Ireland Study Abroad, Installment 7

Belfast has been a very different experience from the other places we've been so far. Luckily, our border crossing was uneventful, although using pounds is odd after seven weeks of euros. I still don't understand why the two pence pieces are nearly the same size as the fifty pence pieces.
We've been able to stick to our normal class schedule while here; it's nice to have a routine. The close of the semester is drawing ever nearer; I still have a lot of writing to get done for my classes. There's been a lot less play-going while we're here, which is nice because that means we have most of our evenings to ourselves.
One of our first excursions was to see some of Belfast's murals. These are all generally of some political bent, sometimes local, sometimes more international, often featuring either Nationalist or Loyalist imagery or celebrating historical events. We also saw several informational panels, which are created digitally and then printed and posted. I'm not a big fan of these; the murals are far more striking and effective. Someone driving by won't read intimidating blocks of text, and only some walkers will do so, but an artistic image can be processed at a glance. Furthermore, the murals are temporary and generally reflective of the community's sentiments; the panels seem to defeat that purpose.
We also visited Healing Through Remembering, which I was really glad we were able to do. We saw a few items from their exhibit, Everyday Objects Transformed by the Conflict, as well as got to hear about a lot of their work and how their organization began. We were lucky to see them because they're currently in the process of a downsizing move.
On Thursday, we went to Angela's Ashes: The Musical, which I quite enjoyed. Several of the songs were rather catchy, and I think it did a reasonably good job of adapting the novel and maintaining a similar tone of sadness and humour. I was distracted by the children Malachy and Frank being played by adults.
Friday we took a field trip to several sites in County Antrim, including Giant's Causeway and the terrifying Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge. We still have another week full of things to do in Belfast.

Ireland Study Abroad, Installment 6

Midterm Break is over, and we’re now beginning the section of our program set in Belfast. We were able to travel independently over the break, so I traveled within Ireland. I was able to see the Frank McCourt museum and take the Angela’s Ashes walking tour in Limerick.

Just riding on the bus to reach places on the Dingle Peninsula was absolutely beautiful. Tralee has a very nice town park where I practiced some of my watercolors, and Dingle Harbour also had some amazing views, although it would've been easier to watercolor if the rain would stop drizzling or me every fifteen minutes or so. It was nice to take things at a bit of a slower pace, although I wish I had done more work while I was at it.

I was traveling by bus, which gave me plenty of time to do some reading. Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark and Glenn Patterson’s The International are both books on our Belfast reading list. I enjoyed The International the most, although both were good books for trying to get some idea of the experiences of The Troubles. I did find it interesting that Patterson’s narrator Danny, a barman at The International Hotel, identifies as neither Catholic nor Protestant, although one of his coworkers does identify him as Protestant based on his educational experiences. Meanwhile, Seamus Deane’s young narrator is decidedly Catholic; his book is definitely about the Catholic experience living in such a violent environment. It seems that Danny is intended to be a more generally relatable narrator, although I'd be curious to know if he would seem to be Catholic, Protestant, or neither to a native of Northern Ireland.

Ireland Study Abroad, Installment 5

It's been a long and busy handful of days in Galway. I really enjoyed the size of Galway; it felt manageable enough to get a handle on location. I know where all my favourite coffee shops are by now. The Arts Festival has been great, and we've seen lots of shows: Irish Shorts 6 from the end of the Film Fleadh, Yellow Moon, Bathroom, Pumpgirl, Dún na mBan tri Thíne (The Fairy Fort is Burning), Woyzeck in Winter, Crestfall, and a staged reading of Bir Tawil.

We also met with the author of Solar Bones, Mike McCormack. I really appreciated that he talked a lot about the publishing side of being an author and how he was rejected so many times. I'd like to try reading some of his other books, particularly Notes from a Coma, if I can find the spare time someday.

We also spent a day at Cliffs of Moher and Coole Park, as well as a day on Inis Mór. I wish we'd had more time to spend at Coole Park; there were a lot of trails I wish I could've walked, and views I would have liked to have attempted to draw or paint.

A lot of the performances we were able to see were quite good; I personally think I enjoyed the reading of Bir Tawil the most, even though it was only actors reading a script rather than a full production. You could see a few of the actors tearing up on stage during the reading. Afterwards, there was a Q&A session so the playwright could get feedback on his work. Crestfall, on the other hand, has mostly left me very unsettled. While the production itself was strong, I'm having some difficulty understanding what purpose was served by putting that type of graphic violence and brutality on stage.

