There are no boxes for us!

As inspired by my darling TheTsaritsaSez, who asked for a post about a life passion and what we've done in going after it...it may seem rather broad and cliched to say, but art in all its forms would be my answer. Music (with a jazz musician father, it's hard to ignore that influence); the visual arts (HELLO ART HISTORY MAJOR); film (c'mon, we're modern kids who all grew up with color TV and movies); literature too, but not *quite* as influential as the others to me.

My CD collection. This is not including my ridiculous amount of mp3s and minimal vinyl. As I mentioned, my father is a jazz musician, so music was and is always played around the house - most likely while I was in the womb, my dad was playing Miles Davis and/or John Coltrane to my mom's belly through headphones. Growing up, my taste has ranged from '30s blues to Franz Ferdinand; "Singin' in the Rain" to the Sex Pistols; Kate Bush to Afrika Bambaataa - and everything in-between. I really appreciate well thought-out lyrics, probably because I am not a fabulous poet, and lyrics are poems set to music after all. Thus Bryan Ferry's lyrics always mean something to me, since I feel that IF I could write lyrics, his would be the sort I'd write: pop-culture-referencing, sentimental without being sappy, sometimes irreverent...and so when I met him, I was especially proud of myself that I didn't get speechless.

Speaking of Ferry, I mentioned to him that I'd read he had originally gone to art school for art history, the article I found right after being accepted for the Art History program at Temple. (He then exclaimed how much he loved the Philadelphia Museum of Art when I replied to his query about where I went to school. We're both Duchamp geeks, naturally.) When everyone started discussing what to go to school for, around 11th grade, I went into a slight panic since I had no idea what to do. Then I thought about what had always taken up brain space: the arts. Even in my 9th grade Honors course I had done a big project about Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and loved researching about it. 6 1/2 years later, I was writing another big research paper about the actual painting process of the Sistine Chapel...and seeing it in person in Rome.

Prints I currently have hanging up - top picture shows Klimt's "the Kiss", Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2", and Warhol's famous "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" quote. The Man Ray print is a new purchase - I was drawn to it since the main figure seems to be inspired by those wooden figurine bendy models. Hmm, words don't like me today. One of these:

My couple of main bookcases. Still making my way through all of these, since I get sidetracked by rereading the same ones again and again. (See Craig Ferguson's "Between the Bridge and the River", Norton Juster's "the Phantom Tollbooth" [it's not JUST a kid's book], Mikhail Bulgakov's "the Master & Margarita", Walter Tevis' "The Man Who Fell to Earth", and pretty much all the memoirs.) 

  And film...where to start...I don't even know. Currently I'm watching a variety of things - between foreign films, gangster flicks, and camp classics mostly. But I'm so glad I found this poster for cheap online.

Lastly, drawing. I don't do it everyday, but once in a while I find inspiration and this is my latest creation. Grace Jones is sort of one of my heroines now.

Job-wise, currently even while at my temp job I'm researching more artsy-based positions. Thinking about consulting (thanks to a random run-in on the street with someone who overheard me talking about grant-writing), but don't know how to break in; tomorrow I start more non-profit fundraising classes, so I'm interrogating the teacher about what to do. I'm applying for educational, art gallery/museum-oriented, advertising, and archival jobs almost daily - not giving up! If it becomes completely hopeless without further education, then I already know I want to study overseas for my MA. No matter what happens, I'm passionate about being somewhere(s) art-based.

Any of you particularly influenced by some form of art on a daily basis, or artistic yourselves?