remember that time i was back in boston to watch a chamber music performance at wellesley? yes, me too. it was last weekend. in the process, i also got to visit waltham (the aforementioned “watch city”), which was, as always, spectacularly brick and charmingly unpolished. while in the area, the fam and i also made a visit to the (relatively) new ICA museum (by diller scofidio renfro). it was a very nice building, formally speaking, if somewhat marred and marooned by a gigantic eyesore of a parking lot splat in front of any pedestrian approach from the city. like other DS+R buildings i’ve seen, it had various rounded corners, nice interiors, jagged edges, and conspicuous omissions. one particularly notable omission was detailing. almost all the exterior glass i ran into was handled more or less entirely with grout. that’s basically okay on the ground-level street facade, but it’s an odd choice for that leaning box thingy that hangs out over the water, 15 meters in the air. because when that grout cracks in five or ten years’ exposure to that salty sea air, it’s going to be really un-fun to replace those windows. there was also the strange matter of having one level of gallery for a four-level building. that seems to be a growing trend (thanks, sanaa!). but anyway, gripes aside, a very handsome and engaging building. and it really tried to give something back to the waterfront and the public space that lines it, so that’s admirable. awesome floorevator too.
in other news, i’m planning for the trip to spain. this will no doubt be epically spectacular. i also finished draft two of graphic novel two. it’s definitely made strides in the right direction, but it’s also got at least a few more drafts to go. hopefully the next one (or two, or three) won’t take two months apiece. fingers crossed! photos:
hey hey ladies n gents,
i hope you’re all spectacular-fantacular! for a few weeks now i’ve been back in the heartland of our great and greedy capitalistic sinpit: new jersey! it’s kind of funny that the things that the united states is most reviled for abroad (at least in france) is the same property that is its most successful cultural export…consumerism! people sure do love buying stuff. and it is with that in mind that i celebrate my reacclimation to the land of $48,000 per year advanced education, walmart, joanie loves chachi, and sanctioned individual rights of corporations to donate to political campaigns! at least i’m glad sometimes. despite all its problems, i do (at heart) <3 the us.
to celebrate my triumphant return, i’ve done a few sketches of real, live, imaginary american people. mostly with a view to developing a “new” style for the next graphic novel. there’s a lot of decisions to be made…! (click to enlarge thumbnails!)
these days i’m doing a lot of reading and a lot of writing. in the months before i head back to europe, i’ve set it as my goal to get at least one manuscript written and hopefully a second started. by the time i come back, i will have twenty or thirty pages drawn, inked, etc in addition to a complete draft text. armed with these, the idea is to convince a publisher who, in the words of neil gaiman, “publishes the kind of stuff [you] write” to, um, publish the stuff i write. if possible, i’ll have previews for both novels, but i’m going to focus on one (the older one) for now.
when i’m not writing (the other 16ish hours of the day), i’ve been chipping away at several different books. i reread twain’s huckleberry finn and have made various piecemeal inroads on john gardner’s very-nearly-but-not-quite-insufferably-pretentious on becoming a novelist and as well on janet burroway’s guide to narrative craft which is a little bit more to the point than either gardner or dorothea brande. instead of brande, i’m getting my 19th century on with good ol’ leo tolstoy, whose anna karenina has somehow actually managed to live up to its hype. one of my favorite passages is reproduced below. it’s not that i find barbs like this, which appear on virtually every page, representative of the degree of hyperrealism he’s often accused of–it’s more that i think they’re incredibly deft instances of characterization. he’s like the guys in the 1950s who handled uranium isotopes through all these long, spindly tools. only he never dropped it. the passage:
“He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed.”
next up on the reading list are nabokov’s lolita, david mitchell’s cloud atlas, something by chekhov because they were clearly badasses, and that stupid copy of ghost world that i managed to acquire despite my feelings toward daniel clowes. and goodbye, chunky rice. and also good-bye.
well, ladies and gents, it’s a very exciting moment. school’s out–forever! i’ll definitely miss my friends of–can you believe it?–six years. they’ve taught me a lot and i’ll be sad not to see them every day. i hope we’ll all keep in touch. we had our final, ah, final review on thursday (and again on friday as one juror was a bit day late). compared to the rest of the reviews i’ve had this semester, it went pretty well. our jurors were also excellent–particularly incisive was the commentary of two principals of the paris-local firm kilo, linna choi and tarik oualalou. they presented that wonderfully elusive admixture of criticality, humor, and optimism that can really carry a jury. their work is also pretty exciting, so check it out! and of course, with the last day of school (ostensibly forever) comes the terrifying moment of the search for work. i’m looking at a few firms in europe already, but the states are hardly out of the question. perhaps more excitingly, i’ve finished work on my brand-spankin’ new barch graduate portfolio! i hope you enjoy and (as i haven’t printed yet), any comments (positive or otherwise) are extremely welcome. just shoot me an email. in the meantime, i’ll be tuning up the work section of the site a bit to ready it for this new addition. next up before a triumphant (though possibly temporary) return to the us of a? an ecstatically exciting trip to amsterdam, copenhagen, oslo, bergen, and (potentially) belfast, delft, goteborg, rotterdam and a few other places. everybody wish me luck! (…mostly in retrieving my eurail pass from DHL at this point)