Correspondances

This is a final project I did for one of my classes last term, an illustration of Charles Baudelaire's poem "Correspondances". (Click for an alternate viewing experience.)

Ireland Study Abroad, Installment 2

We continue to be non-stop busy, but that's probably for the best because there's a lot to do in Dublin, as well as attempt to have some semblance of classes. We've been able to meet with a lot of guest speakers for historical context and information from their areas of specialty. Tuesday, we met Claire Keegan, a published short story author, who was a fascinating individual. As a class we had read "Foster" and "Walk the Blue Fields", and I had read her other stories from the collections Antartica and Walk the Blue Fields. Many of her short stories were slightly disturbing. Overall, I think it was refreshing to meet with an author who approaches her art from a more personal direction than an academic might.

Both the National Library and the National Museum have free admission. We toured the Yeats Exhibition and had a quick overview of the National Museum archaeology exhibits. The collection of gold is especially impressive, and the bog bodies are another highlight, although that display was creepy. I'm not sure why, but it's very different from seeing a skeleton; it's the whole body, flesh, organs, bones, and all, of someone who died violently.

We've been able to take our art practice outside with us this week, which was a nice change. This week we're working on cross-hatching and quick gesture drawings. I think I need to work on being more patient while working on cross-hatching; my drawings often look very messy and scribbled, rather than neat and realistic, and I think if I could make myself slow down more that would help.

Friday was an all day field trip to several sites in County Meath: the Loughcrew Passage Tomb, the Hill of Tara, and Trim Castle. I enjoyed getting to see a little bit of the history that was discussed in my Norse and Celtic Mythology class last fall, and it was particularly interesting to see the castle. 

Castles are a setting that tends to be present in the imagination from an early age, from fairy tales, movies, fantasy novels, and so on. I'm not sure how much research authors actually do into what castles are truly like, and it's not like fantasy authors are writing historical fiction--they're free to create their setting however they like. Furthermore, there are a lot of different types of castles from various historical periods. Nevertheless, I was surprised by how small this particular castle was. Even the Great Hall didn't seem all that imposing. The most interesting fact I learned is that Trim Castle (and apparently some other castles as well) was plastered and painted. The stone walls we saw would've been a bright white, with a roof of red tiles, although apparently bright colors were often used for other castles--purple and pink, for example. This raised the interior temperature by about 15 degrees and made the building highly visible. With glass windows and thick tapestries as well, the castle would've been a comfortable temperature to live in, although the ruins we toured were drafty and unwelcoming.

Ireland Study Abroad, Installment 1

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I've been in Ireland for over a week now, and it's high time I made a new blog post. We've made it to Dublin now. (The Internet access in Louisburgh was somewhat lacking.)
I made it to Ireland before most of the study abroad group, so I was fully recovered from jet lag and adjusted to the time change when I met up with everyone. I did explore Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. It was a bit of a tourist trap, but it was a good way to spend a day, and the castle, in particular, was pretty neat. The thing that most surprised me was the steep spiral staircases. They certainly were good value for vertical territory covered in a minimum of horizontal area, but they were slightly claustrophobic when there were large groups of people present, and I could feel my fear of heights making me a bit nervous when I turned to go down.
Our first day after our arrival in Louisburgh was a long Sunday of touring various locations in and around County Mayo with a Carleton emeritus English professor from the area. Westport House was our first stop. Apparently, the family that used to own the place were descended from Grace O'Malley or Granuaile. She was a somewhat notorious pirate in the area here around Clew Bay. The story that I remember about her from the tour is that when she was eight, she was not allowed to go out to sea with her father because it was considered unlucky to have a woman onboard the ship. Consequently, she cut all her hair off and was onboard the ship for two moths before her father realized who she was. At that point, it was far too late to turn around, so she received training onboard.
We also visited Aghabower. There's an old round tower, which would have been a protection from Viking raids, and a graveyard and old church ruins as well as a sacred well with a sheela na gig.
So far, Ireland is mostly extremely windy and rather rainy, with occasional spots of sunshine. On all the bus rides, the scenery has been absolutely gorgeous. There are rolling green hills, and Clew Bay with blue-green water and numerous islands. We have passed by Croagh Patrick several times; its peak is often shrouded in clouds.
On our second day of touring various locations, we visited the Michael Davitt Museum. I had never heard of Michael Davitt before, but he seemed like someone of which I ought to have heard. Apparently, Gandhi drew inspiration from some of Davitt's rhetoric and his non-violent methods.
In the afternoon we visited Hennigan's Heritage Centre. Tom Hennigan was extremely knowledgeable about a variety of crafts and skills that were essential to the pre-modern Irish lifestyle. I found his incorporation of references to poetry into his presentation particularly engaging, as when he displayed creel baskets and recited a Seamus Heaney poem about making them.
Our first art class was Tuesday; we began with blind contour drawings. I think I'm really going to enjoy this art class. I don't feel my work is exceptionally good or bad, but I am certain I will improve over the course of the next ten weeks. I really enjoy art; it feels like something I can do. I feel like I have a healthy attitude towards my artwork; if only I could cultivate a similar attitude towards other parts of my life, I think I would be a much happier person.

