Cameron

I spent this last week working on a really interesting assignment for my class Studio Projects: Land and Sky. We were challenged to make multiple plaster casts of an object and then install it into a landscape to evoke an interesting relationship between the two. I’ve always been interested in installation art, and I was really excited to work on this project. Evergreen’s campus also provided lots of opportunities for a site, and I fell in love with the one I chose to work in. Amazingly enough it was a place on campus that I’ve never been to before.

I was struck by the white trunks of some dead cedar trees and I was drawn this incredible stump that felt like an altar. I chose to cast a section of a branch I found at the site, and as I cast them, I set a steel wire in the base so that they could be stuck into the ground and stand up. When I led my class to it, I gave them all a stick that I collected form the site, and I asked that they leave it somewhere on their journey. That way, they would have a piece of the landscape to take with them on the trail, and since many people left their sticks at the altar stump, the piece became an interactive and shared experience.

Anyways, here are some pictures and my artist statement:

Artist Statement:

With its back turned to the well-known path and the towering buildings, an ancient ghost sits and quietly stares into the woods. It is visited by the sunrise and birds and leaves and moss, but rarely humans. Even though it is in plain view from the buildings, it just looks like a normal stump from there. But when you wander past the pavement and the garden and into the forest, careful not to step on any little mushrooms, you can stand face to face with the ghost stump, which opens up like and altar, letting you know you are in a special place. Looking around, you realize you have in fact entered an entirely different world, a secret room that is only noticeable once you are inside it. It is calm, private, and still, yet only a few feet away from the busy cement world. From here you can sense life and death slowly chasing each other in circles. How did you end up here? You followed a trail of small ghostly statues, barely visible except to those who know treasure lies just off the beaten path, and their story is what you make of it.

It’s the end of week 3, and autumn has already wiped its feet at the door and invited itself in to stay a while. I find myself watching great misty clouds shift around in the sky and conceal mountains; and everywhere I look the leaves losing their chlorophyll stipple yellow orange and red spots on a backdrop of evergreen trees. I guess it was 85 degrees today in Fullerton. But I’m not jealous. Fall here is actually quite stunning.

I’m also really excited about all the things I’ve got in the mix. My classwork is starting to pick up, and I have lots of reading and an essay and a project all due next week. But that doesn’t mean I can’t find time to skateboard with my friends. We started an unofficial skate club, and we take any sunny day as an opportunity to shred. I have also been busy starting an official art club at school called “Colourators”. We want to help facilitate more student art to happen and be displayed on campus. I’ve also signed up to be on the Campus Land Use Committee and the Arts Annex Remodel Committee. I have also had a lot of creative energy recently, which has been really terrific.

Well, gotta do some homework! Peace!

-C

On Thursday, I safely returned home from a class field trip to Sun Lakes State Park in Eastern Washington. We left on Monday morning headed for this desert landscape we would be inhabiting for four days: a geological curiosity formed by repeated catastrophic floods during the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. I was driving a van with seven other people in it and all the food for the trip. It was sunny, and excitement was in the air.What could have gone wrong?

Nothing, really. It was a blast! The weather stayed beautiful, and I got to know the people in my class a lot better, including my faculty, which is especially cool seeing as this was only the second week of school. We definitely got in some quality bonding time, and we also got to experience this breathtaking area by hiking all over it for hours and hours each day.

Our assignment for the week was to produce 100 sketches. One. Hundred. It was quite a tall order, but it was actually a pretty fun exercise. It strengthened my observation skills as well as my ability to draw quickly and accurately.

On the last night, we had a camp fire, and I ended up sitting around talking to people until three in the morning, watching the fire turn to embers. So when I gave a campus tour on Friday, and someone asked me if it was hard to meet people and make friends at Evergreen, I smiled, and said, “It’s hard not to.”

(I’ll post pictures soon!)

First day back and only a slight case of the first day jitters… Seriously though, this was quite a day, jam packed with adventure.

My friends picked me up for school, and we got there early, and ended up running into one of the faculty we all had freshman year. He is currently repeating the class we were in as freshmen (Awakening the Dreamer, Pursueing the Dream), and this only the second time it’s been offered; we were the originals. And he and the other faculty wanted us to come back and “wake up” the new group of freshman by making a surprise entrance on their first day (today) and doing something spontaneous. So my friend Joey and I ran through the class and shouted “I love Joseph Campbell” (a central figure of study in the class), and then as we ran out, we shouted “Copy Cats!” at them. It was so much fun, and I got an email from the faculty and said it went over perfectly!

