Sunday, September 25

Family Weekend at Stephens




I have a lot of pictures for you! Sarah, my lovely roommate last year, drove in from Kansas City and we spent the entire weekend together having a grand old time!
We visited the vintage costume gallery on campus, which is CIRCUS themed right now! They have the grooviest stuff in there! If any of you are around Columbia, you have GOT to check out this gallery. The themes change (I think every semester?) so stop by while you can!
















After visiting the costume gallery Sarah and I headed to Stephens Lake Park, where there was supposedly a Puppy Fair going on. It was way too cute to pass up!! We spent literally two hours just standing around petting everyone's dogs and snuggling with the cats at the adoption tent.





My friend Kathleen brought her dog ChouChou to the Puppy Fest!




My friend Emily brought her dog Parker as well, who totally gussied up to the camera.





It was all I could do not to shove this cat in my bag and take her home.








The rest of the weekend I spent time with my good friend Courtney and her momma, who came in for family weekend! Her sister Ashley and Ashley's boyfriend also drove in for a while, and we all got breakfast at Ernie's this morning. By the way, Ernie's has the best cinnamon toast in town, which I ate with garden vegetarian sausage.




I wish more weekends were like this, a combination of good food and good friends leisurely enjoying each other's company. There's something so functional about it. I know many of you readers are fellow students who had family come to visit, and I hope all of your weekends were happy ones, too.


love, rudi

Thursday, September 22

Kappa Plant-a-thon


Last week I adopted a little baby plant! Kappa Delta, one of two sororities at Stephens, had a booth set up during lunch one day where you could pot your own baby pansy. I couldn't resist!









Thank you, Kappa Deltas!! My little plant is so very happy and growing on my window sill. What happiness.


love, rudi 

Wednesday, September 21

Doing Your Homework


The mobile in the basement of the library.

There’s some weak part of me that wants to avoid researching other designers and their work, and concepts. Every time I see a new idea I find myself saying, “Well, there’s one less that I can use.” I’ve been going on like this for the past few hours, mixing my evening between sketching and trying to pull together concepts for some assignments with forcing myself to be explorative. It’s like exposing my mind to these works deletes that part of me that now must accept the fact that now, whatever I do come up with, has to strive to be pushed yet another step further.
But if I didn’t force myself to take all this in, to digest as much art and design and other people’s good ideas, I’d be taking the easy way out. But after spending an entire evening on pinterest.com (wow, by the way) I’ve taken myself one step further- seeing all the art out there makes me braver. Check out what I’ve marked in just an hour or so of searching- there is so much good art out there. And that fact- that it’s everywhere and it’s amazing and there’s always some awesome thing that you’ll never have even thought of- reminds me that whatever I do will be created, and it will exist. And that’s saying that every time I have some project or feeling, all I have to do is throw it out there and then there it will be. Forever. For anyone who finds it, it’ll be another reminder (in a world filled with them) that every piece of art is a beautiful byproduct of everything. I’m finding bravery in being anonymous.
But still, it's always a pit of disappointment when you see something brilliant that you didn't make. I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping my chin up anyway. I hope you can do the same.


By the way, and I meant to tell you all in some big awesome post before life got in the way, I was elected Sophomore Class President Monday, and I've been riding on a I'm-Really-Proud-of-Myself cloud all week. I was never elected ANYTHING in high school despite my desire to be, and it's just one of those zero-to-hero stories that seem to come up so frequently around here. Dreams come true at Stephens. I promise you that.

love, rudi

Tuesday, September 13

Girly Girls


 Hey ya'll! I had the best and quickest weekend. Sarah Reeter, my beloved ex-roommate from last year, was in and out of Columbia a bit and we had the nicest mini-visits. On Friday she, Courtney (the blonde one), and I spent a good hour or so in Stamper Commons munching on dinner and chatting, and finally ended up walking downtown and window shopping.