What makes something art? Why does an object become more aesthetically pleasing when we call it art? Maybe it's a type of peer pressure that we all have decreed that certain things are art, and thus worthy of appreciation, or perhaps the knowledge that something is considered art causes the viewer to look at it in a more thoughtful way.
In our most recent art class, we drew shoes. I quite like my shoes, and I don't think they're ugly, but I hadn't appreciated a shoe as an object in a certain way until I had to draw it. Looking at everyone else's drawings, what they had produced was something aesthetically pleasing and attractive, something people would enjoy looking at, even if we are not all perfect artists. Meanwhile, people wear shoes all the time and don't appreciate them in that sense. Even now, I'm not going to look at someone's shoe and really consider it to be art (at least not in most cases). What changed between the object itself and the representation of the object? To make this more complicated, what about forms of art such as sculpture, in which the object itself is the product?
This is primarily an observational and field drawing class, so we're mostly focusing on translating three-dimensional objects into a two-dimensional medium convincingly. We are keeping a field notebook for 55% of our final grade. We are supposed to include some small bits of journaling within the book as well as all of our assignments, so by the end of the course, I hope to have something pretty interesting to look back on from this summer.
Wednesday was our day for Croagh Patrick. I am somewhat disappointed in myself that I did not do the entire hike. I hiked the first third, which according to the map, appears to be a bit less than two kilometers, although an extremely steep, treacherous, and windy two kilometers. Nonetheless, it was my choice to turn around, and I didn't want to hold up the entire group ahead of me. Looking at the map, we didn't have too much more to go, just a flat section and a last steep bit to the summit. I doubt I'll have a chance to hike a mountain in Ireland again, so I do kind of regret it, but it was probably the better decision at the time. Still, at least I wasn't one of the people who chose not to hike it at all. That would've really felt like a poor choice for me to not take advantage of this opportunity because hiking is something I do enjoy. I did see some fantastic views as more and more of the bay becomes visible.
Thursday we visited the Jackie Clarke Collection in Ballina. There were some interesting pieces there, although the curator was a bit long-winded. They seem to be a relatively new installation, in the last five years or so. We were hoping for more small objects to practice drawing, but the collection is mainly documents of various types. They do have a copy of the 1916 Proclamation, I believe the only one that is not located in Dublin, which was cool, and will probably have a little more meaning for me after we've had a chance to discuss Irish history in a bit more detail in classes.
Grades came out from last term on Thursday. It's strange to me to be heading into a new term already when the old one is hardly finished. I haven't been home since Christmas, so I am really looking forward to those few weeks in August and September before Fall Term classes begin.
So far, my favorite reading has been Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. The Guards by Ken Bruen and The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle were also enjoyable reads. Angela's Ashes was surprisingly humorous at times for a book about a childhood spent in abject poverty. It was particularly interesting to see the ways Frank McCourt was encouraged to read and to further his education, the importance of religion in his life, and the relationship between Ireland and America for many of the characters in the book.
My other two classes are Irish Literature and Performing Ireland. They are mostly functioning together as one class on this program, which seems more sensible for our situation, although Carleton requires that they be two separate six-credit courses with two different grades. It's a lot looser than what I am accustomed to, with a lot more options for us to choose how and when we will do a sufficient number of assignments of various types, and which books, from on or off our syllabus, we will use to complete those assignments. I know our professor doesn't want to stress us out so much that we can't take full advantage of our location, but he also has high expectations for our writing. It's going to be interesting seeing how that goes.

