Books I don't read

I bet you're all wondering, "How is Sarah's art coming along since last week?" Well, to answer that question, it's coming along quite well, thanks for asking.

If you ignore the table covered in crap and the lamp, you can see my two most recent pieces. Last night at like midnight, I literally got up out of bed to talk to my roommates because I came to the realization that these two pieces are really all I have to show for my long hours in the studio. Yeah. It's a little depressing. 

Complete with Josh trying to photobomb my pictures.

And the snake is growing. 

I would like to point out that before I started saving these gluesticks I threw a good deal out, and I also have used a number of bottles of elmer's glue, some book glue, and hot glue as well. This is just a small sampling of my glue consumption.

I would really like to post photos besides my art of New York but I haven't taken a whole lot. 

I will, however, throw in this photo of some old asian people playing hacky sack. They were pretty good at it, too.

Things made and partially stolen

So. I've been making things. Out of books. And glue. A lot of glue. Like this:

(See that sign behind it? Although it clearly states not to touch or move this, at least 3 people kicked it. Two have fessed up. I'm still waiting on the third.)

I sort of wanted to shoot myself making it, and it's still not done, but it's mildly enjoyable. I just hide in my corner crazily folding and cutting books for hours upon hours. 

I also made these:

Does this look familiar to anyone? I'm fairly sure all of the three people who read my blog will make the connection. Haha... Sometimes I steal my friend's ideas. But generally they're just Christie's and I call it collaboration. (On a somewhat related note, has anyone seen this?) I'm just waiting for Chris to end our friendship and sue me. (I would actually link that to something, but THERE'S NOTHING TO LINK IT TO.)

In future I will perhaps post more exciting things about New York, but for now, all you get is this boring book art crap.

Things I don't like about New York #1: Ballsy Pigeons

Seriously, I'm not going to feed you, get your little beaks away from me or I will not hesitate to aim a kick at you.

Things done whilst at work

At this point I still had like 70 juice boxes, but it was becoming a bit structurally unsound and I had to go do other work related things.

Only a partial slacker

It's official. I suck at blogging. I've had this blog for approximately 157 days and this is only my ninth post. I suppose a post every 17.4 days isn't that bad, but even so, none of it has been entirely spectacular.  My only excuse for sucking this badly is that in the 157 days I've had this blog I've been extremely busy. What have I and have I not been doing, you ask? Let me tell you.

I have NOT:

been blogging very much (clearly)
invented anything life changing
contracted any deadly diseases (that I know of)
graduated
managed to walk in heels without looking like an idiot
learned to play the harmonica
found a place as awesome as pinkberry in minnesota (even though I did try a number of promising alternatives)

I, however, HAVE:

been a complete overachiever in my studio classes

discovered that I own a tambourine (who knew?)
asked my roommate heidi how to spell things in approximately 1 out of every 10 texts I send
created massive amounts of prints and photographs

such as this nifty monotype that I made at like 2:30 am the day of my final critique, that I only have this ridiculously discolored photo of

been a complete slacker in my generals (which I feel completely fine about)

played the barbie game more than I ever thought I would

been chained out of my room by my roommates

managed to get four pieces into the student art show at my school

won best of show for one of my photographs in said show

seen here behind chris, who claims he is standing suspiciously far away from us because he didn't want to cover up my photo, but in reality I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to associate with us non-medal-winners

had four jobs at one time

purchased a bow-tie

helped somali adults learn english

read both The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth in the last five days

spent extended periods of time at royal grounds trying to de-stress

done an entire series of photographs about fruit

THAT'S RIGHT. I wasn't a total slacker. Only a partial one.

I have somewhat nerdy hobbies

I've done absolutely nothing productive today. Here's what I did do though:

That's right. I arranged my books by color. I mean, that's a totally legitimate use of my time, right? Notice how I don't have any bookends, so my books are flanked by candles and a camera. Classy. I need to invest in some bookends, I'm thinking either these or these are freaking awesome.

I sort of love books. A lot. When I'm older I hope to have a huge library. Something Beauty and the Beast-esque. Growing up I was always surrounded by an abundance of quality literature. My mom used to have a business buying and reselling books, so I went to an extraordinary amount of book sales, bookstores, antique stores and garage sales looking for books with her. Since then, she has been slowly paring away our collection to only the very best, but every time she wants to get rid of something I protest. I feel like there's always a chance she could get rid of something I'm going to really want to read in the near or distant future.

In reality, I will probably never read a good number of the books we own. I have this problem where I get books and then never read them, or I only read part of them and never finish them. Of the 29 books in that photo I've read somewhere between 4-6 of them all the way through. Pitiful, I know. In my defense, since these are the books I have at school, a lot of them are books for classes that I only had to read part of. I also still have some books for a class that I went to once and then dropped. Yeah, some of those I haven't even cracked open.  I'm probably going to read them someday. Just maybe not soon.

You may not believe it, but I do actually finish books sometimes. I have been known to do nothing but read for days on end if I have a good book. It's one of my favorite pastimes. (I actually hate when people ask me what my hobbies are, because they all sound super nerdy. "Ummm... I like to read... and sew and knit and stuff... and make art...") Because I was homeschooled, I had to be really self-motivated, and I remember getting in trouble a lot because I would spend too much time reading when I was supposed to be doing other schoolwork. How sad is that? Who gets in trouble for reading too much? Me, apparently.

Failstruggle.

There are a number of things I feel like I should be good at, but I'm really not. For example:

1. Flower arranging.
I mean, how hard can it be? You just throw some flowers in a vase, cut the stems down and done, right? False. I have yet to understand how this can be such a struggle. Even when I buy those really nice bouquets that look fantastic in all their wrapping, when I get home and put them in a vase, they look unfortunate, no matter how much cutting and arranging I do. You would think that this would come naturally, since I'm an artist, but no.

2. Parking.
Yet again, how hard can it be? I'm a fairly decent driver, but when it comes to parking, I'm sort of screwed. Especially if I'm driving a large car. Parallel parking is just a mystery to me. How did I pass my driving test? I don't know.

3. Comforting people.
This is the worst. Inevitably people will come to me and relate some tragic story and then start crying. At this point I'm just lost. What do I do? Do I say something? If so, what? I usually just end up awkwardly hugging them and saying something ridiculously lame, like, "That's so lame!" Exactly. I suck at this.

4. Making small talk.
I have this problem where if I will never see you again I don't feel the need to get to know you or really talk to you. I don't actually care what you do for a living or what you're doing next weekend. I will most likely forget it all in about 10 minutes anyway. I know, I know, this sounds horrible. I suppose it is. But are we really enriching each other's lives at all? What are we gaining from this awkward chit-chat? Nothing, I say. NOTHING! This view on life is probably all due to the fact that I am horrible at making small talk, especially at college. Once you get past the "What's your major" and "What classes are you taking" questions, I get stuck.

5. Spelling
I used to be good at spelling. Somehow I lost that skill. I'm not really sure how.

Apparently, writing blog posts is also not one of my strong points.

In other news, yesterday I was wearing a name-tag at work that said "Sam." It took a good amount of time before I actually noticed.