Graduation

I finally graduated. Two years and a million lives later. It is so nice to be done. I'm ready for it. I never thought I'd be glad not to have classes. I've always thought of myself as a perennial student. I'd take classes forever if I could. But not now. I'm done. It's time I moved out of the protective environment of my Alma Mater. It's time to leave home.


This is Mitch. I met Mitch in my first semester and we became best friends. He has now moved to California. I'm really sad but that's what I get for making friends in college where most students do move on. This is one of my favorite graduation photos. I don't remember who took it, though. I think it was Mitch's mom.


As a master student, part of the graduate experience is being hooded. The hood is a sash that drapes down your back. When I opened the carefully wrapped square-shaped plastic bag that had my rented hood in it and pulled it out, I gasped.

"It's a vagina!" I cried. (I live alone. I can blurt out things like that.)

Imagine a Georgia O'Keefe flower painting...yes it's a flower, but it's also a vagina! Well, that's what a hood is. Yes, it's a hood, but, OMG, it's also a vagina! The pointed, oval shape. The folds. Then the clincher is this quirky hooky thing at the bottom that looks like...forgive the vernacular...a clit (I can't believe I'm writing that, but it's true!)

What's even more funny about graduating from Indiana University is that the colors are crimson and cream so it has a blood and skin reference to it!


Needless to say, as I watched all these masters and doctors walking around with their heads sticking out a metaphorical vagina, it made the ceremony palatable for me! (I don't care for graduation ceremonies...I only came because--OMG! this is too funny, I just now realized why I came--I came because of the hooding! hooowheehehehehe!)

On a more philosophical note, however, I'm glad the hoods have a vaginal look to them. As I said above, I don't care for graduation ceremonies. I haven't attended mine in the past because they really had no significant meanings for me. But this one did and discovering the "birthing" metaphor via the hood solidified the ritual.

I am a ritualistic person. I believe in the subconscious need for ritual and meaning. But the ritual must have meaning to my conscious, also, so that I can fully experience it.


Mark McCreary hooded me. It had to be Mark. He has been extremely influential in my life. If he didn't or couldn't hood me, I wouldn't have gone. Period. I was "birthed" into a new life. That's what the hooding ceremony means to me. Graduation indicates a moving on, but the hooding is the actual birthing. And I don't think it's coincidence that we call the college we attend our alma MATER

So for all it's quirkiness and humor, the hoods are pregnant with meaning (pun intended).

Final Project--Finally

I am not a good blogger. It has been over a month since I finished my final project and I'm just now getting to it. Let's blame it on FREEDOM. Yay! Graduation! No more "have to's!"

Ok. Done.

My final project was fabulous. I loved working on it and getting it together. I did an art installation. I had two distinct areas in the installation based upon the same idea. The title of my project was:

"Senescence"

The main focus was the video I made from the layers I created in Photoshop to make the print I framed behind the door. I found a door screen that I used for the video screen. Rich loved the pun. No one caught it unless it was pointed out. I found a lot of broken urns and two fabulous wrought-iron rails that I draped with muslin I drenched in mud and ironed to set the mud. (I've since cleaned my iron...it was a mud-caked mess!)


The video itself was a slooooowwww dissolve from one layer to the next so that you didn't know it was even happening unless you either watched it really carefully or you turned away from it then came back only to see a different image on the screen. I LOVED it. It was my favorite part! But it was lost on so many people. We live in a world of instant gratification and immediate results that no one had the patience to really engage in the video. Oh well. I loved it and so did Rich and if it were in a real gallery I think it would be appreciated.

I pulled from past photos plus I made new photos all based on that theme and turned the photos into the interactive part of my project. I set up two computers plus the Johnny Box. (It couldn't be removed from the room so I appropriated it...it worked wonderfully!) I created an .html program that worked off hot spots on each photo. Depending upon where you click on the photo determined the next photo. It was interesting to watch what happened when people got "stuck" doing the same photo sequence numerous times. If it was the same photo sequence for each person, I would have been concerned. But the sequencing was different for different people so I knew it wasn't a glitch.


The purpose of the interactive portion was to give each person their own experience of "senescence." Depending upon what interested them in the photo determined the outcome.


I had a lot of positive response to it.

I appreciate Rich so much. He saved my master's degree. If I had done a website, I could not have pulled my studies together into a cohesive whole and I would have always wondered what the hell it was all about for me. But my final project truly codified my studies and made it worthwhile.

So, thank you, Rich Edwards. You read me well and pulled the essential Dezra out and into the open.