Cameron

Wow, I’ve already done so much and met so many new people this school year! That is probably why I am so tired. Luckily, a week of vacation has come to rescue me in my time of my need.

I’m currently at the airport, about to fly home to So-Cal. I’m ready for a little sunshine, and I’ll be really glad to hang out with my family, friends, and pets. Still, it’s hard not to think about what I’ve got coming up before winter break. I’m about halfway through my stone carving project (my arm hurts!), I’ve yet to start my drawing of a local landscape, and I’m already thinking about what I want to say in my self-evaluation.

I’m also looking at some classes that I might take during Winter Quarter. There is an interesting program called “Sustainable Forestry” that has caught my attention, as well as one called “Protected Areas?”. I am also looking into taking a woodworking class that meets once a week in the evenings. Our wood shop is the jam! We get access to really nice tools and facilities, and have great faculty and staff for support.

I’m also now officially a student representative on the Campus Land Use Committee,  and I’ve been thinking a lot about our last meeting. There was a proposal for posting “No Recreational Skateboarding” signs, which concerned me, but it wasn’t until a few days later that I got an email dialogue going with the members of CLUC about why this would be a mistake, at least with the present wording of the signs. Evergreen allows students to skateboard on campus, which is uncommon where I come from, and so I treasure that freedom. But skateboarding has caused some damage on campus, and so there has been interest from Campus Facilities to try and prevent any skateboarding that might further this damage. Anyways, this is not a new debate in the world of skateboarding, but I think it is really cool that at Evergreen, the students are allowed to engage faculty and staff members and try to reach a solution that works well for all the groups. I’ll keep you posted on the future of the signs.

Well, I’m about to board my flight (I wish that meant I got to skate onto the plane), so I’ll leave you to enjoy your weekend! Thanks for reading

It’s already Week 8, and I’m really surprised because I’m actually not stressed out. Not one bit. I think it’s because I put a lot of effort into balancing my energy between work and recreation. I have been trying to stay ahead on my school work by doing little chunks of it whenever I can (this is a simple skill that has taken me my whole academic career to engage with, but I’ve been reaping the benefits). It also helps that my work has been fun and engaging; right now we’re doing stone carving (so much freaking fun, I’ll post pictures soon!), we’re generating a large (26″ x 40″) drawing of a place where landscape and the urban environment meet, and preparing a presentation on a landscape artist (I chose Thomas Kinkade, since I feel that we can learn a lot from bad art, especially when it’s been successful). Anyways, since I’m on track with my school work, I’ve been doing lots of things I want to do.

Earlier this week, my friend Mitch and I went to go get acupuncture. It was my first time doing it, but it was at a really cool place called Community Acupuncture Studio, and it was free because it was their one year anniversary. And it felt incredible. As soon as the little needles went in, I just instantly felt overwhelmingly euphoric, and I just closed my eyes and napped for about a half hour, and came out feeling peaceful and clear-headed.

On Friday, I went to work and then did a little stone carving, and that night I went skateboarding (it was like 40 degrees but whatev’s) and then went to an awesome show at the Northern, Olympia’s all ages venue. I saw Julianna Barwick, Arrington de Dionyso (of Old Time Relijun), and Rain Machine (Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio + a band). It was pretty sweet, and they all have really powerful vocal qualities.

On Saturday, it actually wasn’t raining, and after I got done working on my presentation, I got to go skateboarding again for like 2 hours!

Then on Sunday, after I put in some more work on my presentation, my friends and I actually played a show at the Northern. We’re called City on the Bridge, which is a project started by Mitch. Lots of our friends were there, and the other bands were amazing! It was a perfect playbill (Sleep Whale, The Long Mornings, Darin Hanlon, and us). And it was the biggest show I’ve played since I’ve been here.

I also want to mention that this whole week there was the Olympia Film Festival at the Capitol Theater, our local indie movie theater and home to the Olympia Film Society. Every year they conclude the fest with “All Freaking Night”, where they play like five horror movies in a row starting at midnight. I’m bummed I didn’t get to go to any movies, they showed some really cool films and actually a lot of rare features.

Well I gotta get some rest so I can keep up all this work/fun. Thanks for reading!

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.