Spring Term Update

Wow, spring term has been long, and it's not even over yet. I've read a lot of books this term, and still not as many as I'd like. Highlights include Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Paul Auster's City of Glass, and Amèlie Nothomb's Biographie de la faim. Outside of class, I still haven't quite managed to finish Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert's Marvel 1602, although I'm enjoying it so far. Meanwhile, my "to read" stack stares at me accusingly.
I have actually been involved with The Lens, one of Carleton's publications of a more literary bent, as a content editor this term, which seemed to go well, although interest in the publication as a whole seems quite low. I hope to get in touch with people about maybe working with The Manuscript, another one of Carleton's publications, once I am back on campus for the Fall term.
It's Week 8/10, and already preparations for Fall term are underway. I have secured my room assignment for the Fall. Course registration is upcoming. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Shakespeare I, Self Defense for Women, Critical Methods in English, Middle East & the French Connection, and Windows on the Good Life.)
My courses for the summer trimester in Ireland have already shown up on my schedule as well. I'm excited to take a real art course for the first time in a very long time. I'm hoping it will improve my work. I am really looking forward to this study abroad; I hope I will get a chance to see art and literature in a more real-world context, as well as enjoy the beautiful country.

Stand Still. Stay Silent.

The rule from which the
comic takes its name

Were you looking for a heart-warming post-apocalyptic Scandinavian webcomic, in which the artwork is amazing, the characters all have fantastic hair, and the cats are plentiful? If so, I found it. Stand Still. Stay Silent. is a gorgeous webcomic by Minna Sundberg.
With events detailed in the prologue, a catastrophic disease destroys the world that we know, and Iceland, as an island nation which closes its borders and defends them aggressively, becomes the most populous country in the known world. Ninety years later, an expedition to explore the dangerous and empty "Silent World" begins, and thus we meet our intrepid adventurers. Unfortunately, their mission is extremely underfunded, and the crew is therefore composed of a ragtag bunch of not-quite-so-professionals.

The mission's backers discuss their hiring options

Tuuri Hotokainen is the Finnish skald and mechanic, while her cousin Lalli is the mage and night scout for the group. The inexperienced Swedish Emil Vasterstrom and the enthusiastic Norwegian Sigrun Eide are along for more combative duties, while Danish Mikkel Madsen functions as both cook and medic for the team.
There are a lot of things I love about this comic. The characters are all very multi-dimensional and real. The comic manages to have a lot of laughs and enjoyable moments for something set after the end of the world. Most importantly, there are so many cats in this comic.
A lot of world building has gone into this comic, and I like that there are occasional pages of extra information, rather than attempting to awkwardly have characters explain basic facts of their own lives and the world they live in through dialogue. The info pages answer questions readers have about the complex and fully-realized world, without disrupting the story.
Of course, the artwork is fantastic. I would love to own the print version of this some day. The backgrounds are beautiful. The facial features are very expressive, which is important in a comic, and each character's design is distinctive and unique. The use of paneling is innovative--wavy panels help to denote the dreamworld that mages visit, and the artist is not afraid to use creative arrangements of panels. Unfortunately, some of the larger page spreads are not as easily enjoyed online, or may even have to be rearranged for the online posting format (just another reason to buy the print version).
Furthermore, the characters all speak subsets of different languages (Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, or Danish). This is an example of something that works very well in the medium of sequential art, but would not work at all in other media. The author denotes the language spoken with a little flag in the speech bubble, while the huge majority of the comic is all in English. It illustrates well the language barriers that exist between certain characters, while readers are still able to understand what's going on. Even the animals' onomatopoeia is in the correct languages (the Icelandic sheepdog barks "voff")!

The comic updates on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. You can start reading here!

Lalli recites a Finnish runo to summon the moon

Part of a short montage that
represents a few weeks' travel

Map of the Known World

The Beginning of the End

It's about to be 10th week, and then my freshman year will really be coming to a close. I've registered for classes fall term. I'm pretty excited: French 204, Anthropology of Humor, Folk Dance, and Norse and Celtic Mythology. I've been less interested in Biology lately.
This Saturday was Rotblatt (the 150th year, too). I was in line for a T-shirt at 3am. It began to lightly rain on us, which was fun. When they started tossing our shirts around 5am, the crush of people was unexpectedly forceful. One of the barriers was knocked down, and I was pretty certain I would get lost between the groups of people pushing in two different directions. Luckily, I claimed my shirt and was freed from the mass of people. Rotblatt itself started around 5:30am, I believe. It's a softball game with an inning for every year of Carleton's existence, and must be played with a drink of some type in one hand. Mostly, it appears to be a reason for the student body to get outside during Spring Term.

9th Week Update

I've been painting a lot recently, mostly space because it's easy and doesn't need to exactly match up to something real. The stars have made a complete mess of my desk.