   If I mentioned it once, I mentioned it a thousand times to them, but I have a new goal. I have a lot of clothes (a lot) but half of them either don't fit me very well or don't fit my ever-evolving style. I've been working on my collection since the 7th grade or so, and I think I'm finally ready to start dressing like a grown up. It's been on my mind a bunch lately. Do you all have any store suggestions?The only website I know to check out is Modcloth, and even their stuff is too similar to my previous flowery, cutesy style.
Anyway, I talked to the girls about it a whole bunch, and we ended up playing dress up.








Then on Saturday Courtney and I got our nails done. It was my first time!! About a week ago we were talking and I realized that I am a sophomore in college, I'm not exactly a tomboy, and I've never had my nails done. It seemed insane, so I made us appointments that day. I spent all week getting excited about it, and it completely livd up to the hype. I feel like a princess every time I look at my hands.





Courtney did this crazy thing where she got some sort of crackle-effect nail super duper polish, and she ended up with some awesome looking Spider Man nails that have secretly made her feel like a rebel all week. She's been wearing her leather jackets a lot...don't tell her I noticed.




On Sunday Courtney and I wanted to take our new mentiz (we're mentoring together! More on that once we have our first mentor/mentiz date) to the Roots and Blues Festival, but we didn't realize it closed on Sunday. It was so disappointing expecting a big sloppy pulled pork sandwich and getting chicken and rice instead, even if Jingo's does have the best Crab Rangoon I've ever had.

And to answer that question on your mind, Yes. I did get my homework done.

love, rudi

Thursday, September 8

Breakthrough


The thing I love best about design and marketing so far is the amount of immediate freedom I have in it. I don't have to wait around for someone else to decide if I can be involved or not like I would in theatre. I don't have to already know a bunch of rules and regulations if I want to create something like I would with set design or follow another person's idea of what the art should be, and find out a way to fit everything that's going on in my head into their vision.
I'm not losing the collaboration, either- that will develop later once I've discovered who am and what can do as an artist, which is what I really wanted to learn in college anyway. Stephens has always provided itself to me as a safe place to take risks, but I'm finally at a place where I'm able to really take advantage of that. There's no more waiting, and it's all up to me.
   And another thing? I can't tell you how liberating it is to not be constantly wondering if I'm good enough, if my personality is up to scratch, if what I do matters, or if I'll ever get a job like I used to, and like 98% of my theatre friends still deal with. It's not a bad thing to be selfish and concentrate to developing myself anymore, in fact it's encouraged.
These are a few of the sketches from our very first assignment.






 
That sort of happened to me yesterday during my Typography class. Earlier in the day, during Principles of Design, I spoke with my teacher Kate about several of my designs. We talked about my gravitation towards texture and depth in design, and whole bunch of other jargon-heavy concepts that were appearing in my art. Later, during Typography, I had to quickly sketch a few concepts for a poster, and it took Kate all of five seconds to decide which concept I should run with. "It's you! You have to develop this idea because when I saw it, I knew it was you doing that. That's you're thing."
   Maybe that doesn't mean anything to a lot of you, but basically I had a breakthrough yesterday. a mini milestone. Kate, my audience, recognized something I did as my work, she noticed and identified my style. That means I have a style! Or, at least, the beginning of one. One of the biggest goals of my year is to pinpoint and discover my style as an artist, to settle in to my particular aesthetic, and yesterday it happened. It was minor, but so important.

This is the poster I did yesterday, the poster that's "my thing". This is my G.


I got really excited. I've felt so great ever since, and I'm so happy to have that inkling of confirmation that I'm on a good path, one that fits me that I can really settle into and do exceptional work in. It's so priceless, it's such the ideal "college dsicovery" thing.
   
Have any of you had moments like this? I want to know your experiences! Leave me a comment,
I want to know I'm not alone on this one.

As always,
love, rudi
P.S. I'm going to start playing around with the way I do things around here. Any input, positive or negative, is completely appreciated!