Pres NAHS Comes To Visit

On Friday October 17, Sue brought 5 of her National Art Honor Society (NAHS) Students to NKU for the day. I kind of acted like a tour guide and talked a little bit about my art classes. After touring the Art Department we had lunch in the student union, then we left campus and went to Eden Park. 

This is a photo of the view from Eden Park, I really like the sky in this picture :)

Cool Tree in Eden Park.

After we went to the Cincinnati Art Museum, We went to the Krohn Conservatory, I had some fun playing with shutter speed while we were there.  

Waterfall in the conservatory. Taken using a slow shutter speed.

Close up of a cactus. Sadly, I didn't see the cactus man on this adventure to the Conservatory.

Some pretty purple flowers in the Orchid Room.

Fall colors!

After leaving the Conservatory, we went to LaRosa's Pizza for dinner. After Dinner, we went to Newport Central Catholic High School to take some photos. This high school is on top of a huge hill and you can see all of Newport, Covington, and Cincinnati from the parking lot.  The Photo above is the view we had of Cincinnati with the cool sky above. 

Pit Fire

On Friday October 11, I went to a pit firing behind the Ceramics Building. 

Loading the pit. You can see lots of ceramic pieces already in the pit. 

This is a close up of the pit. Once all of the pieces are in and arranged, Sawdust, newspaper, and a number of other things are put around all of the pieces. When these burn, they will make different colors and designs on the clay. 

The next step is to put wood all around the artwork for protection. 

Next long strips of wood are added to the pile. 

After all of the wood has been added, the time comes to start the fire. 

The beginning.

Throughout the night, The fire grew. I took a few photos of the fire to show how big the pit actually is. 

While we were firing stuff in the pit, we were also raku firing. To raku fire something means to heat it up in an outdoor kiln. When the pieces reach a certain temperature the lid of the kiln is raised exposing the ceramic pieces like you see above. 

The pieces are then moved to a chamber of sawdust, sand, and newspaper.  As soon as it hits the newspaper, it will burst into flames. Once all of the pieces are out of the kiln and into the chamber, the lid is shut and the pieces will smolder and cool. After letting them cool for 45 minutes or more, you can open the chamber and see your piece.  

This picture is of the pit the next morning. You can see all of the pieces with ash all over them.

In this picture, you can see my pot that I put into the pit fire. It is right in the center laying on its side. 

Here are some of the pieces that came out of the pit.

Here is what my finished pot looks like. 

The side that it was laying on turned out black and the side that was exposed has some deep red colors, a little blue, a little green, and a few others. I am pretty happy with how my pot turned out. I wasn't sure what to expect from the whole process. It was very fun and I am glad I was able to be a part of it.

I Love Art

I have turned my dorm room into my very own personal art studio for the time being. I have a lot of ceramic projects that need to be smoothed, burnished, and glazed. I took a few pictures to show you how I have transformed my room. :)

This is my pit fire piece. It is a big pot, I'm not sure what urpose it will serve after it's been graded though. Maybe a nice flower pot for Grandma's patio? We'll see.
Here is a photo of my makeshift art studio. Bottom left you can see my duck bowl, with a little owl sitting on the side, and you can see my pit fire pot on the upper right. 

I have built seven pieces so far in my ceramics class, two pinch pots, a closed form, 2 imaginary fruits, a duck bowl, and my pit fire piece. All of these pieces are due October 15th, complete with glazes and everything. 

Now to change the subject, the sky recently has been so pretty around here. I just wanted to share it with everyone. :)

About a week ago, Hurricane Ike hit Kentucky. Northern Kentucky was hit pretty hard with half a million people loosing their power, but I think that Louisville was hit much harder. I lost power at school around 2 pm and it came back on around 10 pm. Just long enough for NKU to call school off on Monday. We were back at school on Tuesday and everyone was talking about how they still didn't have power. My first class Tuesday morning started out with 8 people. Most of my classes were pretty small this past week. All of my tests and due dates were pushed back too, so that was also pretty exciting. 

The weather here has been crazy lately. With earthquakes and now hurricanes? Luckily, Our little house is pretty strong, The hurricane winds didn't cause any major damage. Just a few shingles out of place and one of our fan thingys (not sure what they are called) on our roof blew away. My father however, suffered some damage. He thought he heard something hit our house in the middle of the windstorm, so he decided to go out and see what it was. As he was coming back inside a part of our neighbors tree broke off, flew over our roof and hit my dad in the head. My mom was standing at the back door and her side got all scratched up from part of the branch. My mom and Katie took him to the hospital where he got ten staples in his head. He didn't suffer any damage other than a headache. 

