An Inspiring Day: Shelf-Life and Huntington Library by Steffi Wong

Today I went on two field trips for two classes: One to Huntington Library for my Architect's Sketchbook class, and the other to Shelf-Life for my Design Fundamental class. Well, you can't really call Shelf-Life a field trip since it was located in school, but nonetheless, it was a departure from my regular location on a Saturday afternoon. So much artistic activity in one day naturally led to some growth and revelations on my part.

In the morning I took off for Huntington Library to meet with my architecture teacher and fellow students, and as I was waiting I took a look around the Entrance Hall and saw some of Colleen Toland's amazing jewelry. I was stupid enough NOT to take any photos, but the pieces were absolutely exquisite! Colleen specializes in creating floral jewelry, and there was this one particular pink and green floral necklace that especially charmed me. Unfortunately, she was still setting up and not open to selling stuff yet when I was there, and I left Huntington Library still deeply yearning for some of her jewelry, but thinking back now I don't think I could've afforded any of it anyways. I looked up prices online and yikes, they run from anywhere between $150-$200! But you could definitely see why it was worth so much from the materials used to the craftsmanship and design of the pieces.

Moving on, we went to sketch the Chinese Garden at the Huntington Library. Usually during this class I'm very cautious because we need to draw in the basics of perspective lines and stuff, but today I decided to just use pens instead of starting with a pencil, and we were in an environment apart from school, and with more natural scenery and open space. I think it was these factors, along with a talk with my teacher the other day about developing personal style and not being so cautious, which allowed me to let loose and draw freely. Ironically enough, with a pencil, when I am "allowed" to make mistakes, I am so cautious and go so slowly I end up hampering my progress, but with a pen, when I am "not allowed" to make mistakes, I became almost absolutely reckless and out of control. But the result was great and a great start to allowing my personal style shine through. I also think it would not have been possible had I not trained myself in the basics and fundamentals of perspective sketching either, and I must continue solidifying this aspect to make my drawings even stronger. The teacher was very pleased with it, and he even showed it to visitors that were passing by! Naturally, all the compliments made me very happy and gave me a nice confidence boost, and I look forward to finishing the sketch, drawing more and seeing how I can apply what I've learned to design as well.

After lunch, I went ahead to Shelf-Life at Roski. By the time I arrived it was already 4PM and unfortunately I had missed all the panels, but it was still great to look around and see what all the artists were up to. There was an interesting silk-screening demo going on in Watt Hall Entrance place, but what interested me the most was in the Harris Courtyard. There were a surprising amount of students displaying stuff there, and I talked to a couple of them. There were students from CalArts and Art Center majoring in graphic design, painting, photography, etc., and it was interesting hearing about their experiences. I've heard a lot about the animation and character design programs at CalArts and commercial and entertainment art at Art Center, but it was great to be exposed to the lesser known side of these two schools as well. I ended up buying a book from Sarah Heysel, one of the CalArts students because I really liked the stuff in that book!

Another notable booth I went to was Tom Neely's, where he was selling a bunch of comic books made by himself and his friends. Being an aspiring comic book author/artist myself, this table was very interesting to me and I spent a long time looking through almost every single comic book. It was great seeing the stylistic and sequential differences, and what I found especially interesting was the high quality of the paper and the paper covers as well. But being from small-press/self-published works, this makes sense. I ended up buying Tom Neely's book of comic strip poems because I found the concept very interesting. He basically created comic strips based on several lines of self-written poems, which came in the form of dialogue, narratives, etc. I found some of his illustrations particularly beautiful, and I love how some of his panels were just an entire illustration divided in four as well.

Today was a great day, and in the end I think it was a great lesson on personal style. I was informed of my own and my process in learning to get mine out in the morning, and in the afternoon I explored other artists' and designers' personal styles.