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    What a trip…


    2010 - 06.01

    Tags: , , , ,
    Posted in Guatemala, MCAD, Travel, Volunteering | No Comments »

    This was a rough weekend for me…the Volcano in Guatemala City erupting, Tropical Storm Agatha flooding the country, mudslides and sinkholes making travel dangerous if not impossible, terrifying border crossing into Mexico, sleeping in the lobby of a closed airport and canceled flights. I am so very very glad to be home…

    When I’ve regained my mind after this really stressful journey I’m planning on writing about the various aspects of my trip in different posts since there is way too much to cover in just one post. I’m hoping to write about the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy, the mural we painted for them, the excursions we went on, traditional weaving techniques we learned about, the chaotic adventure back home and once I learn more about the need, I want to write about how you can help.

    This was a very eye opening trip. I’m still in shock and being back home with all the things I’ve taken for granted feels very surreal. Things as simple as flushing toilet paper or being able to brush my teeth with tap water…hell drinking tap water in general feels weird. My first night sleeping in my own bed with my cat curled up next to me still feels like a dream. I can’t wait to catch up with all of my friends and family. I’ve been very homesick for the past two weeks.

    I’m going to start uploading my photos and hopefully start putting together a section of this site for the Guatemala Saga. Just because I’m home doesn’t mean this trip is over. Now is the time to share the story and inspire action, and now the need is greater.

    Much love to all of you, it’s good to be home

    Katherine

    Phone test!


    2010 - 05.17

    Tags: , ,
    Posted in Guatemala, MCAD, Travel, Volunteering | 1 Comment »

    Just checking to see how well updating my blog from my phone works!

    Graduation Come and Gone


    2010 - 05.16

    Tags: , , , ,
    Posted in Art, MCAD, Socializing | No Comments »

    The ceremony was lovely yesterday. It was exciting to see so much talent walk across the stage to receive the recognition that they’ve worked so hard for. The student speakers did a fabulous job of delivering words of wisdom that didn’t sound too cliche.

    The guest speaker was Stephen Lundin, author of “Fish”, “Cats” and “Ubuntu”. I just looked him up and it turns out he actually went to the same High School as I did…not that that really means a whole lot, but it’s kinda cool all the same. My favorite quote that I was able to remember long enough to get a whole of pen and paper was, “Life is too precious to just be passing through.” It struck me because I’ve found myself getting swept up in the motions of life, getting overwhelmed by the to do list, the planning, all the things I say I have to do. He said something to the effect of when you see your life planned out on paper, it’s no longer your life, it’s someone else’s expectations. Because not only can you not really plan your life, but your expectations of yourself change over time. You can’t turn down possibilities just because they aren’t part of your plan. He also said that when you start to feel the edge of change, don’t resist it because change will come no matter what. But if you move with it and work with it, you’ll have the advantage over the ones that resisted the change.

    So my BS: Viz degree is officially completed, soon I will have my piece of paper that says I know stuff. I don’t feel terribly different or considerably more valuable but it does feel pretty awesome to have achieved a huge goal in my life. I’ve been looking back on my college career, wishing I had done more with it, pushed myself harder, focused less on relationships that ended up failing anyway, and gotten more involved with campus activities…but I can’t change what I did. I’m the person I am today because of what I did (and didn’t do) and that will guide what I chose to do in the future, what I place value in.

    So, congratulations MCAD class of 2010!



    Jerry Allen and I

    Jerry Allen, Myself and Abbi Allen

    These two changed my life

    Next chapter


    2010 - 05.14

    Posted in Guatemala, Internship, MCAD, Travel, Volunteering | No Comments »

    Graduation is tomorrow and it still hasn’t really hit me. It feels like I’ve been out of school for the past 4 months anyway since I’ve been working full time anyway and not actually taking any classes. Which is great because it will make the transition so much easier. Looking back on the past three years of MCAD, I kind of wish I could go back and do it again with my current state of mind. I feel like I wasted a lot of energy on things that didn’t matter. Recently I’ve been able to pour so much of who I am into projects that are important to me. I went a little overboard in fact. Too many huge things going on right now that I’m spread a little thin. But I’m really happy with where I’m at so that’s what is important.

