Present Joys

It was a short, weird school week. Monday afternoon, I went to motion graphics and started working on a silly video based on a short quotation. It was good; we stayed occupied the whole time and didn’t even break out my knitting.

Classes were canceled on tuesday because of the cold, so I slept in, played accordion longer than usual, and worked from home. I took some time to write about my nascent senior thesis project. Though it was nice to have extra time to rest, my schedule was thrown totally out-of-whack.

Wednesday afternoon, I went back to motion graphics and kept working on the silly little project I started monday. Thursday was, thankfully, back to normal! Jewelry was spent critiquing the first major project (a weird bit of déjà vu from last semester) and researching for the next one. I had lunch alone in the library then went to Senior ad, where Mr. Mohr played us the Naked Brand, a short documentary on contemporary advertising. In History of 2-d. And then the school week was over. It started out pretty light but by now I’m feeling very busy.

Friday afternoon, I picked up and paid for my knitting machine. I’ll write more about that in a forthcoming thesis update!

Day 67: wed, 30 jan 2014. First: my jewelry classmates go crazy with desire after our teacher brings free, empty cardboard boxes into class—go figure. Later: conducting a team meeting with Tay and Jen and as much sunlight as possible.

Day 66: wed, 29 jan 2014. They are not working on motion graphics.

No school today! We’re having a cold day, so I’m working from home. It seems like a good time to kick off a series of posts about my senior thesis project. I’m supposed to be blogging about this project once a week, but that shouldn’t be a problem because I have a lot to say! A few years ago, I designed and knit a sweater. It seemed like a fun thing.

Since then, whenever I wear it at school, people are intrigued by it. I’ve had a couple requests to make some more. And though I don’t really like hand-knitting for other people, I’ve always thought how much fun it would be if all my classmates (or at least a bunch of them) had matching CCAD collegiate sweaters. After all, that’s the whole point of ivy style—uniformity, dignity. My sweater oughtn’t stand out like a sore thumb; it should have friends. I want to get other people wearing these things, too.

So that’s the first thing. Here’s the second: I really want a knitting machine. I love hand knitting, but lately I’ve been more and more intrigued by knitwear production methods—and how I might incorporate some of that into my own work. Until now, though, I haven’t had a good excuse to buy a knitting machine.

Here’s the third thing: I just really love my school. I want to do something with all that love before I graduate. I enjoy the history of CCAD and how it’s grown alongside Columbus; I enjoy my peers so much; I enjoy the whole vibe of being at an art school, though admittedly I choose not to partake in most of it; most of all, I enjoy the teachers I’ve had. I’ve built some great relationships with teachers—many of whom have been at CCAD for decades! I take lots of snapshots of my teachers and I talk about them a lot, but I’d love to figure out some other way to celebrate them and their commitment to the school.

Those three things make up the core of my thesis project. I want to make sweaters for my friends and classmates, I want to master machine knitting, and I want to do something to celebrate this school.

What’s next?

I’ve got to figure out how all these things fit together. I don’t just want to make a bunch of sweaters—there’s got to be a soul to this thing. Stay tuned to hear what I come up with.

Day 65: mon, 27 jan 2014. Karl is making the nicest-looking thing in our motion graphics class, which means he has the most work of anyone in our motion graphics class.