BLAH BLAH BLAH COLLEGE BLASED

WAH! I'm stressed! I have 7 paintings due on the 11th along with four finshed, biqued and glazed ceramic projects. There are 9 aktual piecez. Lemme xplain why ceramics is a pain between muh butt cheeks. Nearly all of my projects have been on the larger side. When dryin', clay goes through 3 stages. Wet (like mashed potatoes or really soft taffy), Leather-hard (still wet, but tough and easily carvable, like leather), and bone-dry (like compressed dried dirt. Brittle, fragile as hell). I have to spend a number of days drying of the bases of my projects as I build them up higher (through coil), or else they'll collapse. Once I get that built, I start with the carving, buffing, and refining. Then waiting for it to dry. This usually takes about a week. If it's not dry, or there are air bubbles in it, it'll explode in the kiln. Once dried, it's bisque-fired. After it's biqued, it's glazed and glaze-fired. The more times you fire it, the more risk there is of fucking it up. We also have to mix our own glazes. This means scale-measuring elements like manganese blah blah blah, sulphur, copper, iron, and mixing them with water. Lots of elbow-grease, lots of grit, a ventilation mask is required. Finished glaze is either sprayed, dipped, or painted on. Best thing about a glaze is that you take an absolute risk when you use it. Glazes can fuck up like none other. It's pre-fired version is pastel and nothing like the final. Because is melts. Shit. Is. Complicated. So all in all, it would probably take me about a month to finish a project, because of the drying time, getting someone to bisque it, getting glaze formulas, getting someone to glaze-fire it, AND making sure it's on the right temp. Terracotta (red clay) and stoneware (white clay) fore at different temperatures. If a teracotta piece is fired with stoneware, it will melt. Then there are the high-fire (cone 06) and low-fire (cone 04) glazes. Glaze a teracotta piece with an 06 glaze and you're screwed. Today was the last bisque-firing. Woops, I'm still building my final piece and my multiples pieces. Im gonna have to get one of the grad students to bisque them. Will I have enough time to glaze them? Maybe. Maybe I'll have to cover them with nail polish. I'm desperate. Gawd I'm tired. Like the rest of my painting class, I though I'd only have to have three paintings finished for the crit on the 11th. A crit with only profs is like gettin yer ego pulled out, chewed up, swallowed and vomited by Vince Neil. So, instead, my TA tells me that it gots to be seven. Three for the last prof (this woman was a moron on a power trip who wanted me to waste my resources), two for Ana (the one I REALLY liked), and whatever I want to bring for Frank (OK guy). I have one finished for Ana... And that's it. I now have ot finish my freakshow dinner in oil on gessoed paper (detailed as hell), my deep-space evolving torso picture (oil pretty big, no black used at all), that horrible colaboration that ended up being a pink, pregnant woman with a shadowed face and tree-branch fingers (I had to paint that from someone else's artist statement. BAH), picture of my best friend Anna-matronic in acrylic on big-assed canvas, volume gel acrylic painted canvas that's soon to be covered in lindseed oil and have organs drawn on it, and an acrylic portrait of my brother, Ki-Yell with his eyes half-closed. These are all pretty good-sized, except for my pregnant collaboration woman. Other than this, I have my crit for research on the 10th. I was planning to carve some plastik, Amanda Lepore-esque woman on a piece of plaster, but I think I'll do another artbook. Dave, my prof, gave me a good idea for it. It will take a lot of effort, unfortunately. Then there's another artbook I'm doing for my english class, featuring my life with Boy. I didn't realize how hard it was to live with him until I got to living without him. I miss him, though. HE GAINED THIRTY POUNDS. From his damn medication. Anyhoo, it'll take effort, too, due on the 13th. And then a by-the-book paper for history. I like that because I get to go to the big, pretty public library.