#i loooove my new tablet its very good

[ethosiab]

Me thinks a RED joel pretty please?

i know his lack of recklessness lately is like, important character development and all but i do miss 3rd life joel. he just went for it and died. rip

(vote boat boys and ill draw something for you)

[soapamine]

Post 1 of things i love

Okay this is probably going to be a long-ass post so feel free to stop reading at any time lol

Really i love everything, but here are some things i especially love in no particular order I love the seasons, all of them in their own ways, i love absolutely everything about the fall, especially the leaves and pumpkins and memories associated with the season, even memories that are not my own. I love the summer because i love florida and tourist/beach aesthetic, i love pastel beach houses and long reeds in sand dunes and trays of brightly dyed seas shells in stores and i love boats even though being on them always scares me more than a little, i love the sea even though it scares me, i love peers and docks with rocks around them especially in the fog or rain. I love looking over the edge at the fish hiding in the shadows, i love algea and the aesthetic of fishing villages. I love ice cream shops and sand on hot pavement under bare feet and especially summer storms. I love the winter and the snow and the blue/silver tone the world assumes. I loooove the smell of cold air and the way snow sits on top of wrought iron fences and lamp posts. I love bare trees on gray skys and the idea that i could wear a coat and walk through a park or down a street enjoying the weather. I love the idea of shops and streets decorated for christmas, the idea of a new york winter, going to social gatherings in the christmas season. I love the warm lighting and trays of cookies and bringing loads of food to christmas parties for people because its the time of year i know i can bake lots of things without it going to waist. I love christmas parties and new years parties and i wish i ever had the oportunity to go to them. I love wearing christmas dresses and playing with children around cheerfully decorated homes with extra tables set up to accommodate all the extended family. I wish my family had little children, or even got together at all because i love that, i especially love the times i’ve gotten to be part of other peoples families around the holidays because mine was always too estranged from eachother to do that. I love all festivities from every holiday that doesnt celebrate patriotism. I love the spring and flowers and the start of the daily afternoon showers. I love walking in the rain especially when its just sprinkling and when i’m with treasured people. I love making devilled eggs for Easter and visiting my grandma when she acts surprised that ive brought devilled eggs even though i do every year. I love carnivals and fairs and foodtrucks and i especially love funnel cake. I love anything fried but especially when that fried thing has dough lol I love to look at the world in detail, i love architecture and art and nature and rocks and old worn streets. I love the look of europe for its entirely different streets, even the debris on the ground is enchanting. I love old metal, especially copper with green petina, i love moss and the general bits of green that show up on stone buildings, i love vines and i love little english houses and flats with tiny fenced yards, theyre entirely different from americas. I love rooftop gardens and i loooooove greenhouses even though im a terrible plant owner. I love the look of green glass encased by ornate brass or steel. I love trumpet flowers, especially angels trumpets which are my favorite even though most trumpet flowers are poisonous. I love art deco and art nouveau and shabby-cheque and anything gaudy. I love 80’s home decor especially in florida homes with pastel sea shell print couches and whicker living room furnature. I love gold and pink, gold and white and gold and green paired together. I love baroque and rococco decor and art, i love renaissance art and egg tenpera and oil paints. I love chiaroscuro art and violent art. I love violence and destruction portrayed through beautiful art in ways not intended to shock but simply to appreciate the passion of violence. I love blood and especially blood in art, and religious art largely for that reason. I love old Christian and Catholic art, especially of devotion and suffering. I love stigmata and the very muted violence and gore of christian art. I love the aesthetic of jesus and mary and the saints and esecially the strangely eroticosed depictions of a bloody and beaten christ. I love the impression my christian upbringing has left and especially the blasphemous flavor it has brought to my art appreciation. I love the opportunity to learn i had in highschool and continue to have in this age of education. I especially loved the things i learned from mrs hadsock, mr maternowski, mrs downing, mr sozeri (bless his little foreign heart for trying so hard and taking an interest in my interests and caring about suicidal 14 year old me) and mrs kennedy, and i appreciate more than anything the effort they put into teaching something worthwhile, they all taught some combination or art, literature, and history, all of which overlapped. I love technoligy and the raidly changing nature of it, i love being alive at this particular time period where it is changing so rapidly and i love that ive had the chance to go from handing in essays on floppy discs to the likely future oportunities to try fully emersive virtual reality devices. I love that i was old enough when the ipad and tablets first came out to be amazed at the “stargate technology” and that it has now been around long enough to not give a second thought to it or to what it was like without it. I love the internet and the age of information because i can entirely satisfy my curiosity and need to learn instantly and in great detail. I love the application of technology and science in art, in creating it whether it be through new materials and methods we are constantly creating or the new mediums to be able to express that art through. I love my hero, adam savage, and his impact on the art world and this entire generation of makers and scientists, and i especially love his attitude on life and humanity and creating. I love his excitement and energy and the energy and encouragement it gives me and other makers like myself to create greater and greater things. I love music and media and poetry and storytelling, and art, whether its fine art or any other sort, especially when its my friends and loved ones creating it. I love finding new media to enjoy and to hold onto, especially influential and thought provoking media. I love singers with bold voices and music that has melody to it. I love the variety of music tastes in the world and the effort and emotion put into creating them all. I love people who have an appreciation for everything even if its not their taste.