I came home this weekend to visit friends and to see my family. It is also my Momma's birthday :) So HAPY BIRTHDAY MOMMA! I LOVE YOU! (If you ever figure out to get on here and read this.) We are supposed to be having a family brunch type thing tomorrow, that I am really looking forward to. 

I took some photos around my neighborhood to show a small part of the damage at our end of Louisville. 

This is a down tree at the house diagonally behind ours. 

This is the giant tree branch that hit my dad in the head and sent him to the hospital. No worries though, he is doing alright. Just complains of a headache. 

Five telephone poles were snapped in half at one of the entrances to my neighborhood. Above is a zoomed out shot and below is a zoomed in shot. 

A Little Bit About My Classes

This semester, I am taking five classes. They are; Ceramics, Math for Liberal Arts, Spanish, Photography II, and Psychology of Race & Gender. 

So far, my classes haven't been too boring or loaded with homework. I know it is only the fourth week of school, but with my roomies and my classes, I think it's going to be a pretty great semester. I'm going to break down each class and tell you a little more about each one. I'm sure you are thrilled to read this... I will make it as interesting as possible ;)

Ceramics- I have this class from 9am to 11:40 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Right now we are finishing up our duck bowls and starting on a simple form at least ten inches tall for a pit firing we are going to have in a few weeks. A duck bowl is an ancient type of pottery- basically we are making a bowl that has an animal that represents us. A pit firing is where we make something out of clay, the put it into a fire pit, cover it up with wood, sawdust, leaves, pretty much anything that will burn. When this stuff burns it will color the clay in the pit and leave natural colors and maybe even cool designs. I am pretty excited about the pit firing on October 10th. My professor said that it will be like a big get-together pot luck dinner with all of the ceramics and sculpture students. 

My next class is Math for Liberal Arts. This is by far the weirdest math class I have ever taken. I'm not exactly sure what we are supposed to learn from this class, or how I will ever use it in real life.. but it should be the very last math class I ever have to take! In today's class we learned about the different ways to tally votes.  I have my first test next Wednesday. 

I have exactly five minutes to get from Math class on the far side of campus to Spanish class in the first building on campus. Needless to say, I take off out of my math class and walk super fast across campus to my building and the race up five flights of stairs to my classroom. I haven't been late yet, so I guess my method works pretty well.  My Spanish class moves very quickly.  My professor is American, but she is married to a man from Mexico and speaks spanish at home. She is a very good teacher and i have learned a lot in the few short weeks that we have had class. Just this semester, I am supposed to learn the equivalent to two years of high school spanish.  I got a 92% on my first test! The test was over spelling and listening. I am really looking forward to increasing my Spanish speaking capabilities. 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Photo II from 9am- 1140. Last semester, when I took photo I we worked only in black and white... well, this semester we are working in color and doing a lot of editing and modifying our pictures. I'm not really sure I like going in and changing the color around in my pictures, maybe I just have to get used to it. Right now in class we are in the process of our first critique. For the first project, we were told to take pictures of light and color... an impossible yet simple assignment. My critique went pretty well, my classmates seemed like they liked my photos and had some pretty good things to say about my work. Tomorrow we will be finding out about our second photo project. I'm a little nervous about what it could possibly be...

My last class is called Psychology of Race & Gender. Basically, this class is all about stereotypes people have about different races and genders. It's a pretty interesting class so far. We are reading a book about a man who was raised as a girl. It is a strange but very good book. The only bad thing I have found that don't like about this class is writing reaction papers. We have to read some about some boring issue concerning race and gender and then read a pro essay and then a con essay. After reading all of this, we have to come up with a reaction and strong opinion on the issue. It's a great big ball of fun. 

See, that wasn't so bad now was it? Thanks for sticking with it this long. :) 

The Suite Life

This is just a quick little blurb to show off a few photos. NKU has giant lights in front of all the buildings. While out walking with Nicci and Kirsten, we decided to set up my camera and take some photos of the lights. I only put two pictures on here, one of the lights, and one with the three of us acting silly. 

King's Island

On the day after we moved into our suite, two of my roomies and I decided to go to King's Island. Since we had an uneven number, I asked my friend Caleb to come with us. We had a lot of fun riding rides all day. 

The Girls.

Nicci, Kirsten, and Me

Caleb, Nicci, Kirsten, and Me

Caleb thought I was a scary driver.. really, I'm a great driver.

Me and Caleb

The Girls

Caleb showing off his cheerleading skills...

We had a lot of fun in front of Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion

Scared Faces

We had a lot of fun screaming and riding roller coasters.  As we were leaving the park, it started pouring down rain, so we had to run to our car. Going to King's Island was a great way to start off the school year.