    Here’s the breakdown for the weekend… Today after work I’m running to the Verizon store to see if they can hook me up with a phone for my travels next week, probably should have done this sooner but I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Around 3 today we have graduation rehearsal, it’ll be fun to see everyone again today and get a preview of how this whole thing is going to work. Then at 4:30 I’m meeting with the Guatemala group to take care of any last minute freakiness that we haven’t figured out yet. (I just got butterflies in my tummy…I can’t believe I’m doing this trip, it’s been so distant for so long, now that it’s less than a week away I just can’t believe it.) Then I get to see Iron Man 2 tonight and I’ll be finishing my friday with Midnight Muse Review presents Carvival at Ground Zero.

    Saturday is commencement and the reception. Hopefully both will go off without a hitch and no parental drama will ensue. I’m so glad the sun has finally come out of hiding just in time for graduation. Sounds like it’s going to be a gorgeous day. Along with receiving my ceremonial fake piece of paper (we don’t actually get our diplomas tomorrow) we find out who won the Van Derlip Grant. I think there are 5 Grants to be awarded, one for the Bachelor of Science program specifically. The application involved writing about 1 or 2 of your best projects. I used the project that I did for Psychology of Social Interaction that involved looking at Subway’s website and finding ways to improve it after doing a Heuristic report, competitive analysis, and wireframe usability testing. It was my first real exposure to what I’m doing now and actually lead to me getting my internship with EatonGolden. I compared it to a project that I did at EatonGolden, showing just how much I’ve grown in this field in a few short months. The grant is intended to encourage students to travel after graduation and broaden their view of the world before starting their career. It certainly would make the trip to Guatemala a little less painful for me financially. It’s already paid for but I took quite a hit for it, I couldn’t let this opportunity slide. There’s plenty of money in the world, they print more all the time, but experiences like this are few and far between. I was lucky enough to get the encouragement from EatonGolden to take some time off after graduation to travel so I knew I had to take advantage of it. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed, I know there are quite a few other applicants in my degree that are extremely talented and every bit as deserving as I am.

    Sunday and Monday will be a blur of packing, a workshop, an Art Pandemonium meeting (this week’s assignment was Macro and I finished mine last night, woot!), last minute seeing friends and reassuring family that I’ll be okay. That’s a short version of the list… I probably shouldn’t be spending so much time having fun tonight, I’m really going to miss the people I’m seeing tonight, so it’s important.

    I’m not ready for any of this, graduation, my trip, the performance later this month…not in the slightest. Life certainly doesn’t wait for you. Events don’t line up perfectly and sometimes procrastination bites you in the bum… I’m learning to roll with the punches and enjoy every second I’ve got.

    Hopefully I’ll make time for another post before I leave detailing exactly where I’m going, what we’re doing and when I’ll be back.

    I think there was another thing I wanted to mention, but I’m really scatterbrained today… oh well. probably wasn’t important… time to get on with my day and actually get stuff done…

    Scratchboard: The Peacock


    2010 - 05.05

    Tags: , , ,
    Posted in Art, Blogging, MCAD, Socializing | No Comments »

    Okay, I’m going to be a little lazy and just copy paste a post I wrote for another blog detailing this latest project that I finished. But to Preface it I’ll explain what it’s for. A few weeks ago my friends Mike and Megan decided that we missed art classes so we started meeting at a cafe in St. Paul once a week to devote an evening to doodle, sketch, experiment and get the creative juices flowing a bit. The first night we challenged each other to do something we don’t usually do. I was told to do a landscape with pastels, Mike was told to do a landscape with inks (red, teal and black only) and Megan got to do a self portrait with charcoal. Thus, the assignments were born, we immediately began writing down as many ideas as we could think of, themes, mediums, locations, subjects, anything that could be mixed and matched as we saw fit. We had a great time and came up with assignments that could last us well through the summer. This endeavor also got a name, we’re calling it Art Pandemonium. Last week we created a wordpress blog in order to keep track of our work and our thoughts on it. This post is about our second assignment, I’m hoping to scan and write about the first assignment tonight or tomorrow. But for now… here’s the scratchboard assignment:

    Two weeks ago we chose scratchboard as our assignment and I think we were all a little nervous yet still excited to try a medium that was rumored to be completely unforgiving. I was inspired by a woman that works at The Wildcat Sanctuary where I volunteer every other saturday. Trista Campbell is a very talented artist and an incredibly wonderful woman, she works tirelessly for the cats at the sanctuary!

