Monday, February 8, 2010

Feb 8, 2010

I had Art History in the morning time followed by my usual break, which I used to watch tv and then get blueberry pancakes and tater tots to eat whilst we wasted over two hours in Photojournalism. We actually learned a few things that were interesting but not before being subjected to the usual circus of our professor (unquote) figuring out the computer/projector.

We left right after class for Haverford College to see the exhibit of Chris Jordan's work. I've been a fan since a year or two ago when I found his work during a Color Theory project. He uses thousands of small items put together to create large images of mass consumption and waste in the U.S.

Skull with Cigarette is made of 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of people who die from cigarette smoking each year.

Paper Bags depicts 1.14 million paper bags, the number used each hour in the U.S.

Even I can't really tell that this is a photo of a photo, it's amazingly detailed and realistic. You get the full effect standing back and then really walking up close to it in the gallery.

Prison Uniforms is huge and takes up the whole wall.

It shows 2.3 million prison uniforms, the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.

This is one of my three favorites of his, all hanging in the same room. It's amazingly detailed and just a great work on its own.

Plastic Cups shows one million plastic cups which is the number used every six hours on U.S. flights.

Cans Seurat is a contender for my favorite of all. It's an amazing replica of the original work and is strangely similar in design to the way Seurat worked.

106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the U.S. every thirty seconds. It's crazy to even think about that. That's the great thing about his work is the beauty of it catches you at first and then you realize the intricacy of how many little pieces are put together to make it and then you really stop to think about what it means: every thirty seconds this many cans are used and surely not all recycled. Just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of the tip of the Iceberg, Denali Denial is an awesome design made up of logos from GMC Denalis.

24,000 of them equal to six weeks of sales in 2004. Gas prices didn't slow down the sales at all it seems. I really love the word play that you hardly notice until you get close.

After the gallery, we stopped to see Jen and Micah for a short time since it had been a long time and we were right around the corner. It was good to see them again before we headed into the city for ice skating, finally! This is my big idea for our date.

It was hard at first but after doing a few laps and getting the right sized skates, I felt a little more confident. Not confident, but more so than before.

We skated around for an hour or so, holding each other up and listening to a lot of '80s music. It was a lot of fun and a little scary at the same time. I didn't fall though!

What somewhat cliche date would be complete without dinner? We went to Italian Affair, where we were seated in the indoor/outdoor area with a stream and a waterfall but it was too cold so we came back inside. I got the spinach gnocchi which was delicious as always and Joanna got spinach raviolis that were very good as well.

We came back and stayed up longer than we planned to but still got to bed pretty early compared to usual.

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