art and and the finer aspects of obeying traffic signals

well kids, here's some art for ya

i put up two pictures of the same painting because it's really hard to take a good picture of a shiny canvas...the actual colors of it are somewhere between the two images.  the assignment was to paint without the use of white or black.  

this is an etching print, done with acid eating away at the spots i designate it to on a copper plate.  this will have more versions up soon because i keep changing the plate.  we  had a little student art show this last week and i actually sold this image printed on pages of old robert frost poems.  the money goes to the art department...but i think this might be the first piece that i have sold to a total stranger...kind of exciting :)

(in case the photo is exceptionally and characteristically crappy, it is a tree whose arm has turned into a typewriter while another arm types...the assignment was to make a surreal image that also gave the idea of space)

this is a "linocut," print which means on a linoleum block i carved away all that is white in the picture, inked it, and ran it through a press.  it's called "love your neighbor as yourself."  i really like this one but i think i only got, like, a B on it.

in other news, i almost accidentally stepped out in front of a bus today- 

i had just got out of school and my mind was completely distracted when i got to the corner i was going to cross that is in front of the school.  the sign going down the street said green...so i thought that meant me...but my sign was red.  so i stepped down off the curb and looked left and this bus was coming super fast with its blinker on to go right.  since i thought it was my turn i was a second away from just stepping in front of it- i just thought he would stop because apparently i am a little to overtrusting of traffic lights.  through the haze of my tiredness i think God just stepped in and stopped me.  when i saw the bus go past me i realized how gnarly that could have been.  

it was surreal to walk safely across the street, knowing i had just escaped smearing my body all over the pavement...it was like those books with two endings...or like a soul passing into heaven on a bridge over hell thinking, "that could have been me down there."  

*shudder*

let me tell you, that's enough to wake you up.