Apple Station

Apple Farm Station, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

so many times at once

so many times at once, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

Newspapers, clocks, and VCRs.

What is all this stuff? Do kids know how to use any of it? I suppose the clock and the newspapers are wireless... In a school where there are hidden projectors and remote controlled overhead lamp projector heater wineglass organic microscopes, there are also yellowed newspapers, outdated technologies, and un-digital clocks. I was really refreshed by what I saw in the middle school. The warmth of the institution was easy to locate when I was in the English Department Teacher's Lounge, where a table is always overflowing with homemade sweets, and the chairs were always full with teachers and lively conversation filled the air. There is a sense of community and collaboration that has left the public schools I attended in the midwest and now the ones I work at in NYC. The excitement for experimentation that I received when I proposed outlandish ideas and the energetic effort put into the conversations I had with all the teachers and staff was incomparable to anything I have experienced in my education. So thank you to all the teachers and staff that helped me to get acclimated at the school and allowed me to keep coming back to photograph everything.

my island before snow

my island before snow, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

I was busy drawing this when all of the sudden...

my island after snow

my island after snow, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

This is what happened while I was busy drawing the first unsnowed island.

THE island

So this is how it went down. Here is the island I claim as mine. It is off the side of the cemetery in Haukivuori. I sat down to draw it. As I was concentrating, it started to snow. The island changed forms. All the depth of the lake and the surround islands got washed clean, into one flat nordic painting.

I went home and tried to redraw it a few times without my ink getting all fudged by the snowflakes, but the character wasn't the same. Sad thing is that now the ice will definitely not carry me to the island. Anyone have a canoe? I want to go back to say goodbye...

Black Finnish Snowflake

I was sitting on one island, trying to draw another one. It was a sad day because the snow was melting and I barely made it to the island (or so I thought) because the ice was so thin. Some kind of winter.
I was concentrating on shading the one side of the island in my drawing when a snowflake dropped on my paper. I tried to look really close and notice the real shape of it. I haven't spent much time one on one with a snowflake, and this seemed like a good time to try to understand the shape. I kept drawing and redrawing, and the snowflakes kept coming, ruining my drawing. The drawing was getting blacker and blacker with my many layered attempts to sketch the damn things. I wasn't upset, but only so curious and excited to find a basic shape to these snowflakes that I think are different than those I got to know as a kid in the midwest.

So here is the black Finnish snowflake.

Drawings.

I had a dream that someone stole my sketchbook and I killed them for it. I never got it back. So, in case the dream foreshadowed a coming loss, I wanted to show you what I have been drawing.



islands.

trees out my window.

A fork in the road of the tree out my window.

Yesterday's shack.