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Crits are over!! Yay!! I want to give my cohort a huge congratulations and let them know that I’m super proud of them. I also want to say thank up to them and to staff and faculty for all of the great feedback. I’m very excited to get back to work, and the feedback really helped to clarify my next step. Thank you.

I think my crit went well. It was kind of a blur while being up there, to be honest. Thank goodness for friends taking notes in the audience and for the audio recording. The faculty members present gave me a lot of references to look at, which, happily enough, included a fair number of graphic novels to read. They also seemed to be pretty excited about my perspective as a post-punk dad and how that relates to my art making. Best of all, they really responded well to my current pulp-painting/drawing. It is a very good feeling when people are responding well to your most current work.

Post critique, I am hunkering down a bit and catching up on emails, class readings, and research. I will also be figuring out what my next source images will be for more pulp-painting drawings. Oh, and driving to North Carolina for Spring Break…

My wife’s best friend, an old friend of mine from high school, is getting married this Easter weekend, and my wife is the Matron-of-Honor. So exciting! We are packing up the kiddos and ourselves and hitting the road. It’s a fifteen hour drive. Thank goodness for the movies in the van. These kids have it good, amiright?!

The neat thing about the wedding being in North Carolina is that my parents also live in NC and only about a half hour away from where the wedding is! I might actually get to have a date with my wife! So far, its looking like it’ll be a fantastic wedding. Aside from the drive, of course. That is long. Very, VERY long.

I am pretty sure that I can speak on behalf of the rest of my cohort and say that Critique Week fit into the schedule pretty well. Though it felt like it was pretty early in the semester, it is incredibly awesome that spring break is the week after. It’s a built-in decompression/processing point where we can both recover from the last few weeks of work and figure out our next steps. And just plain escape. Cosmically, this wedding lined up with this schedule for me, and I really get to take a break. It’s a good feeling.

So again: Crits are over, and Spring break is here. Time to breath. Thanks again to everyone that provided feedback during my Crit and congrats to my fellow students! As for you newly admitted Book & Paper MFA students reading this (time to break the fourth wall), I will see you all at the Interdisciplinary Arts Admitted Student Day on April, 4th. It’s going to be a fun day, and I can’t wait to see you all and show off this school! Until them…