aSoSS 06 | Expectations

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

He’d say something horrendous and then turn and look at me and be like “right?” Um, no??

– Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 12/1/2023

humans are strange creatures. with which other species is the support of one is enough to guide the gaze of a hundred? we come up with words and use them to convince others that the words we utter are true. have you ever met a false preacher? don’t let the robe deceive you — as harry frankfurt says, bullshit is not false, but phony. you flop like a fish out of water. are you acting to sell, or are you selling your act?

We can style people’s hair but we have to have neutral hairstyles ourselves.

Exactly, it doesn’t make sense. The times are changing…

In-N-Out, 1:30PM, 12/12/2023

i meet you outside the gates of the airport. for some reason, i was afraid i wouldn’t recognize you. you’d cut your hair, i noticed. i later learn that this was in a time of crisis. why wasn’t i there to support you? i was scared. your face splits my vision, like a crystal of ice in the sunshine. emeralds glisten. i reach out to grab them — your hands, your gemstones — and they are cold, impossibly so. my fingers burn. you melt away and stain the epoxy, streaks of luggage mixed with strands of your hair.

Yeah, I’m a senior this year.

How’s that going?

It’s pretty busy… when I’m not at school or working I hang with my friends a lot… my mental health is basically dependent on being able to see my friends, so I’m not home a lot, I know my mom doesn’t like that…

Hong Kong Gifts, 12:00PM, 12/16/2023

a quiet disconnect from reality. i am four again and watching from waist-height as high school students sip and chatter away. time passes through a polaroid: oblique, grainy, heavily accented. i remember sitting at a cafe and watching a young child stare. i was that student once, just once, before i met you. perhaps i stared my way into your life, just as your eyes stared their way into mine. friends, lovers, students, mothers. i am four again, but this time i look away.

Capturing Campus: December

EKArts Leave a comment

Heaven on Earth

are you born from the snow

an angel? 

or something real

phosphorescence, incandescence

I double over at the sight of you

you call my name

I’ll carry you

to the Heavens

we’ll rise

but I’ve forgotten

my back doesn’t come with wings

so you rise while I

f

     a

           l

               l

all I want is too high

so I lay in the snow

where I found you

Industrious Illustrating #50 – Autumn of Artwork

Robin Leave a comment

Hello! It’s been a while since my last post — I ended up more busy with finals than I expected, and then I threw myself into making more artwork right after I finished my last final project. This entire semester I’ve been writing how-to guides and overviews of art business-related topics, but I think it’s about time I went back to talking about my own artwork for column #50!

Since I didn’t take any art classes this semester (unless you count Intro to UX), all my artwork from this semester is personal work or commissions rather than academic work. Most of this artwork was specifically for prints and small merchandise that I could sell at conventions, sometimes of original ideas (e.g. a fat squirrel wood pin) but mostly fanart of existing media properties. Because of how much of my time was taken up by programming/website design classes, I didn’t make as many fully rendered paintings as I would’ve liked and focused more on simplified artwork that I could finish in one or two sittings. I think it says a lot that my artwork output from November to today (mid-December) looks something like this:

Even then, I’m still overall proud of how much progress I made this semester both in terms of developing my art abilities and my business. I think my rendering has made significant and visible leaps above my artwork from last year, for one thing, and I’m getting better at making my artwork look more appealing from a design standpoint.

I’d like to highlight that the one original character piece I drew this semester (besides artwork for Flamechaser that I’m not posting publicly yet) was this piece I drew for Digipaint’s Fall 2023 zine “Dreams and Nightmares”, which will be printed next semester:

It features Wenet Tozawa (purple-haired girl) and Rashida Kuromiya (pink-haired girl) intertwining their fingers through a plane of water. This piece is supposed to represent the feeling of seeing a familiar face in a dream and reaching out toward them.

I personally really enjoy drawing my OCs and would like to make more artwork of them, but I also want to make a lot of new merchandise designs before the convention season hits again next year, and my energy and time are both very limited… I applied to a bunch of major conventions happening next spring/summer, so I’ll probably be discussing anime convention application results next semester!

I may or may not be making more posts over winter break — it really depends on whether or not I have anything to talk about. If I don’t, I’ll still be posting next semester anyway, so see you guys soon!

When my legs become the white noise crinkling from the tv in a storm

Mattie Grace Levy Leave a comment

This is where my voice is 

Socotra coffee house is a sea of color

And when I order my small adeni chai I feel at home in a language I don’t understand

My heels hanging on to a metal seat frame 

Typing busy bees, the meaning of indeterminancy, and complaints of capitalism

“And when you cross this divide, you’ll get what we’ve all been denied” 

I call my mother because I’ve finally found the right line

Note from the poet:

This is the first poem in the new Written in red series, which are poems focusing on the personal, creative, and political

My stomach is empty

Mattie Grace Levy Leave a comment

But I can’t eat

I’m sitting on a couch 

The same couch where one message from you once caused my hands to shake has me shaking again

The same couch where I finished my musical

Where I kissed a mistake 

Wrote emails and gossiped and found crumbs 

My stomach is empty 

But I can’t eat 

“Once I’m done with people they’re gone” 

You’re gone but your name has never come up more

I’m thinking of you hoping to rewrite your name into acceptance 

Or suppressing every thought to forget your presence 

Maybe if I get rid of all your stuff I’ll feel full 

if I go to Blue Llama if I go to Pinball Pete’s maybe I’ll be comfortable in chaos 

My stomach is empty but I cannot eat 

I can’t watch anything I’ve never seen 

I cry when I can’t ge a refund for a cake at coldstone

I sleep with my back aching under LED lights at christmas time

…

When the pit passes 

I find a few moments where I’m freed

My stomach is empty and I see through the haze

I finally eat 

Before one message sets me off again

aSoSS 05 | Finals

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

I’d be stressed about my grade but it’s too much energy to be stressed so I just accept it.

Union Basement, 1:30PM, 12/8/2023

worry is a tranquilizer. it paralyzes you under your covers, on your phone, in your dreams. it seeps into your bones and dulls your tongue. what’s the point? the two hours are going to pass whether you like it or not. the storm does not wait for you to board up your windows. hunker down and persist, or perish. or maybe you won’t. the hurricane will tickle the roof above your head, a gentle brush with the back of a scarred palm. let this be a warning. you will be ready next time, you think — if there is a next time…

It was just the two of us and a bunch of books. In the Hatcher basement! I was like “where are we going? Are you going to murder me?”

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 12:00PM, 11/28/2023

what if we were to soak up information like a sponge? the logarithms of knowledge are beyond comprehension. even with all of hatcher tucked away, what else lies beyond? the madness of multiplicity: in seeking understanding in one subject, you invariably uncover another… these are the consequences of grasping at infinities we will never see. an expanding edge of space. the horizon, and nothing beyond. who could live with this? a murder would be the easy way out. history defeats itself.

I spent a lot of time crying over question 1, so if anything goes wrong… that’s probably where it started.

Panda Express, 1:00PM, 12/8/2023

the symbiotic relationship between the student and the exam should be carefully examined. there is a certain kind of irony in learning everything but the information: the highlighted color (blue), the study location (panera, but only on mondays), the back of your shoe rubbing against a bouncing heel — if anything, is this not a more finely attuned case of studying? perhaps if you committed to watching espn while transcribing notes you would remember the transcriptions and not the fantasy numbers, or the missed flags, or the post-game interviews. yet this fails as well. a strange phenomenon!

if all else fails — in case of emergency — wipe your tears on question 1 and turn to question 2.