What next?

With as many studio classes as I have this semester, I'm already beginning to feel a bit burned out.  Which isn't good, since we're barely two weeks into it.  I have 3 months left to go.  So here's what I've decided.

I had my concept that I'd been working from.  The idea of looking back at family history.  I won't go into the details again, you can look at previous posts for that.  But basically, I've decided to sub divide that concept so that while all my work is in a similar concept, each class I'm dealing with different content.  That way it breaks up my day a bit.  Otherwise I'm dealing with the same thing all day Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it gets dull and monotonous and it starts to feel like I have to force it.

So in Painting I'm going to focus on the Trundle Bed Tales, the book of family stories from my maternal grandmother's side of the family.

In Printmaking I'm going to work with The Grandma Christine Story, the autobiography of my maternal great grandmother.

And in Sculpture I'm going to go a bit more meta and focus on the entire idea of written history, and the value we give to the written word even though it's completely subjective.

For the next sculpture project, the one I have to start on Tuesday, I've been thinking about what we did the first day of class.  Two Truths and a Lie.  We've all played the game.  It's just a silly, fun way to get to know people in class.  But it does make me wonder.  Did/does my family play the game when passing on family history?  What they don't say is almost as interesting as what they do say.  Am I getting the whole story?  Is there any way to reliably pass on the 'truth'?  It's really all just a story.  One supposedly based on real life events, true, but how can we really be sure?  Especially in the case of the Trundle Bed Tales, which involves stories dating back to around the time of the Civil War.  We can look at their letters and pictures and listen to the stories, but we can't really be sure that it's 100% accurate because there's no one around to corroborate. 

But we still treat it like it's an accurate record of our family history.  Because it's written down.  If you pass something on verbally, it's like a game of telephone.  You expect there to be little inconsistencies or embellishments.  But something written, well, that means they took their time and got it all right, right? 

As with my last 'planning' post, I don't really know yet how these thoughts are going to manifest yet.  I have the beginnings of an idea, but it still needs to percolate for a little while before I share.