboards, and comfy seating flips on its head to reveal the conversations waiting to be verbalized by those who were “studying.” Regardless of the assignments untouched and the essays left not started, laptops become cold to the touch as yapping and DoorDash orders commence. In this setting, after that time, is where Jada shared her story.

As an international student from Trinidad, Jada is one of three students she knew from her country to have gone to Michigan (and one of two Jada Smiths, a name she told me raises eyebrows in a “post-slap” society). During her college application process, even her counselor was unsure on how to help her apply internationally, forcing her on a journey paved by her own volition. As a result, Jada is a person of infinite professions. She truly is a Michigan “Barbie.”

Once the clock strikes twelve, the CLC partially turns into a gymnasium. It starts with a simple “hey dude can you do a cartwheel” and then ten seconds later everyone is trying to do backbends around the computers. In our lounging conversation, gymnastics came up as one of Jada’s activities from back home. She casually dropped that she was a gymnast and children’s instructor back in Trinidad, and that she could do a backflip. Obviously, I collectively rallied for a demonstration, but she said the ceilings were too low. So instead, with true showmanship, she did an aerial (an insane cartwheel with no hands). Meera (another Bursley Bucaneer) took a video that I’ve linked above.

On the theme of showmanship, Jada also included that she was a NATIONAL radio show host in Trinidad for a teens’ station. She would play music, take calls, and post her broadcasts on her Instagram, which went out across the Island. Through her Instagram reels, she showed videos of her breaking it down in the station while wearing the sickest outfits. Imagine yourself in her shoes; the second the microphone light goes red, you’re live in front of your country. However, if anyone is bound to establish a lack of personal pressure from that situation, it’s Jada.

Her expansive resume is only the tip of the iceberg. Here at Michigan, Jada is studying mechanical engineering. Considering every conversation freshman year starts with someone’s major, it was one of the only things I knew about her before our CLC chat. She studies hard, flips high, and radio-hosts (custom verb) powerfully.

In this blog series, I plan on giving each Bursley pirate ship member a nickname that attempts to encapsulate their story. Completely in character, Jada just happened to be wearing a Barbie sweatshirt that early, early Friday morning.

Whether Jada becomes a mechanical engineer, or a gymnast with a radio station about the field of mechanical engineering, I can’t wait to see what step Bursley’s “Barbie” takes next.

Yours sincerely,

Captain Singh

(NOTE: This author is not in any legitimate position of power. They just smugly decided to call themselves the “Captain,” apologies).