One thing....

I have one thing to say..... I am tired of having the flu, or whatever I have.

And it is during finals.  Fun times for the last set of undergraduate finals.

Glorious Rays of Sunshine!

I did it!  I just got back my last paper for developmental and I got a B!  I never thought that I would be so happy over a B.  But then again I have never been so horrible in a class before.  So I am doing better with this whole class, and knowing that I am going to be fine in it and that December 20th is just around the corner.

On a happier note, I am going to try and get a job at New River in Wilkes for my 8 month stint at home.  It will be a hell of a lot better than retail, and somewhat connected to my intended life.  I will be a case worker, which could be extremely emotionally draining, but that will be a good thing too.  I need to toughen my skin and know that I can handle all of this.  And I am excited about my future, the one that I am working to get to.  It is a nice feeling to know that I am in control of my life.  

And so it all is about to End

I had my last 'offical' class of printmaking today.  and it has already left a small hole.  I know that I will be in there a ton between now and next thursday, but the thought that it is over has left a cloud over me.  It hurts my soul to think that I will never be a student in Owen again, that the wonderful mingling smells of toxic spray paint, pugnent nitric acid, sweet smelling gum aribic and tantalizing printing ink will not fill my nostrils after the 20th.  I am glad that I am graduationg, and moving on, but I will miss the family have found in those messy halls.  I had never had that kind of artistic community until this summer and I am disheartend to know that it is over.  

What am I going to do now?  I mean I know that I am going home and then hopefully grad school, but my studio life is over.  I am already missing it.  I will miss the random art conversations, the debates of the meaning of life and if the human race was really just a slave race for some far off aliens.  My life will consist of my parents and coming to Asheville whenever possible to maintain some feeling of culture.  I guess my personal work ehtic and artistic desire will maintian my inspiration form now on.  

WTF??

So, I was given permission to rewrite a paper for developmental, which I did.  I took it to the writing center, and got very little help, but added to my paper and what not, added discussion and clarified things.  And then I get my new grade today.

IT IS THE FUCKING SAME!!  What the HELL!

I was not expecting an A or anything, but damn, I turned a better paper in.  I did everything she told me to do and the writing center and I get nothing.  She said I could go and talk to her, but I know that if I do emotions will get in my way.  I get so angry when I think about that class, and anger makes me cry.  I am not good at expressing my anger, so it breaks lose in my tears.  I am not feeling sad or depressed about all of this like I was last week.  Now I am seething, boiling with anger.  I will probably go and talk to her since I don't know what she wants and neither did the nice man at the writing center.  So now I have to suck up my emotions and try not to cry and make myself talk because I tend to shut up when angry.  I am either silent or crying, odd little mixture I have here.  

I have been in brutal critics.  Crits were I cried in my studio space after.  Crits where I lost all confidence in my art and myself.  Hell, I even had a crit right after my show with a visiting artist that told me "The sculpture was too much for you to handle and the puzzle pieces do not clarify your idea, only confuse due to the lack of control."  I cried in my space for a while after that one.  But they were always something that I KNEW I could improve on.  Even asshole-artist-guy made some points.  Just not many that I agreed with, he just did not get my work.  I could improve my craftsmanship, but my ideas are sound.  Sure it made me feel useless, but I never doubted that it would make my work better.  But with this... I don't care if I get better, I just want to get a C.  I cannot have a fucking D on my record.  I am not a perfectionist, I gave up on straight A a long time ago, but this fucking class is the blight of my college career.

I am just going to have to suck it up and talk to the bitch.  And stop thinking of her as a bitch and thinking that she is a stupid-anal-A-type who knows jack shit about people over the age of 8.  I am just going to have to think positive about this.  That I need to do this to make me better.

-inhale, exhale- I can do this.

Personality Disorders... does everyone have one??

The high emotions have subsided from the pervious blog.  I am fine, although my ego is still bruised from not being good at something.  And that is when I found the silver lining- I need to humbled.  I needed to know that I am not perfect, and I don't have to be.  I have to ask for help, something that I have never been very good at.  Especially since Aaron.  Asking for help was something that I just can't do.  But now, I am working on it.

So in my abnormal class we are going over personality disorders (PD), and I was shocked at how I knew someone that could fit into almost each one.  For those of you who don't know, a personality disorder is defined as rigid, persistant character traits that cause great distress in life.  And due to the nature of PDs it is easy to see yourself and others in them.  But then I really thought about it.  We focused on borderline today and when we went over the DSM criteria for boderline, I was shocked at how many people in my life fit the criteria.   

A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following: 

1. frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5.

2. a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation, know as "spitting". 

3. identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. 

4. impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self- mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5. 

5. recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior 

6. affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). 

7. chronic feelings of emptiness 

8. inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights) 

9. transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

So why do I draw them to me?  Four people in my 23 years have fit this, and when only 4% of the entire US population has borderline, how can I find 4 of them?  (All of which have been diagnosed with this by a professional).  Granted that I only talk to one of them on a regular basis, and she is improving.  While the others, are well either exactly the same or I have not seen enough to know.  But the one that sticks in my mind the most is Marie.   

