Done some more work.

Need to do more.

Thought that my journal needed its perfunctory half yearly update. This year has been pretty good so far, I'm often shocked when reminded that it's already been 6 months, then wonder what the hell I've been doing all this time. I've been working on my painting skills, my new painting teacher has been really useful, helped with my inhibitions and I've learned to just get the damned paint on the canvas and deal with the finer details later on, not so apprehensive and reserved anymore. It's been a struggle to deal with 6 subjects, though, compared to the conventional 4 . Because there's so many, I'm not able to spend more time on one subject to do a better job, without it being at the expense of merely passing another subject, so it's just an average job on most of them. That on top of working two casual jobs, soccer, and volunteer work at the homeless shelter..... ok so the last one is a lie. I'm not sure if there even is a homeless shelter in Wagga. But I am a very very busy girl, and I can't goddamn wait until the holidays.

This weekend was our end of year class exhibition, 'First Mark' and it went brilliantly. The opening night was last Friday, and it was my job to give the opening address speech. I never usually would have volunteered to confront myself with the arduous task of public speaking, but I thought maybe it was a good opportunity to combat this fear...! It worked spectacularly, and I had nothing but good feedback from it..! I was worried that my anxiety was really obvious, but apparently I seemed confident, which is big news for me. I even managed to draw a few tears apparently...! Our class became quite close in the end, and some of us wouldn't be continuing next year, including a couple of teachers, so that was no surprise. We've managed to sell a few works, my train engine charcoal study [link] was bought by a gallery in a neighbouring town, and some works by other class members that were not for sale were coerced into the market. So it has been a really successful exhibition, and the celebrations that continued into the night after the opening were insanely fun. This did not continue into the morning, however
And for you Sydneysiders, the two works of mine selected for Showcase 06 are now on display at the Downing Centre Law Courts, so do stop by and have a look, let me know what you think if you get around to it...!

I could have sworn that at the start of this year, I promised myself to not leave assessments to the very last minute, yet I still continue to do so. Should I punish myself? Not in a masochistic manner, though, of course. Deprive myself of... Mango Weis Bars for a week. That's pretty masochistic. But appropriate nonetheless.
I've been doing pretty well though, considering my poor self discipline. I got 19/20 for a digital media assignment, and my art history teacher said that my descriptive writing and critique is 'of an extremely high standard' and 'well informed'. That inflated my ego for a good 2 - 3 hours today..! Yay . I do love interpreting and observing art though, always found it rather therapeutic. Probably why I'm on here so much. Not because I don't have a life. How grand it would be to breed Bearded Chinese Silkie chickens. I could take them to the shows and fairs, and win prizes for them.. At the Sydney Royal Easter show. Man that was brilliant. Just this giant warehouse/shed thing filled with prize chickens. I could have stayed in there all day. There were seriously chickens there the size of small horses.

I'm 21 now...!
Time to grow up and do something with my life I suppose. Meh. Future Sarah can take care of that. I've been a bit stressed lately, as I was lazy with my sculpture and ceramics work over the past couple of months, and now it's all catching up with me , assessment time and whatnot. And my little pet dog, Milo, died recently, that was extremely upsetting, but at least he isn't in any more pain now, the rabbit poison that caused his death really wreaked havoc upon his poor little system . So yeah right now I'm really anti rabbit poison. The closest farm that has it is at least 3 kilometres away, and Milo never went to that area. We figured he'd found a rabbit that had eaten the poison and then wandered off & died, which goes to show how ineffective it is. Even on the target animals, it is such a horrific and painful way to die, it just tears them apart, and you don't even have to live near a poisoned farm to have it affect you in some way . It's made my shifts at Coles a living hell too, sometimes I'll start crying and people just avoid you and look at you weirdly, and really evinces Wagga's collective empathy..

On a more positive note, two of my works that are currently in an exhibition at the regional gallery have been chosen to go on display at the 'Showcase' tafe art exhibition at the Downing Centre in Sydney, starting in late November...! Which is apparently a pretty big deal, no other works from Wagga were chosen..! So any Sydneysiders out there, do go and have a look when it opens!

And finally, yay! Holidays! Time to kick back and.... catch up on my work