Thesis! It’s barreling ever closer! I just ordered my conversation stickers, which feels great to have those done. The pages for my Chicago punk scene coloring book are done, I just need to format them into a book and have them printed and order my branded crayon boxes. Those are goals for this week. Aside from that, I have been toiling away at this video project to be my big thesis capstone.

Video? Yeah, video. So the main thing that I was interested in with making my zine as part of this multi faceted project of Post-Punk Parenthood was the facilitation of stories from punk parents. I achieved some level of success by publishing printed versions of these stories in a zine format. That project has evolved now to be this video. I am collecting video stories from punk parents and combining them with some documentation of raising kids in an alternative household. I’m having a blast with this project. I’ve found that people are more willing to participate when telling their stories to a camera as opposed to writing them down. At least so far.

AND, I have a couple of famous-type people that are on board with contributing! I’m not going to name names on here just yet because I don’t want to jinx it, but watch the Twitter account for clips once I have their videos. I am beyond excited. The biggest bit of advice I can give to you is that if there is someone famous that you look up and want their help with a project, ask them. It absolutely cannot hurt. But be prepare for the waiting game and also be ready to have to send reminders (which is way more terrifying than asking them in the first place).

Shameless call for participants time: If any of you reading this are or know anyone that have identified as punk and have kids and want to have a video story included in this project, let me know.

I have meetings again all week with the advisors and the new gallery curator. Hopefully, after those, I will have all of my installation questions answered and will know exactly what the presentation of this will look like. Right now I’m envisioning black walls (maybe a chalkboard painted section) with lots of text graffiti, a table for kids to work on the coloring books, a screen on the wall for the video to be projected on, and a changing table in the corner. So I guess I have a pretty good vision in my head, but I need to get final approval. I actually haven’t told the advisors that I’ve been working on the coloring books as a side project. That happens today. I’m a little nervous, but the reason behind them is super important to me. I am staring to feel very confident again and can see the end. It’ll be here before we know it.