Now is probably as good a time as any to pause, been making this post for about 2 hours now. Note to self, resume next post of love with love about human qualities specifically

[kaidaned]

hi! im not the anon who messaged you but i was wondering what some of your experiences at gamestop were? out of curiosity and because i've considered working there. unless you don't wanna discuss it

I don’t mind discussing it! But I also don’t want to discourage you from working there. I had an absolute blast. For every shitty, creepy customer there was one who made me feel great. I’ll share a couple horror stories though...

-In my first week of working there, I had an older man, probably mid 60′s, ask if I had been working there long and said he had never seen my “pretty face” before. I told him I was new, and he said something along the lines of “I would have remembered a piece like you.” Like, he literally called me a piece...

-My GameStop manager once teased me for coming to work with no makeup on, telling me that a lot of the men that shop there spend more when we (me and the other women who worked there) look “put together.” Meanwhile he was wearing the same clothes he had worn the day before, and admitted that he fell asleep on the couch playing Destiny, rolled off the couch fifteen minutes before he needed to be at work, and didn’t even bother to change his underwear.

-The worst was one night when I was alone in the store a man came in wanting to trade in his WiiU. He placed it on the counter and said, “Hello, sweetheart.” which immediately made me uncomfortable. I started hooking up his system to test it and wipe its hard drive when I realized he didn’t have the charging cord for the tablet. I told him this and he got angry, told me it was “fucking stupid” that I needed it. But he agreed to run home and grab it. He showed up ten minutes later visibly pissed. I continued the process of testing the system when he starts telling me that he needed to sell the system to buy food for his son. Starts going off about how his “bitch of an ex-wife dumped the little shit into his lap” and saying he barely had enough money to buy food for himself. 

(Sidenote: guests LOVE to do the above: give employees these sob stories about how they need a certain amount of money in order to survive and the only way to get that money is trading in things. They expect us to give them more money out of pity, when that’s 100% impossible since the trade amounts are determined by the computer.)

I get to the point where I need to wipe the system, and realize there’s a parental lock code attached that keeps me from doing so. I ask him for the code, he doesn’t know it. Calls his son and starts to SCREAM at the kid over the phone. Calls him a little shit, a waste, a dumbass. Meanwhile I’m just standing there pretending to fiddle with the system to look less uncomfortable. We get the code, it works, and I start the system wipe, which takes about five minutes.

He spends that time telling me that he used to DJ at weddings, and once DJ’d at a wedding for the hottest woman he had ever seen. Then tells me that she had the same body type as me, big boobs like me, and the same eyes as me. At this point he’s leaning on the counter towards me and I started to actually fear for my own safety. He’s talking about how badly he wanted to be in the groom’s shoes, how he got off watching how she danced to the music he played, etc.

Then he tells me my perfume smells sexy. And talks about how he likes Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat X because he “loves seeing a woman in leather straps.”

I was shaking so hard that when it finally came time to finish his transaction and send him on his way that I dropped his money and he started to walk behind the counter to help me pick it up (which I shut down IMMEDIATELY telling him he wasn’t allowed back there.)

When he finally walked out the door, I locked it behind him and immediately called my manager telling him I felt unsafe. He drove to the store, closed it with me, and walked me to my car. 

That was the worst experience I had. But honestly, these things could happen at any retail location. There have been a lot of amazing experiences too.

Here are just a few that I shared on here when I worked there: 

ONE / TWO / THREE

It’s a very laidback, fun job with a discount on video games. If you live in a skeevy area like me, you might encounter people like the ones I mentioned. But overall, I looooved working there and the bad was BAD but the good times were AMAZING.

[spicyhoneyheart]

