You know you are an art student when...

You Know You are an Art Student When...

You spend two weeks working on a project.
You go to school on a Sunday-- on your own time (!!!) to finish and print the project.
You spend an hour just trying to cover your project with ink.
You print inky project on crappy press because 6 other students are hogging the good ones.
You discover your project will not work and you will have to start all over again. (note: project due tomorrow!!!!)
You scrounge up new materials to make new project.
You print the new project easy as pie on nice presses because everyone else has gone home.

And you know you are Katie when you do all of these things and shed 3 tears because of it.
It was a frustrating day. Can you tell? No worries, you will all soon be seeing the first and second projects I am speaking of. Hope your Sunday was better than mine. ;)

Dear Palios,
free cake has been known to erase all of my problems...............

Hello Everybody...

...Know that as I'm typing that title I am actually singing it like this... which is in fact what I do every thursday morning with the girls I nanny at a music class. Hard to get the songs un-stuck. :)

Moving on! So, this blog is all about the announcements. So many exciting things going on in life that are flying by so quickly and are in much need of being recognized (some more important than others). But announcements none the less so, here they are:


First: My Best Friends Ashley and Marisa graduated last weekend! Congratulations girls! I am so happy for you and wish I could have been there!!

Second: About a month ago we purchased a milk steamer. (I told you some announcements were mor important than others) But, you don't understand. This milk steamer has paved the way for me to have coffee every morning, and, hot chocolate has never been easier. This thing can heat milk, froth milk, do both at the same time, or make frothy cold milk. It takes 60 seconds and doesn't make a peep of a sound. Easy to wash. Perfect in size. And the best part? the froth isn't just bubbles. We're talking: Steamed milk from a coffee shop. soft, smooth, creamy, hot, deliciousness. Why is this necessary? Because for some strange reason, coffee hurts my stomach if the milk is cold. I know. weird. So now, I can have coffee in the mornings just the same way I would order it at a coffee shop. Cafe au laits at home... can't beat it.




Third: summer is almost here! Which means, that spring quarter will be ending in a few short weeks. I am trying my hardest not to get stressed out about all that needs to be done before the quarter ends. It will all work out... the most exciting part of this announcement is: Vacations start soon! At the beginning of June I will be visiting home (thanks to my parents birthday gift to me). I am very very excited. Quickly after that is the camping trip with Wes' side of the family, and the fun continues through out summer. I've said it once and I'll say it again, Portland summers are amazing. As fun as our trips will be this summer we are equally excited for all things portland: camping, the river, flip flops, Jameson Square, walking everywhere, consistent sun. awhhhhh so good.

Fourth: We officially have OR license plates on the car. Woot woot! This happened a couple weeks ago. And unfortunately we took awesome pictures that I realized we really shouldn't post on the internet. You'll all see them someday. But its official: we. are. Oregonians! :)

So, I guess those were more like updates. I think I have more news than this but I can't think of them. And now its time for me to get out of the pjs and get some things done. So, I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Talk to you again soon,
Katie

An explanation...

For the rather weird previous post. :) I hope that you all caught on that that wasn't me writing and that it was indeed our friend Hannah who thought it would be fun to post one. I was going to come on and tell you about our awesome, quiet, speedy, small contraption that has changed my coffee routine into an every morning habit: the milk steamer. Then our friend Hannah showed up at Palios and decided to hang with us. Luckily I had just finished my homework and she and I played Upwords while she wrote a blog for our dear family.

Hannah is a great friend. She used to live across the street from us and attend the same home community from church. We enjoy eating dinner together and switch off between her house and our house. Its been a nice tradition to have even now after she has moved. Especially seeing as how we don't have too many good friends here. Hannah is again, a great friend.

So there is a little background for you. And the "Katie Special" is not exactly true. It's actually called the "Katie Salad." just to set the record straight. The Katie Salad isn't anything really special. Its just an ordinary salad that's on Palio's menu that I always ordered in the half size. The half size is not on the menu and when the owner found out people were starting to order this katie-invented option he told his employees: "No one can order the half salad except for Katie." And thus, we all joke and call it the Katie salad. I'm completely flattered. ha ha You know you're a regular when you have a salad named after you. And to make it clear we only spend half of our life at Palios not 2/3rds like the previous post states. ;)

Friend Hannah's perspective on our life.

Wes and I spend about 2/3 of our life at a little coffee shop known as Palio's. It is this quaint coffee shop located in the heart of Ladd's addition surrounded by beautiful rhododendrons, roses and lilacs. Some of you may recognize the name of the coffee shop if you are familiar with a popular little book called "Blue Like Jazz" by the world renowned author named Donald Miller. Wes and I first came here because this is one of the places that he talked about when he described his love for Portland, he would come here to sip coffee and write his best selling novels; perhaps if we sit here long enough some of his writing styles will transform into our papers for school.

