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The semester is going pretty good so far. The last week has been crazy busy though. Last weekend was Expo Chicago at Navy Pier, third year Thesis proposal critiques have been fount on all week and I’ve been spending every other free minute in my studio. Oh yeah, and last week I saw the opening of the newly renamed Wabash Arts Corridor.

Of course the opening of the Wabash Arts Corridor was ushered in by a torrential thunderstorm. On the bright side there were a ton of openings to every gallery in the neighborhood. I even ended up buying prints from local artist, Sam Kirk. Even though I ended up coming home soaked, it was a pretty cool night.

Expo was fun. I will say, that in its sophomore year, it was lacking in areas that it excelled in last year. Last year, it had an air of excitement, of something new. This year it was set up in the same fashion as last year, which made it feel a little stagnant. There was still a ton of great, and sometimes not so great, art to look at. I’m very glad to have gone, however, and am grateful that we have an art fair at all to go to in Chicago. Plus, this year, all Columbia College Chicago students got in for free! The best part of all for me though, was getting to see a new painting by my favorite artist, Zak Smith. This has been an annual tradition now, thanks to Expo, and this more than makes up for any of the fair’s shortcomings.

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The last few days have been spent between attending critiques and time down in my studio. The crits that I have been able to sit in on have been very exciting. The third years have all been proposing very cool and ambitious projects. There have been proposals for an instructional database for what I call an anarchist’s cookbook for the Occupy era, a mobile paper making studio in the style of a food truck, and a piece about loss suffered by autoimmune disease on a classically trained ballerina.

From critiques I have been running down the steps two at a time to my studio. The class I’m TAing has been very inspirational. Spending four hours a week in a room full of people drawing people has made me really want to join in. I’ve taking that energy and channeled it into my studio. I’m now working on a drawing of me and my daughter dancing at a wedding as part of my larger body of work and blog and forthcoming zine, Post-Punk Parenthood. Yesterday, I finished the charcoal layer and am very happy with the progress of it. This weekend, I’m going to start on the faces and add layers in ink and acrylic. It really feels good to be hard at work making something. The down side, of course, is that I have fallen a little behind in some readings for my classes. I’m going to tackle those while the wet layers are drying. It’s all part of the plan.

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The energy of second year has been pretty intense and I don’t see it slowing down any time soon.