    Lately I’ve been thinking about peacocks a lot, partially because of a performance that I have coming up that I might end up incorporating their feathers into my costume. While bumming around flickr, looking for ideas. I came across this image by dee_r and instantly knew it was perfect.

    My process involved changing the image to black and white and making sure the levels were just right on photoshop, gridding off the image and creating a sketch on regular paper, tracing the image and then finally using transfer paper to get the image onto the scratchboard. Then the real work began…scratchboard is definitely a labor of love, but it felt like a medium that was well suited to my line quality (read: “I can’t draw a straight line to save my life!”).

    I learned a lot about  line work, cross-hatching and how to treat foreground, middleground and background with this assignment. I think next time I do scratchboard I will be using a picture of my cat Midnight Moon and do a portrait of him. He is the Prince of Darkness after all and deserves his own personal portrait artist to catch him an all his glory…or at least he thinks so…

    The PeacockFor my first scratchboard, I’m exceedingly happy with the results. I owe it all to wonderful inspiration and a very talented photographer.

    Long overdue update, Job, Travel and Zoos


    2010 - 04.10

    Tags: , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Art, Design, Internship, MCAD, Socializing, Volunteering | No Comments »

    So, as I’m sure you have noticed, I’m not a very consistant blogger. I get so darn caught up in the activities that I’m doing that I forget to write about them…I think I have a lot to talk about…like a lot a lot…Tons of great things have been happening and I can’t remember what I’ve written and what I haven’t.

    I may have mentioned this once before, but in case I haven’t I should say that I found out a few weeks ago that my bosses at the company that I’ve been doing my externship at for the past few months have decided they want to bring me on full time after graduation. At EatonGolden, I’ve been learning more about Information Architecture and Usability for websites. It’s been really exciting being fully immersed in the projects and I’ve had fun getting to work with real clients with truly talented professionals. I was so lucky to have John as a professor at MCAD where he could preview my work ethic and personality. When he knew I was looking for an externship we both felt I would be a good fit for EatonGolden. I love having a job that motivates me to work harder, learn more and improve my skills constantly. Plus everyone there seems to like me…always a plus! My official start date should be sometime early June. I’m still working as an intern until I graduate, but it certainly feels good to know that I won’t have to worry about the whole job hunt thing after school…

    Speaking of graduation…hard to believe it’s almost here…I’ve spent roughly 75% of my life in school…Now it’s time for the “real world”. Luckily the transition will be super smooth since I’ve been working full time for 4 months and not taking classes anyway… but still…weird. Although I’ll never stop learning and pushing myself to try new things, it will feel strange not being in a formal education system anymore… but the lasting impression of student debt will no doubt keep me company for years to come…

    More exciting news…after graduation I’m going to spend 11 days in Guatemala with a group of fellow MCAD students. We will be working with the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy to paint a mural and do some community outreach work with the students. I can’t wait! It will be so nice to get out of the country for a bit and do something good for other people. I was so happy when my bosses at EG encouraged me to take some time off for travel after commencement because that was one of my main concerns about going on the trip. I didn’t want that to be a hinderance to my hiring potential at all. (I seriously can’t count all the ways that I love my job, but the primary thing is the people I work with).

