Final Project.

this has been a fun and interesting class.  I can honestly say that i was challenged far beyond my comfort zone and through lots of hard work I have learned a lot more than I thought possible.  In all that i have learned, I also realize that there is so much that i do not know, even with the After Effects software.  It is amazing the development that must go into programs like that and Photoshop (another program that i was forced to learn in order to be successful in this class.  I have struggled a lot and been frustrated (a lot too), but hard work does pay off eventually.  Most of all, I have really just enjoyed the chance to play and make art.

Here is my final project.  It still could use some tweaks here and there, but overall.  I'm pretty satisfied with my results.  Thanks Jill... You rock!

Final Green-Vimeo HD Encode from Thomas Green on Vimeo.

Xtra Credit

Extra Credit

Characters

Rich King is a 42 year old scientist that studies the migration of fish like the oopu alomo’o and hanalau’akula.  He grew up in middle Arkansas and graduated with a class of 12 people.  He likes fishing and outdoor gaming.

Anne Russ is a middle aged wife and mother of 2.  She is the pastor at the first Presbyterian church in Lexington ky.  She secretly loves show tunes and often plays and sings loudly when nooone is around.

Alexandria Monroe is a bodacious an lively 22 year old red head from Colorado whose mother died at an early age from Cancer. Alex raises thousands of dollars every year spearheading car washes t shirt sales and the likes.

Gary West is a 22 year old platinum blonde gay man who works as a warden in a womens prison.  He is tall thin and lanky, and although he acts to be very stern at the prison (and thinks noone knows he is gay)  All the women know and he is quite the flamer outside of work

Derek Burgess is a 35 year old bass player and beach bum.  He lives in Chorpus Christi Texas and enjoys Mickey’s big mouth malt liquor

Shelia smotherman is a 22 year old art student living in Middle Tennessee.  She enjoys gaming and the Ramones and likes to think that she is a secret nerd.

Angelica Villiano is a 46 year old drag queen.  By day she runs a liquor warehouse and skims some off the top now and then.  Her hair varies as does her body weight from average to thin.

Scott Jeffries is a 42 year old country guitarist and die hard republican man working and living in Nashville Tennessee.  He is 6’ blonde, muscular and popular with the ladies. When he is not on tour he likes 

Lisa Sligher is a 19 year old tomboy-ish girl who likes to ride motorcycles and listen to ACDC .  she is 5’7 has dark thin black hair that is often streaked with different colors

Meegan Pattel is a 31 year old hopeless romantic single woman who works for her father in the Sitar Indian Food restaurant in midtown manhattan. She is 5’3 100 pounds and likes to wear floral prints and gold jewelry.  She hopes to meet a man someday soon.

Petey “Peppers” Johnson is an eccentric middle aged gay man living in Hollywood California.  He grew up on a remote island in the mediterannean.  He often has several sex partners and is in the company of men 100 percent of the time he is not  working as a casting agent.

Geena Rudolf is a 19 year old fiddle player from the backwoods of west Virginia.  She is 5’11” 118, black hair, she loves to wear white (almost wedding like) dresses and was home schooled.

Anabeth Qualls is a 43 year old mother of 3 living in midtown Memphis.  She is 5’11” has shoulder length black hair and was president of her high school class. She works as a director for disease control in Washington D.c and is a graduate of Rhodes College.  She

Rus Copeland is a 23 year old art student at Watkins College in Nashville Tennessee.  He is 6’3” and 285 pounds and has long bush brown hair. He has worked for a famous tattoo artist and makes tie dye when he isn’t playing in his electronica rock band.

Donnie Patrick is a 43 works at a bike shop in lower east side manhattan.  He recently lost 40 pounds, wears glasses and likes to smoke cigars.  He won’t admit it, but several have seen him hanging out by the leather bar on the weekends.

Debbie Smilkstein is a 53 year old single jewish woman and mother of two.  She is 5’6” and 120 pounds.  She has curly frosted brown hair and love the theater.  She sings jazz in a nightclub down in the village on Thursdays and hangs out with her family at the deli during the afternoons.

Chico Brooks is a 41 year old glass artist living in Seattle. His mother is from Mexico and his father grew up in south texas.  He is very fit  with several tattoos and loves to go sailing on weekends.