If I had read about this when I was so close with her, it may have helped me to understand her better, and maybe not pull away the way that I did.  She pushed me away to prove that I would abandon her, that I would give reality to her false beliefs in being alone.  I know that there is more to her complexities than this one disorder, but it makes this class even better when I can look at a list of symptoms and see it my life.  It lets me know that I am going into the right field.  That I understand people.  I don't need the experimental science, I just need to pass the class and then I get to the stuff that I do enjoy.  The abnormal, the addicts and the complex people, the people that can't be put into a box of numbers.

Oh by the way, I can see the dependent PD and the avoidance PD in myself.  Which apparently is normal according to my teacher.  And since I don't feel that it hurts my life, I guess my traits are not as rigid as the needed criteria.

Warning: Slightly emo rant.

I have not written in a while, mostly because I am living on auto-pilot these days.  I have a set routine for everyday, I go to class, do work on campus, maybe go out to eat with the girls, and then more class, then home and get up and do it again.  If it is a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, it is dreading going to work, then going to work and returning home exhausted and sleeping.  I am just going through the motions of this life.  And I hate it.

I hate that every Monday I dread going to Developmental Psychology because it puts me in a shitty mood the rest of the day.  All I can think about in that fucking class is how much I hate it and don't want to be there.  Oh, and how I am an utter failure in that class.  I have never struggled like this in a class before.  I have never had to work for a fucking C, not even an A, but a C.  What the hell happened to me?  Where did that good student go?  I used to breeze through papers and tests and I was fine.  But in this class, I fail.  

The fact that I am struggling in this class makes me doubt my wanting to go to grad school.  I mean if I can't make it as a college senior what hope do I in grad school.  If I was going for studio art, no big deal, I thrive in that, but this, writing papers and talking in classes, not my strong suits.  But I want this life.  I want to be an art therapist.  I want to show people how to save themselves with art.  I want art to save someone the way that it did me.  It saved me every minute of my life in high school and college.  And the thought of not having those studio classes everyday scares the shit out of me.

I made a promise to myself last week that I would be a good student again.  That I would not skip anymore classes, and what did I do today?  Skipped two classes.  My developmental teacher sent an email saying that we were going to watch a movie and that she would not be there.  So what the hell makes her think that I am going to be there?  I can watch the movie at home and take notes on it for the test.  And then I got to sleep late.  Then 4 o'clock rolled around and Jeremy was over, so I did not go.  I am not worried about missing the second class, I have an A+ in that class.  But it is the fact that I missed developmental...... again.  

All of the above ranting comes down to this one thing.  I am losing myself.  I am losing my free spirit to the hell of corporate America every weekend and to writing logical precise papers every week.  I lost my spark somewhere.  I lost the fire.  I lost my art.  I spend maybe 8 hours a week in studio.  That is not enough.  I was spending every waking second doing or thinking about my art, and now my mind rests on papers about childhood memory.  I am losing myself to the motions.  

But I am going to get it back.  I am going to be the person that loves school.  I am going to ace my next developmental exam and paper.  I am going to spend more time in the studio.  I am going to find my spark again.  I know that it is hidden in my art.  I know that it is there waiting for me to find it again.  And I know that I will, because if I don't I will lose the point to this life.

I Am.

So a friend of mine wanted me to post these for him.  So here they are.  For a lot of you this is simply a repeat of the real thing, but here they are anyways.  

I Am a Downward Spiral 

I am Wandering

I Am an Alcoholic's Daughter

I Am Ugly

I Am Beautiful

I Am Olivia

Phillip's Wall

I Am a Firefighter

I Am Phillip

I Am a Builder

Amanda's Wall

I Am Broken

I Am Amanda

I Am a Cleaning Monster

I Am Free

Aly's Wall

I Am Trapped

I Am Aly

I Am in Love with Me


I Am.

I have always had a fascination with personality traits, understanding them, accepting them, rejoicing in the flaws and quirks that make an individual, so it was natural for me to be drawn to portraits. When I studied the self-portraits of Durer, Rembrandt and Van Gogh I saw how each portrait showed a new aspect of the artist, showing an evolution of the art and their identity. I wanted to take a new approach to what a portrait contains, I wanted to show who the person really is and not just a physical representation.
The inspiration for this show, or at least the beginning idea, came from life. In high school I had issues with people judging me based on my appearance or just one aspect of my personality. In creating a show that literally breaks down a personality into single traits, I needed a way to convey that a person is more than just one characteristic, so the puzzle pieces became a huge part of my message.



Each piece is a unique part of the person, a way to convey who they are and not just what the world always sees. It is the small pieces of a person that creates of a whole. With each new piece, a different aspect, a different piece of the puzzle, needed to be captured. Due to the separation of the personality, a duality is created that exists within each person. With myself I used body image as a way to possesses my own duality with my looks. The two pieces, I Am Ugly and I Am Beautiful, serve to create a tension between being beautiful and ugly. And it is in the duality that people find a balance, a balance that makes them whole. 



The casting process is used to give a life size representation to add dimension to each piece. The cast allows me to place a tangible representation of the person on each piece. The three dimensional element allows a mood and space to be created just as Edward Kienholz. The drawings that are on each piece serve to clarify aspects of the person, to add yet another element to the work. The life size drawings are the assembled whole, the person as they are seen from on a physical level. 

As you take in the show, I invite you to take a look at yourself, to try and find what pieces make you a unique individual to the world.
Thanks,
Olivia Shumate