Woke up again still feeling crummy- a friend called and woke me up at 10 am- doesn't sound early to those of you abroad, but to those of us here in Russia, especially those like me who usually get up at 11, an early 10 am phone call is disorienting.
I had a dream last night that I met Barack Obama. He was out here in St. Petersburg, and they had opened an American style coffee shop with big to-go cups of drip coffee (I always dream of big cups of coffee when i'm here, Stumptown, i miss you so...) and we were both standing in line. "Excuse me, but aren't you Barack Obama?" i asked. "Why yes! What a surprise running into another english speaker in this country. I bet you come to this coffee shop all the time. What are you doing out here anyway?" "Well, I'm here on a Fulbright. Can I shake your hand?" "Of course!"
That's when the croaking of my phone interrupted the dream and woke me up. I'm sure that Barack was well on his way to hire me as his foreign policy advisor for Russia....
Speaking of Obama, I just watched his 30 minute ad campaign spot on YouTube. I'll admit it- I was choked up when he talked about his mother's battle with cancer and insurance. It'll inspire you to vote more than Ben and Jerry's offer of a free scoop when you show up with your "i voted" sticker. Too bad they don't have a branch out here... I'd already qualify for my scoop of phish food or cherry garcia.

Kaloo Kolay, no work today...

I spent most of today drinking tea in bed. I woke up with a bad head cold and only left the apartment today to grab supplies for chicken noodle soup.
Yesterday Yuri and I started working on my book. I prepared all my materials and started drawing sketches of the illustrations as Yuri and Pyotr covered the studio tables with a much needed new layer of wood. "And next, we'll build a new Russia!" Yuri declared while tightening down the screws.

final product

final product, originally uploaded by laurichka.

Here's a photo of a print I made last weekend. I put it up on my flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/laurichka but didn't post it here. The print was based off of a photo of a miner from this great book of soviet photographs from the 70's. I love the image mixed with the color printing style because it reminds me of propaganda posters.

I've resolved that next year I am going to live someplace sunny. Enough of this perpetual rain. I always hear objections when i complain about constant rain, "but i love the rain" someone will chime in. And you know what? I did too, back when i drove everywhere. But when you're stuck to biking (*sigh* i miss my bike) through the rain or trying to tame an ornery umbrella while walking on a particularly blustery and rainy day, you get pretty fed up with rain. However, it does pose a good excuse for sitting at home at night and feasting on my pot of minestrone soup while watching episodes of Mad Men online.

***

Tuesday put me in such an amazing and wonderful mood! I met with Yuri (who is finally back in town) and I finally realized that my project is going to happen. Discussing the logistics of the project and getting set up with contacts made everything I had been imagining start to become realized. It was the same feeling I had when I knew I had finished my last thesis draft and all i had left to do was fix a few typos. I'm going to start coming in to the studio on Tuesdays to work on creating artist books with Yuri, along with the regular Saturday classes with Smolny students. This Saturday we worked on figure drawings for the first half, and started with dry point printing for the second half. You can see examples of Yuri's dry points here in his illustrations of Kharms stories
I think I will be using dry point for the first book project that I'll be working on. I have a picture here of Ryan and Me when we were really bitty that my grandpa took of us. My Mom sent it out as a Christmas card years ago and i stumbled upon some extras while hunting for an envelope. I remembered the photos he took of Ryan posed as "the boy with the red balloon" and i was thinking of illustrating a version of the story. Thanks to youtube I was able to find the film and sketch out some ideas. Mine will take place in Petersburg instead of Paris, so hopefully the boy with his balloon won't mind all this rain.

... and so much more to come

There's a lot to catch up on, and I promise to do so soon. This weekend was a whirlwind of wonderful art activity so here's a list of things you can look forward to hearing about:

-Yuri's warm-welcomed return to the printmaking studio, and a meeting tomorrow to discuss my project in depth
-color monotypes
-proposal for St. Petersburg Times article
-found hipster mecca.ru at the "art parade" at Etazhe this weekend
-Vanessa returned from America
-voted today!

Sorry family that I didn't give you guys a call this weekend! I promise to do so soon. Megan- i want to hear all about NY, Marko- don't worry, Barack is rumored to make a cameo on SNL that will surely outshine Palin's.
Love,
Lauren

Make it Work!

Today was straight out of Project Runway. Olga and Yana decided to put together an art show in the gallery space at Smolny, and they decided to do it all in one day. The class that I'm auditing, "The Contemporary Exhibit," gives us each a chance to curate a show in the Open Studio based around one of the strategies discussed in conference. Last week Olga and Yana gave us the requirements for the project, but everything came together today. The concept behind the show is "site specific work relating to the gallery space". All of us participating student artists showed up in the morning, presented our ideas, snagged a piece of wall, and went to work. The idea behind the project was inspired by the show "Rooms" at P.S. curated by Alanna Heiss.

I've posted a few pictures of my piece, you can see the rest of the works on my flickr page here.

The collage:

Close up views:

The gallery space feels more like a hallway- it mostly gets used as a way to get from the main building to the library. I wanted to replicate this idea of people walking through the space without paying attention to it. The figures are all drawn on translucent paper and none of them are facing the viewer.

The show came together and looks great, and best of all, no one was "auf'd"!

Published, credited.

The St. Petersburg Times printed my first restaurant review today!

You can read it here.