“Daddy” Don Richards is an 58 year old Xtube porn star that has recently built his own website.  He engages in intercourse with amateurs who wish to star in a video while his husband video tapes the performances.  Since building their own website.  They have developed quite the following. He and Kiddy Cub Joseph like to travel to Australia for the Gay Mardi Gras in March.  Daddy Don is 5’10” 255 pounds with a full beard and lots of body hair.  Kiddy Cub Joseph is 42, 6’4” and weighs 260 pounds.  He is shaved bald and sometimes has a reddish brown goatee.

Beccy Belford is a wealthy 27 year old with brown hair and brown eyes.  She is a perfect 36 26 36, and drives a brand new pink Mercedes convertible.  She has a white poodle named snowflake that lkes to ride shotgun.

Darby Campbell is a 28 year old band photographer from milwakee Wisconsin.  She is 5’10 , 138 pounds.  She has bright blue eyes and coal black hair.   She is an all American girl. 

Xtra Credit

Internship Orientation Session with Carrie Allison Brooke

Thomas Green

I attended the first orientation session for the MCA summer internship position.   I am interested in working a summer internship for either a gallery/museum or a magazine/publication and Carrie was helpful in showing the students locations on the MCA website where you can find links to resources and internships that have been affiliated in some dynamic with MCA before.    

Carrie had a lot of information about the differences between being an intern and being a volunteer.  Namely, that if you are not getting any sort of credit for the position then you are just a volunteer.   Students must follow a number of certain steps in order to apply for the summer internship.  Prior to the internship semester you must fill out an Internship Application Form, Contact and interview with a site, complete an internship agreement form, and then register for the intership course with the registrar.

There are a number of requirements that are needed in order to complete an internship for credit.  One of the requirements is that the student works a minimum of 90 contact hours for the course of the summer.  Internships need to be approved by the school before you can get credit and you must pay for tuition just as if you were going to school.  It is wonderful that the school can charge you 2000k and take that money and hopefully pay Carrie Brooks to continue developing the internship program.   For you to get financial aid for the internship or for summer classes you must take a minimum of 6 hours.

There is also the Ferris Summer Internship scholarship that is offered for internships to two lucky people who get an internship with a company that is “profile,” meaning, a company that can do something for the school even after the student has finished working the internship.  It is important for the school to build such relationships so future interns will be able to gain experience while attending classes.   The Ferris scholarship provides $2500 to go towards travel, lodging and food while attending a for-credit, high profile internship outside of Memphis.  Rising juniors seniors, or graduate students who have a 2.6 GPA or above may apply for intenhships.

XTRA CREDIT

Artist Research

Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist is a multi-media video installation and sound artist that is out of Switzerland.  Her work is amazing and encompassing. The subject matter varies immensely in that it is based on dreams or trancelike states somewhere between fantasy and reality.   If I had to come up with some adjectives to describe the work, perhaps beautiful, light, playful and interesting would be appropriate. She oftentimes uses rich, lush colorizations in her works and refracts the displays around the corners of walls and onto ceilings and floors and pretty much anything that surrounds a viewer.

 Pipilotti Rist was born in Grabs, Switzerland in 1962. She studied at the Universität fur Angewandte Kunst, and the Schule für Gestaltung, Basel. She was introduced to Paul McCarthy, a total nut-job and professor at UCLA that I totally adore, and he asked her to come and be a professor.  She has exhibited all over the world.  And, I mean EVERYWHERE.    One of her career highlights include a 2002 exhibit at MoMA entitled Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), a monumental commission for the Museum's second-floor.  She said in an interview that common themes in her work really deal with being alive, being in the world and being a sensory organism.    She says it is

I was able to experience some of her work recently at the Henry Art Gallery in the University of Washington.  A University Art Gallery seems like an odd place to experience somebody of this caliber, but  U-dub is large and smacked down right next to Seattle downtown.  There are tons of rich folks because of Microsoft, and new money loves to donate to art museums because it makes them feel like they truly understand culture.  I know this because I worked in one of the most elite fine dining establishments and loved to “overhear” conversations of rich assholes… unless they tipped well, which made them wonderful rich people whose names I needed to remember.   My favorite of her works might be the Lobe of the lung from her exhibit “eyeball massage” floating feet and bubbles and round things and bright colors.  If she could include some bubbles I would be so damn happy, I might have to touch myself.   I feel like I’ve become a tele-tubby and transported.  The work is very dreamy and layered with basic-basic imagery.

