EXTRAVAGANZA!!!

Melissa here...back from semi-retirement, once again glad that I glommed onto Andrea's blog instead of creating my own. But this week was rather momentous for several reasons, so here I am.

Numero Uno: I got into my very first real car accident yesterday. Yay! How blogworthy! Ugh. I was on my way to class and got stuck in traffic -- the kind where the car in front of you moves up 10 feet, then you move, then they move, then you move, then they stop moving, and then you keep moving. Just took my eyes off the road for a second, and WHAM! Suddenly the rather large pickup in front of me looked a whole lot larger, and my brain slowly registered the fact that this was no slight tap of the bumpers. Thankfully the guy in the truck was fine -- in fact, he was incredibly nice ("don't worry about it... these things happen."). There was just a slight dent in his bumper and some cracked undercarriage parts. I was also fine, besides my crumpling nerves. Unfortunately, my nerves were not all that was crumpled. Waaaaah! The truck's bumper was high enough to pretty much take out my lights, grill, and the front of my hood. It looks like my car was punched in the face -- a very sorry sight. A situation like this creates such a helpless (and utterly stupid) feeling! One second before, the hood was shiny and intact; then suddenly it wasn't. Surely there must be a way to go back that tiny amount of time and make it go away. But sadly, life sure doesn't work that way. So I was left to feel foolish and shaken up, and then get rescued by so many heroes: my mom (only a few minutes away at the time), the nice truck guy, the cop (um, actually he was a little annoying), Uncle Dave, who got me over to the shop and hooked me up with new wheels in no time (sure is nice to have connections), and my dad, who got home that night and flooded me with love and immediate forgiveness (and a few exaggerated [I hope] estimates of how much it would cost to repair the thing). Such undeserved grace! I really am very thankful that it wasn't worse. It reminded me of how easy it is for such things to happen, and how much protection God really provides on a daily basis. And boy howdy, I was so careful on the way home it felt like it was my first day with a driver's permit.

Okay, so that's not the main reason I'm posting. You probably all skipped that first part anyway if you saw there were pictures below. I'M ONTO YOUR GAME! Man alive, people have no attention spans these days. Anyway, on Monday I officially signed the next 3 semesters of my life away to the art department. BFA FOR ME!!! (Bachelor of Fine Arts, to those who see only in IM-ese and thought I was saying Best Friends Always or something). I had to apply to get accepted into the program, which will theoretically lead to a studio art degree rather than the more generalized B.A. I had to gather my best pieces from current and past classes and present a portfolio for the faculty to review. Lil scary. But, hallelujah, I got in! And I got some positive feedback from my professors and even from a couple of the awe-inspiring senior painters... that always feels good. I really can't believe I've gotten to this point. Basically God has opened door after door over the past couple of years and gently shoved me through them. Suddenly here I am in my junior year, hardly knowing what happened, with a goal and the means to reach it (or at least head in that direction). I'm amazed at what God has done. I still don't know what the final result will be, but right now I'm grateful.

I know several of you more far-flung friends (FFF)have been wanting to see some of my work, so I figured I'd post a few pictures. They came out a little dark and oddly sepia-toned, but you'll get the idea.

First, here's my studio, in all its cluttered splendor. I thought about cleaning it before I revealed it to the world, but that wouldn't really be a true picture, now would it? Notice the spectacular lighting, thanks to the magic of the traveling A's (all these pictures actually came out quite dark, so illuminate times 10 in your imagination).

Here are a couple of drawings from last year. They're done with ripped paper textured with ink and charcoal and such kind of thing. Anyone recognize the above image? (hint: place)

And here are some of my paintings. The first one is, um, a still life with bottles (thanks to Uncle J, who happens to dig up some really cool ones).

This is Uncle L.'s skull (uncles sure are popping up a lot in this post). Not literally his, of course, but he happened to have an extra one kicking around that he let me borrow. At first it was a little freaky being locked up in the cellar with this thing (especially since that was before the days of spectacular lighting).

And here's one from this semester. We've been working on quicker, more gestural stuff a lot.

And that's all for now. Thanks for listening.