See, you gotta understand that my freshman core program was really amazing, and pretty exceptional. I am still friends with the faculty I had two years ago, and with many of the other students I had in my class too. I recently had someone ask me if it is easy to make friends and get to know people at Evergreen, and I gotta say, the structure of the school is set up to facilitate making valuable connections between students AND faculty.

So, class was pretty successful, I am really excited to do some art and sculpture this year. Speaking of which, I got together with some friends after class and started the process of getting an art club “student group” status. I can already tell it’s gonna be a busy year, but it’s shaping up to be an exciting and eventful one.

Til next time!

-Cameron

Hello to all of you  out there!

I’ve been away form writing for the school blog all summer, but now that vacation is almost over and school is soon to begin, I figured it was about time to get back into the swing of things.

I’m beginning my junior year here at Evergreen. After taking a humanities-based program (Awakening the Dreamer, Pursuing the Dream) freshman year , and a sustainable design program (Green Studio) as a sophomore, I am starting my junior year in a class called Studio Projects: Land and Sky. It’s a 2-D and 3-D art program focusing on how we fit into the landscape, and how we shape it/it shapes us. I am so excited to be able to focus all my scholastic time on doing art, and for those of you not familiar with the Pacific Northwest, the landscape here is remarkable and inspiring.

My time not in class will be spent organizing a new student club on campus, which is also very art based, and working as a Student Ambassador (maybe some of you reading this will meet me in person one day). And of course, there is always a show to go to featuring some of the many talented local bands, as well as some awesome touring bands. I might even try to find the time to volunteer at the Northern, which is Olympia’s new all-ages music/arts venue.

Well, I’m excited to be back, and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into Junior year! It’s gonna be a juicy one!

So it’s finally ending! My second year here at Evergreen is coming to a close. I will have my final evaluation conference with my faculty tomorrow, and then summer break and adventures and fun!
I guess saying it like that paints the wrong picture though; going to school here is full of adventures and fun, and I had an incredible year that was packed with things to do. I am just glad to be able to relax and enjoy what Olympia has to offer besides Evergreen. For example, today for my friend’s birthday, we rode our backs to a spot just out of town to a secret lake. I’d tell you exactly how to get there, but, like I said, it’s a secret. Anyways, the water was really warm, and we swam across, and watched the dragonflies and listened to bullfrogs and birds and had a mud fight, and just chilled out. It is finally time to decompress, and now that the weather is gorgeous, I’m going to spend a lot more time outside. I actually just got done playing a game of midnight basketball with my homies.
Although the school year is over, I have yet to finish the wood drying shed, so I’m gonna keep working on that till it gets done. We have a lot to do and we are running out of time, money, and momentum. But we’ll pull it off, and it is already looking awesome. I hope it actually helps wood dry. Even if it doesn’t, I still learned a lot from the designing and building process. I’ll be sure to post pictures of it soon—there might even be a video of us putting the frame up.
So next year I’m going to take a 2D and 3D art and ecology class called Studio Projects, Land and Sky. I’m really excited, but like I said, summer first.

Plain and simple, I had a wonderful week. My team and I finally put up the frame of the wood drying shed we’ve been designing and building all year (I’ll be sure to posts pictures and videos soon), I went swimming with all my best friends on a hot day in a cold lake with a grand view of Mt. Rainier behind us, and I went to an Animal Collective / Grouper concert in Portland with all my friends. The shed looks awesome, the lake was so gorgeous, and the concert was incredible. They played a 20 minute version of the song “Fireworks” that was like being born into a world made of candy! Or maybe better than that… And Portland is such a fantastic city (and only an hour and a half away!).

But of course, the shed still needs a roof, a floor, walls, and some doors, and we are running out of time, energy, man power, and materials. In short, we’re a little beyond shed-ule.

Get it?! : )

We kinda need a week 9 miracle, but it may have already been granted to us in the form of the gorgeous weather! It’s been so pleasant working outside. I think I actually got a sunburn.

So, I should go do some homework. But before, I go, I just want to remind everyone from parts of the country further south that it has been getting dark at like 9:30PM here. Awesome.

