but a daily posting isn’t so well working out–most of my writings need to be longer and more thought out, and with fewer than daily topics. Not to stop writing, of course, just rethinking the format.

Anyway. School’s started (another reason for concentrating writings into fewer, more thought out pieces) and I’m excited about the upcoming semester, with classes in:

learning how to connect, present, and explain my work to anyone (especially important as I feel like I have a difficult enough time explaining what I do to even people in my program!),
in the historical and contemporary practices of hand papermaking and how it interweaves with micro-industries, the environment, crafts, and art practices,
and in focusing my own personal writings and documentation of my ongoing hooray and gifting projects and how to best document the upcoming roadtrip.
I’m sure this explanation of my classes are very dry at best, but it’s necessary for the following thought: the world is really as interconnected as we think it could possibly be. I don’t mean the world is small, and I’m not relating this to “the art world” in specific…but the amount of information, projects, thoughts, people that are connected and related always surprises me.  I recently picked up the latest issue of Proximity, mostly on a whim: issue eight’s title is “Education as Art” (it’s not online yet) — a subject I’m fairly interested in — I knew it was a quasi-local focused art publication.

I crack it open and find articles ranging from:

short pieces on various  free-schooling movements in Chicago – after being enthused about the unschooling movements in No More Prisons –

and articles on artworks being created communally –

and interviews with No More Prison’s author, William “upski” Wimsatt as well as an interview with Bryan Saner, one of the founding members of the Goat Island Performance Group and also one of the adjunct faculty in my department –

and the work of the Conservative Vice Lords with the Jane Adams Hull House Museum, which we’ll be studying Hull House in my history of papermaking class –

to a piece about Teachers for Social Justice in Chicago

& of course more (but if I listed everything, what motivation would you have for picking up your own copy?)

and simply, the amount of ideas coinciding and working together on branching art, awareness, and education both in and out of academia is always amazing, especially as I’m still (and will always likely be) refining my ideas of how to both fit into and make new places for myself in these areas.