Hermit in Grad School

The graduation ceremony here is quite different. It's similar to how my high school graduation was. The faculty read a really nice blurb about each person graduating, even taking quotes from their final paper. Like my acceptance letter from the school, except longer and more flowery. Everyone was crying. Boxes of tissues circulated through the audience. The event was being live-streamed via internet, so that is good to know. The diplomas were given to the graduates from a member of their families. So people's spouses, parents, siblings, children, whoever they chose to be their person stood up on stage and present the graduate with the diploma. It was really nice. Right in the middle though, the power all went out. And of course, people were attributing it to Anna, and as far as I know, no one even tried to turn the power back on. The president of the school stood up and said he had prepared a few words and proceeded to read his speech. Somewhere in the speech he said direct...

Yesterday was meeting after meeting. First, a workshop in the morning about critical reading, then I met privately with the program director to talk about scholarships and grants, then I had a meeting with Dont about my Artist-Teacher, then I had a meeting with my group in the library to talk about my research topic. Just boring meetings all day. The library A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 27, 2017 at 8:15pm PDT The program director is so kind. She is just one of the warmest nicest ladies I've met. I was in her office talking about financial aid and somehow we started talking about the baby and what I'm going to do next residency. She said, have someone come with you and bring the baby, stay off campus, I have a resources I know some places nearby. She had it all figured out. She has a little two-year-old boy who is arguably one of the cutest little kids I've ever seen. I don't even say that about kids, but he is really somet...

How is it possible to wake up more tired than you fell asleep seven hours earlier? Somehow it is and I have done it. I was so exhausted after breakfast that I accidentally fell asleep and almost woke up late for my critique with photographer Adam Pape. Then I woke up and had a few minutes to get there. But I really had to go to the bathroom. So I had to make a judgement call: "What's more important: being there on time? or staying regular?" I chose the bathroom. That's where I'm at right now. On the way back from my critique, I had a conversation with Zach, a fellow photographer further along in the program. He has three kids, the youngest being three months old and the oldest looks about five. He has a full time job, and is doing this program. He asked me when I was due and if I had a plan for how I was going to handle balancing everything. He expressed how life is super freaking difficult to balance all of his various things. I also talked to a student in my...

Here's a collection of all the feedback I got from all the Critters. Harmony Hammond (badass critiquing skillz) They are strikingly beautiful and intriguing. They are rich, luscious, sensual. The feeling of being transported to another plane we don't often get to see. Think about getting the pictures off the wall. Maybe have them hanging a few inches away from the wall, or presented in some other way. Maybe having only pins in the top corners have the bottom corners free. Experiment with different papers, more unusual papers. Think of ways they can have more presence in the room. Think about size, should they be bigger? Maybe they should be "larger than life" as in, larger than people. What else can you do? Juxtapose more than one kind of veggie in the frame? Play more with multiples? More techniques like incorporating more photoshop/drawing/painting?  Heather Ferrell (Museum Curator) If the project is about shape/form/texture maybe have them presented i...

Two in five artists, people. Two in five. It was the number I came up with after my research a couple classes ago, but it seems to be pretty accurate. You know what I'm talking about.  Apparently, it is tradition to come up with a name for our class. I can't think of such things. Someone suggested it has to have something to do with Js because there are 5 of us whose names start with J: Jaime, Jason, Jessica, Jessica, Jo. But then that leaves out the rest of them so I don't think that's a good idea. The graduating class' name has something to do with Dolly, which is why the dance is Dolly Parton themed. One of the other classes was Wanderlust, which got shortened sometimes to Lusters.  It was raining pretty heavy when I went to sleep last night, and it rained all through the night. I left my window open and listened to the sound. This morning the rain seems to have subsided.  With the rain has come a strange musty smell in my room. I'm not sure where...

Today an interesting thing happened. In the morning for breakfast, one of the older students asked me if I had a critique scheduled this morning. I said I didn't, and she asked me if I wanted to have a critique with Harmony Hammond, who seems to be one of the more highly-acclaimed critters here. All of her critique slots filled up immediately and no one had a chance. This lady had a critique scheduled with harmony this morning, but she realized she has a conflict, and can't make it, she doesn't want to leave her high and dry, so she was trying to find someone else to go instead. I think this means I'm lucky. And boy, what a difference it made. Harmony is great. She had really interesting ideas and feedback for everyone. I liked the way she always started by just simply describing what she was seeing, or thought she was seeing. With my photos, she was convinced that it was somehow painted/drawn elements intermingled with the photos. She asked the group how they felt look...

I woke up this morning to all of the student's tears pouring down across the campus after last night's strange lecture somehow about the history of modernism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, ideology, and artist burnout. I would like to ask others if anyone understands anything from that. I would be surprised. It was an odd way to end the evening. I woke up to this. A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 24, 2017 at 3:48am PDT Yesterday afternoon, we had a research methodologies meeting where people brainstormed together what was our schick when it comes to research. And Dont (yes that's his name) was talking about how when we find something that blatantly contradicts, we tend to just throw it out, like "Ah, ha! I caught you!" and throw out the entire source. Or we then seek out to prove or disprove the statements. But what we should do is let those contradictions sit with us and they "become the borders around a path that n...

