Galway was beautiful! Not what we expected from an ‘arts festival’ i.e. booths for miles of artists and their wares and work. But more like masses of people and performers in the streets, selling their creations on blankets on the ground, while the guy next to them juggles flaming torches while riding his unicycle and then up the street a troupe of drummers played beats so beautiful that any soulful woman there could have danced til her clothes slipped off and not even noticed. Didgeredoos, djembes, bongos, pandeiros, firedancers, you name it we basked in the beauty of it. I'll post pics tonight when I get home.
Galway also offered a much more diverse selection of food, and you can bet your sweet ass that we hit up Mr. Waffle the morning after our first night of drumbeats and experimental mixing of boozes. The difference is, their waffles are the consistency of an over-done glazed doughnut. Still tasty, but only if you smother it in bacon. Bippity-boppity-BACON! Saves lives, I promise. Afterwards we moseyed into an REI-like store and purchased some delicious attire, unlike anything I have found before. Hooray, this made up for the lack in visual art pieces at my fingertips. Back to the wine bar for dinner, this time complimented by a delicious steak and strawberry-rhubarb crumble smothered with tasty ice cream. Oh joy… what did we do after this? Ah yes… Irish ‘Gentleman’s Club’. We had to! How would we ever be able to appreciate the beauty of places like Sapphire and the Rhino if we hadn’t?! And oh do we appreciate them now… I’ll spare those of you who don’t want to hear the gory details. You can message me privately. J For more entertainment and accounts of traveling, please refer to my sweet friend Kari, who is in our group on this trip. She is freaking hilarious, and I love her blog: http://www.thoughts.com/kenicholas/blog
On more personal matters, as I stated before I have decided to back off from school for a bit after I finish my Masters in December. So far the approval ratings on this decision have been very high. Good to hear. As I try to explore exactly what it is I want to do with my life, I always come to the same general areas. Art. Travel. Education. Policy. In that order. Art always being number one, and all categories in the realm of helping others. The logical repsonse is to work in educational policy as an advocate and fighter for maintaining quality and consistent art programming in the public school systems. But at the end of the day, that still leaves me behind a desk for the most part. The thought of this gives me a headache and scares the living shit out of me. So I dig deeper. I have been exploring artist residencies, all which sound amazing, and all which remind me that I’m nowhere near established in myself as an artist to even consider applying for one of these yet.
So in my quest to save the world, I have obtained a good amount of education to make me ‘qualified’ to do so (Human Services BA, check. NPO Leadership MA, check.) In my further quest to save it with art, all I have is my little bit of technical talent and personal basis behind it. *Lightbulb* Eff the Ph.D. for now. I’m going to paint my ass off. Not only that, I’m going to figure out a way to articulate what the hell I’m painting for and what I’m trying to communicate with it. (Here lies the challenge)
Kristin, Blake and Joe – you officially have the right to bludgeon me with an actual bludgeon rather than just your words from this point on when you feel that I’m not painting enough. Thanks.
What I hope will transpire from this is an actual art proposal that will reap some funding and provoke some research, thus bringing me closer to the ultimate goal, which is… well I don’t know yet. But I’m sure this process will decrease the fuzzy lines surrounding it.
This week I’ll be wrapping up the PR for the Big Bang Festival and Young Urban Arts, and will then be delving into The Archive, the physical documentation of all art in and around Dublin for the past 30-some years. Wheeeeeeee!! This will provide most of the material for my summary project, as I compare it to the child violence rates of the coinciding time period. This is what I wanted to look at for my Ph.D. proposal, so doing this will get that out of my system for a bit so I can focus on… d’art.
Love and smoothies,
Emily Jo
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