It is 4:25 in the morning. I am sitting at a table at Sizizis, the new 24 hour coffee and tea shop in downtown Olympia. The coffee I drank several hours ago to keep me awake is losing its effect. I come here for the atmosphere, the delicious beverages, and because I can concentrate on my work. And as Week 8 is upon me, I am faced with a daunting amount of work to do (I just finished writing a research paper, and that is just the icing on the work-cake). But as I sit here and think how much I have to do in the next few hours, days, and weeks, I realize how “college” this all feels. I am also surprised that after an entire school year, I still take so much pride in doing my work thoroughly; I attribute it my work ethic evolving to mesh with Evergreen’s academic structure. I have so much control over what I am doing here, and so I am my taskmaster and my toughest critic.

Soon, I will walk home—the warm days have yielded surprising warm nights. I had an incredible weekend, and now I have an incredibly busy week to look forward to, but it’s to be expected. I am enjoying spring, the sunshine, watching the snow slowly melting on Mt. Rainier, and the late nights and Sizizis. Evergreen and Olympia harbor inexhaustible opportunities for things to do, and thus, I’m exhausted. But I know someday soon I’ll finish up my work and have the summer to relax.

Hmmmmmm…. I’m pretty sure I’m going to watch the sunrise. 

So everything I have been doing for the last few weeks kind of came billowing to a splendid catharsis this weekend. First of all, the wood drying shed team went down to Oregon and helped load our logs onto a truck that brought them up to Evergreen for us. This was a crucial milestone in the process, as the logs would later be milled into the wood we will use for building the entire shed, which we have been planning and designing for two and a half quarters now.

My parents also came up on Friday evening from California. Actually, my dad got a job in Seattle working for the Cascadia chapter of the U.S.G.B.C., so I’ll be seeing him more often now. Anyways they came up for Arts walk and the Procession of the Species. Arts Walk was on Friday night, and I got to be in something called The Luminary Procession, which is an incredible event where people process through the streets with lanterns and walk to the waterfront by Capitol lake and set off small hot air balloons and they ignite baskets full of papers with everyone’s wishes with fireworks! Sound amazing? Well, it was, but what was more amazing was that a man I met randomly is in a class at the UW with the woman (an Evergreen grad) renting my dad a room in Seattle let me carry the lantern he made in the front of the procession! Olympia is funny that way.

But the fun was just getting started. The Procession of the Species was on Saturday, and my roommates and I donned the 20 foot + long shark costume we had barely managed to complete on time and marched (or should I say, swam) along the streets of Olympia. It is mind blowing how many people come out to see the procession, and the kids really loved the shark. Now that it is over the shark will be hanging from the ceiling in our living room, and serve as a reminder of all the good times we had making it (there is a free art studio downtown that opens up to the whole community to prepare for the Procession every year).

On Monday, more excitement was on its way. The wood drying team got to mill the logs we got on Friday. We met the miller at school at about 7:00 am, and after only about 2 cuts, he told us that we would not be able to get the cuts out of the logs that we needed to complete our design (there was too much checking). so n the fly, we had to redesign the shed  (for what must have been the 5th time) so that we could get something out of the logs we had. We worked for 8 hours, and hopefully got all the lumber we will need out of the 15 or so Douglas fir logs. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, life throws me another curve ball. But if this project hasn’t been a learning experience, I don’t know what one is. Now I just have to roll with the punches and build a different shed in just four weeks. Think I can do it? 

I guess we’ll see. 

I had a really productive week believe it or not! I was able to drive down to Oregon with my project group to look at the logs we will soon be retrieving, milling, and turning into a wood drying shed. We met with the man who was donating them to us, and he gave us some really good advice about the milling process. We also lined up a miller, a truck, and a trailer, and this Wednesday we are going to go pick up the logs.

I also got a lot done on my Procession of the Species costume—a 20’ long shark to be worn like a Chinese dragon by my roommates and me. I did a lot of the work paper maché-ing and shaping the fins and the body over the weekend and I had a blast working the studio with my friends.

I also spent some time enjoying the incredible weather we have been having. Right now it is in the high 70’s, and I am actually typing this in my back yard as a soak up some sun. Yesterday, I went down to the Olympia Farmer’s Market and rode my bike all around Olympia. It is a truly great city, with plenty going on, and now that the weather is good, it is like a slice of cherry pie with whipped cream and a tall glass of ice-cold milk—so nice.