So God Ball has a home now in the exhibit. He lives on a table with other little books. He is ready to be viewed. God ball in the exhibit A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 22, 2017 at 8:52am PDT At lunch, I shared with the group that there are five psychiatric hospitals nearby, and I wondered if there was a demand for all of them. Somehow this turned into a joke about how this school is really just another psychiatric hospital that specializes in people who have delusions of grandeur that they are artists. So we only think we are attending critiques and lectures but it's actually covert therapy to make us realize that we are delusional. Anyway, it was pretty funny. In the morning we all put our names on two more critique slots in addition to the ones we were assigned. Critique sign ups A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 22, 2017 at 6:54am PDT Speaking of critiques, I just had my first one, and it was ...

You should pay extra money for a single occupancy room. Really, it's worth it. I value my alone time in the morning and evening so much. Getting dressed and changed would be a real pain. Who wants to change in front of other people, and who wants to get dressed in a bathroom? Not me, and not me. A moment of solemnity in the day. #coffee #dormlife A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 22, 2017 at 4:06am PDT You should only take a shower in the evening when no one else takes showers. You should sit by yourself at a table for meals. You know...no one should listen to me about this because when there are 70 people who are living and breathing on the exact same schedule, you basically have to be with people. There's always going to be another person in the bathroom, there's always going to be another person brushing their teeth. We all eat in the cafeteria at the same time, because there's only a one-hour window to eat, so no matter when y...

Today we had an Orientation, which really didn't orient us that much, but we had our pictures made for our student IDs. Then we had dinner as a group with some of the older students who are farther along in the program. And as family requested, here is photographic evidence that I am eating. Look, here is dinner, and look how big a salad I ate. My dinner. Baked chicken, potatos, roasted veggies, and a big salad. Just ignore that cake A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 20, 2017 at 7:44pm PDT Love this conveyor belt A post shared by Jaime Tamrakar (@anonymous_hermit) on Jul 20, 2017 at 7:50pm PDT When I made this video some old people who work at the cafeteria were not impressed with my fascination of the conveyor belt. The lady said, "It's people like you who put that horrible sign up on the corner." I said, "the VCFA sign?" "Yeah, the one with the hole in it." The guy stepped in. "it used ...

I could hardly sleep at all last night. It didn't help that at about 1:30 am I heard this strange sound. I thought it was like the loudest water rushing through pipes I had ever heard. But then it started changing and getting more buzzy and fluctuating and I was like, okay, what the heck is that. I opened my door just a crack to realize that it was the fire alarm and it was super loud out in the hall way. I thought for a moment maybe it was some kind of system test. So I waited a few more minutes. But nothing was happening so I finally grabbed my sweater and walked down the hall toward the exit. Some other lady emerged from her room too and said, "what is that?" I said How should I know. We went out to the front door of the building and sure enough there were about 7 of us out there. They said they had already called campus relations and they were on it. Campus relations called the fire department and the fire department casually pulled up to the wrong building. We watche...

How very cumbersome it is to travel with a suitcase, a backpack, a tube of archival fine-art prints, and a baby bump. On the BART train, I had to wedge the wheels of the suitcase between my feet so that it wouldn’t roll anywhere, which left a gap big enough for the tube between my knees. Perfect. No wait, there’s the backpack, remember? I can’t put it on my lap because something else is already occupying that space. I had to sort of angle it at a diagonal on my lap which was infringing upon the boundary of the next seat. What kind of people board the Bay Point BART train at 5 am? Construction workers. They seemed to prefer wearing their hardhats, but some pinned it under an arm while holding their tool bag and lunch box in their hands. Some had their reflective vests, while others looked like they probably packed their work clothes with them. Big guys with weathered hands tipping hardhats at each other and asking questions like, “Where you building at?” Some even had tubes of their ow...

You wouldn't think it would be so difficult to print five photographs. But it is. I will be given an 8x8 foot wall to fill with whatever I want for the exhibit, and I had to make a mockup of my wall and how it will look. The guidelines were to bring something that you still consider "in progress" and that you would like to have a discussion about. So I'm bringing the beginning of my "Etherial Edibles" series. I made a 8x8 inch photoshop document to lay out my photos how I want them on my wall, and then I had to translate what that means into actual measurements. Then, I ended up having to do it all over again when I saw the standard sizes of the printer that I decided to go through. It was quite the process. I got my prints the other day and they look great. So velvety and full of depth. I'm looking forward to seeing them on the wall with all its neighbors in the gallery. I plan to sign the bottom right corners in pencil like all the real photograp...