Rist continues to live in Los Angeles where one day she will be legally married to her

common law partner Balz Roth, with whom she has a son, named Himalaya.

XTRA CREDIT

Extra Credit

Carrie Brooks with Career service

How to interview for a job.

On Tuesday April 9, I attended a short workshop/lecture that was geared towards showing students better ideas for how to present themselves and prepare themselves for interviews.  Interviews are very important, because they are involved in a lot of the things we do.  There are jobs, internships, fellowships, marriages (if you are marrying someone from out of the country), and there are also interviews for clubs organizations and even to get into grad school.  If you really think about it, a first date is pretty much an interview.  So, if you aren’t good looking and you wanna get laid…. Learn to interview!

The meeting went like this.  Carrie handed out some phony resumes for a character named Jonathon Doe and she also posted his resume on the overhead projector.  She ran through the ideas of how to have a proper and organized resume to fit the job (etc.) that you are applying for.  She went over ideas of how to not use the first person or any person when listing the ideas and duties that you want to get across.  For example:  Don’t say “I” took care of guests in the restaurant.  And, she also talked about ‘fluffing’ the language up for the resume.    Example:  you should say…. “Exceeded guest expectations in fine dining establishment.”  This not only makes your experience look better, but it also makes you as an employee look like you value your job.  She said it is important to include any job, and told the way she got her first real job at MCA because she had waited tables.   Customer service is an important field to be a part of, and it is not easy. 

As we went over this she said her interviewee was late, and where was he?  This was all a set up.  In walks Jonathon Welden, the EPA guy, and he’s wearing nylon sweats, tennis shoes, a MCA t-shirt and he’s got his cell phone out.  She asks him some questions.  He talks about how he has had a hard time getting into college but that he is a hard worker and even though he failed a couple classes, he is persitent and moved on til he got his degree.   Jonathon actually did a really good job at showing some of the things that might seem innocuous, but can really become detrimental to your work interview.  With each positive, there was another negative that deflated his chances.

Jonathon left and Carrie said she had another interview at 140.  At precisely 140, in walks Jonathon again.  This time he is dressed appropriately, he has a notebook and takes notes, and he really seems eager and positive to work for Carrie’s fake company.   He gives her what seems to be all the right answers, he makes eye contact, he engages her, and he asks questions that show a true interest in the company and the position, not just the money and getting a job.     

xtra credit

Meeting with Carrie Brooks

I met with Carrie Brooks on Monday April 8, 2012 to discuss my resume and several different strategies I might be overlooking when I’m applying for an internship as well as go over some interview techniques that might be helpful in obtaining jobs, residencies and really just anything.   I am old.  This is true and I have had to apply and interview for many different positions in my lifetime, so I thought that I had this down.   But as it turns out, Carrie had several ideas that could streamline and increase the effectiveness of my resume and also my interview skills.

First we started by taking a look at my resumes, YES, resumes… plural.  I have three different resumes because there are several different fields that I am applying to jobs.  My degree here at Memphis College of Art will qualify me to work in a position as a university professor in Painting and foundations.   And, I am interested in gaining that experience to teach different classes, but I also am interested in curatorial or writing positions.  Carrie had some ideas about arranging my experience in a RELATIVE experience and also OTHER experience type format so that each employer would have easy access to what is most pertinent to the job that I might be applying for.  I would really love to have a good job doing something exciting and creative after school too, so I am working on gaining the knowledge to qualify for such a position.  There are so many options.

Carrie also decided she would go ahead and run through a mock interview with me while we were there and she asked a lot of open ended questions in the interview.  She likes to ask broad questions, as employers like to do the same thing.  It is sometimes hard to find the right amount of time in responding so you don’t seem unenthused but also so you don’t just babble on and on and on about things. 

The meeting was good and very helpful. Carrie is wonderful and has helped me a great deal in preparing for interviews and the application process.  I really appreciate all that she does here at MCA.