    In other news, went to the MN Zoo, compliments of MCAD this afternoon. Took TONS of pictures, hopefully some of it will inspire art soon. The sea dragons were particularly awesome and beautiful, so was the Amur Leopard (I was amazed to learn that there are only about 30 Amur leopards in the wild!!! holy crap! that’s ridiculous!!! and I thought I was amazed by there being only about 4,000 tigers in the wild…). If you want to see all of the pictures I took, I’ve posted them on facebook and you can see them here and here. But here’s a preview…

    Be expecting more art from me in the future, I just dropped entirely too much money on new art supplies to play with and I can’t wait to test them out more. I have that mural for my friend to make some more progress on, the mannequin is getting lonely, these new zoo photos to play with and I’ve been making feather fascinators like crazy. I should post those soon, they’re super awesome.

    For now, I’m going to wrap this up so I can get ready to go to Balls Cabaret at Midnight. Good times!

    Book Review: The Innovation Paradox


    2009 - 12.08

    Posted in Book Review, MCAD | No Comments »

    The Success of Failure, The Failure of Success

    The Success of Failure, The Failure of Success

    Just a quick book review…or recommendation really since I haven’t read the whole book yet. We were assigned a few of the chapters for my Senior Seminar class. I thought it merited a blog update because it highlights many issues that I’ve been facing myself in my creative work. Without going into too much detail, the best take away that I got from this book was the idea of “Productive Mistake Making”. Personally, I have trouble starting anything in fear that I might fail. I have to stop looking at failure as an end-all embarrassment fiasco and more like experiments in which I learn what works and what doesn’t. Something that I believe sites like Facebook and Twitter are contributing to is this feeling of our own importance, that people are constantly watching our every…EVERY move and are just waiting to see us fail miserably. In all honestly…it’s probable that no one actually cares enough to do anything more than giggle a bit and they’re ready to move on with their lives.

    Mistakes often lead to new paths, new ways of thinking that we might not have come up with on our own had we not “failed” to accomplish what we were hoping for. Evolution itself is a key example of “failures” turning into huge successes. If mutations never occurred, species would find it impossible to adapt to environmental changes.

    Ultimately, surviving embarrassment is a liberating experience and it gets easier with practice. I know when I’m getting ready to do some class presentation or other forms of public speaking I freak out and get super nervous, but afterward I feel amazing and wonder what I was so afraid of. It just takes practice (and realizing that most students are too busy worrying about their own presentations to be worried about yours).
    Anyway, good book, I highly recommend it if you’re looking for something to break you out of a failure-phobia. Quite Eye-opening and has countless examples of where failure turned out to be a good thing.

    The Monster inside us all


    2009 - 11.29

    Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Art, Journal, MCAD, Networking, Socializing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Just finished Season 2 of Dexter this evening. I know I’m a little behind the times and just trying to catch up with this amazing show. But wow, what a ride. If you haven’t seen this show, get on Netflix and watch it all…right now. I’m actually a little grateful that the 3rd season isn’t on play instantly because if it was I’d start it and not get anything done… This way I have to wait until I get the next disk. For those who haven’t seen it, I’m not going to spoil anything, suffice to say that the characters in this show are amazing, the plot is intense and the show never stops giving you little twists along the way.

    Plus, it makes you think about the monsters inside all of us. Sure, not everyone is a serial killer in their free time, but we all make mistakes, do bad things, hurt people we love and keep secrets when we are afraid to face the truth. It’s interesting to think about how there’s a good and bad side to everyone. I have personally been facing a lot of my monsters lately and it certainly isn’t a pretty thing. Ultimately, I’m working on being more honest with myself and the people I care about, learning how to trust again and remembering the value of owning up to mistakes and seeking forgiveness in due time. With any luck, the new visual journal I’ve started will help with this process while also easing me back into the habit of making art.

    I’ve just realized that there are two weeks of classes left. Two more weeks to wrap up projects before I’m off to work on my own. Time to prep for my new job, get back into old hobbies, earn some extra money and spend time with people I’ve been neglecting. I’ve gotten so wrapped up in my own issues lately that I forgot the people that were most important to me.