This place is our Cheers, they know us by name and we get FREE pie (because it is less then perfect). As I sit here and write, Wes is in his usual spot reading his text book, today's book of choice (dictated by a paper due), Marriage and Family and I, I am taking a break from my studies to eat what is known as the "Katie Special". That's right! We come here so often that they have named a salad after me. I can walk up to the counter and tell them that I want the "Katie Special" and I get a spinach salad with feta, walnuts, figs and tomatoes with a raspberry vinaigrette.

Sometimes we are here for so long during the day that we run into people through out the day that we know. Today was our friend, Hannah. We have known Hannah for about 2 years now. She first came into our lives when we meet at the Mount Tabor/Hossford Abernathy Home Community. Through out our busy school schedule Hannah has remained a friend even though we don't have the time to always spend time getting to know each other the way that true friendships are kindled. She has even convinced us to join the Buckman Home Community where she now attends.


WRITTEN BY OUR FRIEND HANNAH

Print Numero Dos

Hi all. So, the printmaking continues! This time with a whole new process and a whole new subject matter.

The Assignment: to read the assigned poem and make a print of whatever it inspires you to make.
The Process: This print still involves etching like the first print I made, however instead of drawing on the plate and having full control over all the details we were required to "paint" it all. Basically this process is called aquatint.
Step One: Spray a fine mist of spray paint on to your plate. The dots will be etched into the plate giving the final print a smudgy misty effect.
Step Two: Determine how many shades of grey you want your final print to have.
Step Three: Map out how much time you need to etch each "layer" in order to accomplish the desired shades of grey/black
Step Four: cover your whites, etch, cover your light greys, etch, cover your medium greys, etch, cover your dark greys, etch and anything uncovered will be your black. The process is a very "paint-by-numbers" if you will....

I know the whole thing sounds confusing, because, well it is. But basically the longer the copper plate is exposed to the acid the deeper the marks will etch, the more ink they will hold and the darker that area will be. So, you create your print in layers of shades covering up different parts with hard ground to protect it along the way. My print was very complicated because my main figure was the darkest part of my plate. Thus, I had to draw or paint (yes we painted on the hard ground with a fine-tipped brush or a special trick: using sharpie, more on this soon.) everything but the actual figure. For my specific print this means that I had to paint everything but the tree. Unfortunately, my tree had much more detail than you can see. I used sharpie which is suppose to work, to create tiny detailed branches and things but they didn't end up etching. I think because they were so small. Anyway-- here it is!!!

The Print:


Love,
Katie

A day Late

But have no fear! We did wish our Mamas a happy Mothers day yesterday. Its just that it only just occurred to me this morning that perhaps it would be fun to address the special day on the bloggy-blog. So, here I am: coffee in hand (with all of its yummy-frothy-milk glory. Blog to come on that note), breakfast of champions (for real it delicous), and eyes in need of some duct tape to keep them open. I am so so tired this morning. It was the kind of night where a. I was scared being alone (wes was working last night, I heard noises, ended up being something falling in our closet but still it kept my mind awake for a while) b. restless until 4 in the morning and c. had fallen into deep sleep at time I was suppose to wake up. Awesome.

Anyway, besides the lame nights sleep I had, we actually together had a pretty awesome mother's day. Besides the lack of actually seeing our Mothers. We enjoyed ourselves in honor of them. Yesterday, I had to go to school (yes, on a sunday) and print off my final edition of 5 prints for my project due today in printmaking. The experience was actually quite enjoyable for this reason: there was only one other person there and she wasn't using the equipment. So with the radio killing the silence and just me and all 3 printing presses I was able to actually enjoy making art. No other students cutting in front of me, messing with the equipment, or accidentally using your paper. Just me and all of the printmaking equipment at my disposal. I enjoyed it. THEN, I got home and Wes woke up and we went and got happy hour pizza down the street followed by Swirl yogurt--same thing as Tops or Big Spoon in Sacramento. So So Sooo So SO yummy. Then it was time to get cracking on the homework. So that we did for the rest of the day. HOWEVER, We also got to talk to our moms a couple times in there which was really great. This year we got both of our moms a children's book called "Someday." I strongly recommend it to everyone. This book is beautiful. Not only is the artwork simple and sweet, the text is presented in the same sort of playful manner: it swirls on the pages and things like that. Then the story is the best part. Anyway, again, a great book for every age!

So to all of you mamas our there, grandmamas, mamas-to-be, new-mamas, we hope you had a great mothers day yesterday! We love you,

Katie and Wes