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The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. The week before Spring break was critique week. This year’s critique week was a little different than years past. Responding to feedback from students from the year before, the Interdisciplinary Arts faculty decided to completely change the format. This time around, they wanted students to show as much physical work as possible, this year students reenacted performances, installed their work on the walls and as for me, I set up a merch table showing off my Zines and current body of handmade paper portraits and drawings. It was great.

After that was Spring break. Mine was spent with three out of four members of my family fighting an awful stomach bug, a massive migraine for me and an emergency trip to Madison, Wisconsin to be with a member of my wife’s family in the hospital. Not exactly restful.

Then back to class for a week. On Thursday of that week was Admitted Student Day. As the program’s Ambassador, I really enjoy ASD. It’s really great meeting the newly accepted Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts MFA students. I Think the best part of this program is its ability to attract such a huge variety of people from so many different backgrounds. I can’t wait to work alongside them next year.

While back in Chicago I had a chance to talk to one of my instructors about the idea of bringing a little bit of fantasy back into my work, something that I had been doing during my undergraduate studies. And then…the family and I decided that we needed an actual retreat. We went to St. Louis Comic Con. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, considering the conversation I had just had concerning the trajectory of my work.

It was the first comic book convention that we had all gone to as a family. It was not exactly restful, in that we had to keep a pretty tight schedule to get the most out of our stay, but it was extremely refreshing. While there we were able to meet a ton of my entertainment heroes: Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, of Doctor Who; Nathan Fillion and three other cast members from Firefly; Sean Astin, and a bunch of others. It was exactly what I needed. Being there really helped me think about potential new avenues to explore in my work.

This afternoon, I met with another faculty member to discuss some of these ideas and he turned me onto Joseph Campbell’s concept of the “Monomyth.” He described an idea that every life seeks out the hero’s journey. Thinking about parenthood along these lines, I think I will be able to expand upon my body of work in a new an interesting way.

I’m going to ride this momentum for a while and see where it takes me.