The Making of Me

Hello again! I've been moving so quickly the past few weeks that finally my body said 'hold on a sec, we're going under maintenance'. So I've just been doing little tasks this week. In bigger news though, I launched my first “Commissions for Cause” event on Facebook! This one is for raising money for the Relief Efforts in Australia. I've had many people reach out to me and say very touching things. It is a great idea. However, I know it's only been active a few days but I was hoping for participants by now. I wonder to myself, perhaps, if people already donated before and I'm just late with the proposition. Maybe having a fundraiser button for only one charity makes it easier. Or, maybe they're still unsure of what to commission. I'm hoping it's the third case! I will host more of these because I love the idea, so even if this one doesn't run successfully I won't be deterred from trying again. If you love my work and want to donate, here is the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2197153080588836/ Now then, last time I said that I would explain how I ended up where I am. Why an artist, why a printmaker, why a glassmaker? My older brother was the one who encouraged me to draw. He himself was very creative, and he spent a lot of time in visual arts in highschool, but he dropped it in favour of the sciences and a more stable career. He's doing great but he has expressed he wished he stuck to it. But before all that, he and I would sit in the basement and draw dinosaurs. I went on to draw anything and everything, but most of the time I really loved drawing dragons. They had a little bit of everything; horns, teeth, legs, wings, scales, feathers, whatever you wanted. When we had the internet in the house (first computer we ever had was a Windows ME) I looooved looking at other people's drawings. I remember visiting and revisiting one artist's page. It was nothing flashy, just a continuous lists of texts and links showing her drawings over a span of decades. I remember feeling very motivated; “her earlier drawings are like mine, and now they're so good! There's hope for me!” So I kept at it, kept drawing, kept improving. It also inspired me to start drawing digitally, so I got my first pen tablet sometime in highschool. I would spend much of my time drawing fanart of my favourite tv shows and video games, and hey, that's still progress. My parents chose to encourage my artistic career. The only condition they placed on me was that they chose which university I went to. They were paying for it anyway, so I was very grateful for that and agreed. In my final year of highschool, a few of my classmates and I went on an orientation trip to the John Labatt Visual Arts Center for a few workshops. I picked two workshops that greatly interested me: print and glass. Who knew that these two would be the precursor to my medium all those years ago? Print was evident, because that was what I was going to specialize in the next four years. Glass, however, was a funny, specific venture. The person that offered the workshop was a masters student who finished her time there before I entered my first year. I was disappointed, but it fell forgotten during my studies there. My time at Western was... alright. I enjoyed my time but I mostly stuck around in the back of the crowd because my type of art wasn't exactly considered 'fine art'. It was considered “too representational”, “too illustrative”... at the end of it all there was some odd, negative connotation attached to those terms when anyone uttered them in group critique. I was stubborn, though. I strove to improve my skills and followed advice but I never strayed from my style or concepts. The failure to conform did get to me sometimes, since it impeded on potential awards and somewhat isolated me from my classmates, but I did find some good friends who I found things in common with. I was happiest in printmaking. I was charmed by the labour and processes and loved the rush of surprise and satisfaction upon seeing the first printed edition of a project you were more-or-less working in the dark with. It was easy to get lost in, which was my style. Printmaking was also the lowest tier in fine art, for some reason. Maybe it's the idea of the edition, or the ability to apply digital elements to speed up the process, it's hard to say. I know a few classmates who were fantastic, visionary printmakers, yet I had to see them struggle justifying their choice of medium. Everyone has their reasons to make art, and while it can be questioned or its success speculated, whether it's easier to just paint it isn't a justifiable criticism to me. Don't even get me started on what they'd say if you digitally-painted something. The computer doesn't do everything for you, guys. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Upon graduating from Western, I wasn't sure at the time whether I'd be an independent artist, so I decided to continue my education. I applied to the Illustration program at Sheridan College in Oakville. I attended workshops and had colleagues suggest it to me. I remember stopping by the college to drop off my portfolio and application and I wandered to the AA Wing, where the printshop was. I remember looking at it wistfully, then getting intrigued by the glass studio just down the hall. It was empty at the time, and I had no idea that was where I was going to spend the next four years. I got waitlisted by Illustration. I can't tell you exactly why, but I have a feeling that I wasn't cut out for it either based on my portfolio, which was a bit distressing. Neither fine art nor illustration had a place for me? Harsh. I was accepted into my second choice, Craft and Design in Glassmaking, and the college suggested I attend it and wait for a spot to open in Illustration. It never did, but I am glad I took their advice. Okay so, I chose glass because the medium has always appealed to me, but I never actually saw how it was made, let alone in a handcrafted way. When I was very young, anytime my dad took my brother and I to the mall, I insisted on window-watching a glass shop the likes of Svarowski; you know, with all the figurines in the window. I loved the reflections, the facets, the forms, everything. Fast-forward to the orientation field trip to Western I mentioned before. I got to actually see how an artist could morph glass into a shape. The masters student had a torch set up and various examples of their work on display: intricate little trees with jewel-like, colourful leaves. I remember when she let me try, I had such a handle for it that it surprised my classmates (I ended up getting self-conscious and fumbling it, but I still remember it fondly). Then, fast-forward AGAIN, I enter the Glass program. I was initially overwhelmed by the speed and heat of the hotshop, and I had thoughts that maybe this wasn't for me, but the longer I stayed to understand the processes, I started loving it for the same reasons I loved printmaking. And the people!! They were so genuine, so down-to-earth. And just so you know, the masters student from Western ended up being one of my instructors at Sheridan, too! Glass makes the world a lot smaller, a lot more comfortable. I majored in kilnforming, where I specialized in lost-wax casting and enamel/silverstain painting. I also had the ability to minor in something, so to get my printing fix I enrolled in Surface Textile Printing. I was able to let loose and get real messy. In addition to my program, I was able to use the printshop in the Craft Wing in my spare time. I got to explore vitreography for the first time, a combination of glass- and print-processes. Score!! And that's how I got here. I loved my post-secondary educational career, despite the gripes I have with schools acting more like banks than institutions. I still find myself torn between fine art, craft, and illustration, but I've come to accept that it's part of how I approach art. I love and feel all sorts of things, all at various levels of intensity, and the way that I express it will require a method that suits it. I'm content, and while I'm struggling to make things work, I'll keep at it. I'm stubborn, like I said. Next time I think I'll go into what goes into my art and what concepts keep me thinking. Have a great day! Gosia  ​