A W A R D S _ A N D _ J U N K

Well, it's been awhile since I've been blogging, but I realize that I need keep doing this to keep myself up and running on the interwebs.

So, in a need to keep my site up to date, here are some new things about me.

I'm going to be back at Marvel again this summer, every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, starting June 1st. Should be exciting stuff! I'll be working in the X-Offices as an editorial intern, so I am INCREDIBLY EXCITED! This also means that I'll be spending the entire summer with my bestest bud Zack Rosenberg, and I'll have to spend ALL of my spare time reading every X-Men comic in the last 6 months to catch myself up. So, it should be a very busy summer.

OH! I also won an award! It seems like the good people of UConn have deemed me worthy of the Zachs Endowment Fund, which means that I am the proud recipient of a very decent sum of money to complete quite a heft art project over the next year. Here's a snippet of application essay to give you an idea of why I won:

"I intend to publish a comic entitled "Fifteen Things I Wish I Could Ask My Father", in which I will illustrate a conversation I have with my father wherein I ask him to honestly answer the most important questions I’ve wanted to ask him, but have never had the courage to. In addition to this comic, I will be creating sets of hand-held action-figures that depict my father in various stages of appearing as a hero to me, and will show how I’ve seen him in different lights over the last few years of my life,. This way of representing both him and my view of our relationship will serve as a direct reference to the outright and constant idolization of my childhood fantasy heroes. Finally, I will be creating a fully interactive life-size action-figure of my father, using sculptural casting techniques I’ve learned in the academic setting. As a child I wanted nothing more than to have life size Spider-Man or Power Ranger action-figures for me to play alongside of, and not just with. Creating a life size action figure of my father, the most influential and important real person in my life, will be an incredible realization of a childhood dream, and would communicate the depth of my feelings to an audience in a contemporary and meaningful way."

There's a lot more emotional crap behind it all, but this gives you a good idea of where things are going, both for this project and my arts career in general. It should be both exciting a daunting, as I hope to get the entire book completed by the end of the summer. I'm really nervous, probably more nervous than excited, and I think it'll only get worse with time. Either way, I'm happy that I can do this, and I think even happier that apparently someone thinks my art is worth supporting in a serious way. I suppose it's been a long time coming, but I guess I finally feel like I'm becoming an actual artist.