Room Draw was last week; I will be living in the dorm that's generally considered the worst dorm on campus, but I know a few people living on my floor, so that's good, and I'm also not on the far side of the lake from everything else, which was a possibility. I'm going to be so lost at the beginning of next year when I don't know where all my friends live anymore.

I finished reading Purity by Jonathan Franzen recently. It was a really interesting book. It was cool to see the stories of all the separate characters begin to intertwine and entangle. Strangely, I feel like every mother-child relationship in the book was definitely odd.

I've started reading Circling the Sun by Paula McLain. It's about Beryl Markham, so I suppose that makes it a form of historical fiction. I'm really enjoying it, although I'm not very far along yet.

Recently I re-watched Ant-Man, and I think I enjoyed it a lot more the second time. The first time I watched it was probably 3am in the morning and I'd been awake for 20 hours or so, which, for me, is unusual, and I was really annoyed by how Hope wasn't allowed to do anything and this random thief just becomes a super-hero for them over the course of a few weeks. I think the second time I watched it and was a little more awake, I was able to get how this conflict was an actual part of the movie that made sense within the movie, and enjoyed it more. I feel like Ant-Man worked well in part because it wasn't just a superhero movie; it was a bit more of a heist movie, that happened to have a setting full of superheroes and cool powers.

Captain America: Civil War

I recently read Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner. It's something I've been meaning to read for a while, and it was interesting to read about some history and ideas of how we got to where we are today. It was a little shocking to read about how things were for women in the past--it's something I knew, but not something I've spent time thinking about consciously lately. The more disturbing thing is that there are still many parts of the world today where women are considered the property of their husbands, fathers, or brothers, denied access to education, or suffer other inequalities.

I'm also almost finished reading Deep South by Paul Theroux. I received the book as part of a book club, but I'm really not enjoying it at all. Maybe I just don't need to be reading travel books, but, in my opinion, the author manages to come off as condescending and full of himself and a bit rude most of the time, which is really making it difficult for me to enjoy the book.

All my friends are already done with classes and exams. Meanwhile, I still have a bit more than three weeks remaining before I'm done with exams. It's very strange to be the last one out of school, but it's also not warm enough here for me to feel like it's actually summer.

I re-watched Captain America: Winter Soldier this week with a friend in preparation for Captain America: Civil War last night. I'd forgotten a lot since I last watched that movie. I really liked that Natasha and Steve's friendship was platonic--it was refreshing to see something different for a change. It was also a reminder of how confusing all the stuff going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe can get if you're not paying close attention.

Civil War was fantastic! I really enjoyed it. At this point, I'm not certain if we're capable of not enjoying Marvel; they've set themselves up with enough a good track record that we're far more willing to be forgiving to any mistakes they might make. Spoilers ahead.

What did really bother me was that I felt there was a missing sense of closure at the end. Steve sends Tony the letter which suggests that they're all still going to work together, but it hasn't really addressed what's going to happen with the Sokovia Accords or any of the issues that caused the team to fracture in the first place. T'Challa is the only person who has learned anything from the entire ordeal, when he decides to forgo vengeance. It seems like Steve and Tony haven't learned anything, they've just decided to quit trying to kill each other. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed the movie.

The Original Affluent Society

From looking at some of my Friday Flowers this term

Maybe these wrinkles are the reason I've had painting difficulties

This trimester, I'm taking Introduction to Anthropology, Indo-European Folktales, and French 103. I'm really enjoying all my classes; my professors are good. I've been painting more, since more of my brushes and watercolor paints are up here for the spring term. I'm pretty pleased with some of my efforts, if I do say so myself. I haven't been as happy with some of the stuff I've tried to do on larger paper--maybe that has something to do with how rippled the paper has become...I should probably try to use up this block before it gets any older and sadder.

I learned something interesting in Anthropology today. We've been reading The Dobe Ju/'hoansi by Richard Lee for one of our class readings. It's about Richard Lee's ethnographic work with a group of people in the Kalahari desert in Africa. Along with his ethnographic work, he also collected scientific data about number of calories, types of foods consumed, and hours worked. Interestingly, he found that only about 20 hours per week were spent on getting food. When he added in housework, tool repair, and other types of work, (work that we in Western society would not count as part of a traditional 40hr work-week job), that number came to about 42 hours of work per week. Calorically, the Ju/'hoan diet was appropriately meeting their needs for nutrition and diversity. This was a bit strange to me, because it's the opposite of what most people probably expect. Marshall Sahlins also wrote an essay further exploring the topic of the hunter-gatherer society's work week. I'm not really sure what it means, but it was still interesting.

Can you guess this landmark?