    Time for bed, just wanted to reflect on some thoughts swimming through my head. Goodnight everyone

    A Sunny Black Friday


    2009 - 11.27

    Tags:
    Posted in Art, Journal, MCAD, Socializing | No Comments »

    It’s the end of November and it’s freaking gorgeous out…am I the only one who thinks this is abnormal and a little disconcerting? It’s Minnesota, snow is expected well before now. Lakes should be frozen over and kids should be having snowball fights right about now. I’m going to stop rambling about this now before someone tries to hurt me though…

    Thanksgiving was wonderful yesterday. Gathered with my aunt Diane’s family and enjoyed a wonderful dinner made almost entirely by my cousin Kori. She did an awesome job, the turkey was absolutely perfect. I’m making myself hungry again just thinking about the amazing food… Of course we had the typical conversations touching on all the subjects to avoid at a family gathering, politics, news, sports etc. I think we made it out without talking about religion which made me happy. The holidays this year are going to be rather quiet I think. Usually we get together at my uncle Tom’s house where his wife makes the most amazing dinner and we do a small gift exchange, catch up and enjoy seeing the great grand-kids run around. The economy is getting to everyone though and family gatherings are expensive and stressful. I think the most we’ll do this year is do dinner someplace, that way the stress isn’t all on one person and no one is expected to bring gifts. Personally, I hate how holidays have focused so much on gift giving and less on time spent together.

    This year, any gifts I give (with some exceptions) will probably be handmade in someway or another. I’ve got some ideas floating around in my head and am really looking forward to taking the time to get back into art. This year has been very artless for me. I’m hoping to change that once this semester is over and I have a month off, then just an externship next semester. No classes, no homework and a work environment that with any luck won’t suck the life out of me. I need art again, I miss it and crave it. Starting with an art journal, I need to get in the habit again.

    Nothing terribly new to report I guess…hopefully this week I’ll get a start on that art journal and can throw something at you then. Maybe I’ll find some answers too.

    Google Analytics and more


    2009 - 11.19

    Posted in MCAD, Media, Networking, Socializing, Tech | 4 Comments »

    Time for a quick blog update!

    I just want to share my amusement with Google Analytics. I just set it up on this website about a week ago and have been thoroughly enjoying seeing the data roll in. Thank you all for following my links on Twitter and/or Facebook, randomly googling me or looking me up from the link I have written in on my old business cards (I promise I’ll get new ones soon >.<) GA is exciting and a little creepy to be honest…I mean, I’m seeing hits from states where I don’t know anyone from, finding my blog. Common people, who are you? leave a comment, say hi, I don’t bite! Granted the average time spent on my site is about 2.5 minutes…and that’s alright, I don’t have much of interest up here yet…it’d just be fun to know who’s looking.

    who are you people? don't be shy, say hi!

    who are you people? don't be shy, say hi!

    On another note, I have some wonderful exciting news to share with my vast number of readers…*cough sarcasm* I got an externship lined up for the Spring Semester with EatonGolden. Yay *happy dance* My final step in the process of graduating is soon upon me and I’m so excited to take on this challenge. Working with John Golden in my Psychology of Social Interaction I got to learn more about usability and web functionality. So when my class got to tour their office I was terribly excited when I got to have a chat with John and Emily about what I was looking for in an externship and they said they wanted to bring me on. I couldn’t be happier. It’s going to be a lot of work but I’m all about it.

    Last night I took part in a Women Helping Women networking group meeting at the Medina Entertainment center. The keynote speaker was Dave Meyer of Bizzyweb and he spoke about Social Media use for personal and small business use. I had a lot to add to the conversation and very much enjoyed learning some of his professional strategy suggestions. Might even end up doing some freelance work for him soon. It was great to finally have the opportunity to go to the group that I’ve been helping Melissa get going. She’s done such a great job putting this group together and I think it will do a world of good for the women who get involved. I can’t wait to see it grow.

    Tomorrow night I think I’m going to catch the Bella Koshka show at The Whole on the U of M campus, haven’t found anyone to go with yet but I’ll manage. Should be good times all around. Perhaps I’ll get to catch up with Hilary (the violinist of Bella Koshka). Can’t wait to get that project going, but more to come on that later I think.

    That’s all for now, time for some Project Runway!

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