All right, I shouldn’t complain. My newfound closeness to Canada gave me an excuse to visit Montreal this summer, and I even got to fly home to Georgia for a little family beach time! But as I pulled my first super-late-night sleepless workathon of the semester – one day before classes even started – all I could think of was “where did my summer go?!”

So much of my summer was taken up with working on my Maneater book and the shows that it will be a part of, and I was binding books round-the-clock up until the semester’s start. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel like I spent as much time thinking about the upcoming year (my thesis year, by jove!) and my new work as I would have liked. The above photo shows the book on display in the gallery – I’m pleased with how it ended up looking, but things like painting murals and hanging shelves take time that I would have loved to spend drafting a watertight thesis proposal, perfecting my artist statement, or – let’s be honest here – binge watching TV with a pint of gelato in my hand like a bad Cathy cartoon.

A stack of completed book copies!

To me, art takes the same amount of creative mental energy, whether the work you’re doing is actually creative or not. And while it’s very satisfying to watch the completed copies of my book stack up as I bind them, that feeling comes nowhere near to the excitement and mental stimulation of dreaming up the next project. I’m more than ready to switch gears from the technical-skill-based side of things back to the creative side of things.

And switch it up I certainly will – our department gained access to a phenomenal amount of new equipment, resources, and studio space thanks to our merger with the Art and Design department, and I’m planning to use it all to its fullest. I hope to experiment with media (performance? has the day really come?) and techniques (offset printing, our meeting is far past due!) unfamiliar to me, and to make my final year at Columbia a true proof of concept for the sort of work that I’ve learned to love making throughout my time here.

I’m going to do all that… you know, once I get a little sleep. And maybe have a little gelato.