ok now im really here

So, Im an image kinda guy...so maybe ill do this that way. This is a good one, me holding up drawing that one of my students did of bottom half of my face in front of bottom half of my face. They did a pretty good job, I gave them an A+ but mainly for subject choice. Damn you guys have covered a lot of ground while ive been sleeping, I think im finally caught up now, didnt want to post until id read it all, kinda like walking into a movie halfway and voicing a really loud opinion that you find out to be totally wrong, 6331 huh? Its pretty interesting framework, and all the contributors are all the roster, no one else is invited? Anyway, I liked what justin had to say about home. When I got out of High School i couldnt wait to get away from Maryland. Now I find myself thinking there is no better place for me, although that is to do with # of friends, and not family. For me a move there takes me further away from almost all family members. What with high school buds kicking around, all you wash u peeps who are trying to take over my home turf, old acquaintances, lees best bud from high school, as well as just the overall central location, close to philli, ny, dc, and coastal inlet of the cheasapeake makes this kid pretty excited about Sorry Justin, Yale just didnt work out for me, although I think MICA (in Baltimore) had become my first choice even before I got the rejection letter from Yale. Hey you cant win them all. All in it is something about the familiar that I feel as comforting. Maybe I wont settle there but at least for a couple years it sounds really good to be with a fuckin crew again. Boston has been real but im ready for a change. I also liked Winklers posting about the people we meet. My current specialization has been becoming a fusion between the ghetto and the fine art world. This young man to my right is one of my most recent students. He is currently preparing to render this image in charcoal. Ive started a lot of them off with drawing of their hands, their choice of image and pose. Ive gotten a lot of gang signs, or other sybolic gestures. It is interesting that to them, it is just a fact of life, maybe they are even scared to create an image without a hard face on it, for fear of what their comtemporaries will think. I absolutely love these images and even find them to transcend their usual meaning by changing the context. The lighting, compostions, and care each one puts into creating their work places it distinctively outside of their environment-my influence. The subject remains inside. At times I almost feel as though my direction of them results in a conceptual piece of my own, like the artist John Baldassari who has other people execute paintings for him of his own conception which change meaning through those that execute them. Needless to say the whole experience has been eye-opening. A story I already told Morgan: After class one day I left the school where upon I saw one of my students who hadnt come for a while waiting at the bus stop. She pretended to ignore me, so I had to cross the street to engage conversation. Upon asking her when she was coming back she proclaims loudly so everyone waiting for the bus can hear, "You look like a god damn social worker" , stunned I pause, then say, "I am one". She answers, "yeah but not mine", to which I say, "Yes I am, Im your teacher". This is the same girl that tried to start a fight with another student in a class that comprised of 3 students while I was still on crutches. All of them arent this bad, actually most of them really respect me when they see me out on the street, but still, things like this happen pretty often that just open my eyes to this world. This image is of one of the grated windows in the art room in the Jeremiah Burke High School at which I teach. The sign was made of paper was up for about 2 weeks before being torn down. Ill try to comment on what some of you guys say in the future but i just thought I had to throw all this in there, hey you didnt invite an artist to talk about politics anyway now did you? Watched some of your colbert morg dog, put up the bush ones you were telling me about. And yes this last picture is a portait, done by one of my students, of me with a full beard, crying, wearing a polka-dotted tunic. Quite good, I gave it a B+.