Things have been quite busy here on the homefront…so busy, in fact, that my blogging has been nonexistent since my return from our honeymoon in October. I finished my fifth quarter at SCAD at the end of November, completing ARTH 702, Art Criticism. I had to withdraw from Typography Studio 2 due to time considerations, but will hopefully register again for that course in the next couple of quarters. Although it is not horribly suprising, I have been unable to keep up with the demands of work, married life, family and friends, and school without something suffering. Therefore, Crystal and I have decided that I should take a quarter off (that would be Winter quarter for all of those following along), and to resume my graduate studies in a limited way during the spring quarter.

I completed Art Criticism with a paper entitled Aural and Visual Sign Functioning: A Semiotic Analysis of Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VIII discussing the entertwining communicative properties of visual and musical idioms.

I hope to post additional details (and pictures!) of our wedding in the near future. We just got a complete set of prints (around 300) from our photographer, and we’re really excited about getting them put in frames around our house.
Attached Files:

Aural and Visual Sign Functioning: A Semiotic Analysis of Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VIII

crystal and I want to express our appreciation for the support of our family and friends at our wedding on october 13. we have been honeymooning in bar harbor, maine and sevierville, tennessee, and are just now attempting to return to the daily grind. more details to follow, but I’ve included some photos from our honeymoon…

also, here are some photos from our wedding (taken by my brother-in-law). tj getz (of getzcreative) also took bridal portraits of crystal available here.

I have been meaning to let people know what my current plans are (and were) for some time now, but for some reason, I haven’t taken the time to update these plans through my blog, instead being content to repeat the same story to dozens of people. So, here it goes, for all the people that already know most of the intimate details of my life. I’ll conveniently split it out by period to make it a bit easier for those with issues in the department of time or planning orientation.

this summer

I finished my spring quarter at SCAD in Savannah, and promptly moved all of my earthly possessions back up to my parent’s house in Greenville. No, I am not quitting my degree program, just merely relocating for pragmatic and financial reasons. The past year in Savannah has been a learning experience–certainly not always the easiest or most comfortable, but most valuable experiences aren’t. SCAD has been a mixed bag thus far, a mixture of disorganization, high tuition, and somewhat helpful classes, with a couple of extraordinary classes and professors thrown into the mix. Although I may be somewhat reticent to recommend SCAD at this point for graduate studies (at least in my field), I do know the direction of the new chair of the graphic design department, and the movement I’m seeing is positive.

So, all of these details about SCAD this past year leads me to my move back to Greenville. I realized early on that student loans were going to be one of the unfortunate casualties of my graduate education, but there’s nothing like looking at a loan statement for one year totaling over $18,000. This realization prompted me to consider working while completing my degree. Fortunately, SCAD offers an MFA in Graphic Design through distance learning, and, although the environment is not especially ideal, it does provide the pragmatic basis to pay off student loans, continue my education, and (most importantly) get married this fall. I have been working at Port City Java in Greenville since its first location opened in March 2004, and continued working in an assistant manager capacity until I left for SCAD last fall. Due to the gracious flexibility of management and owners, I was able to continue working to make extra money during breaks and on weekends up during my school quarters. After I made the decision to return to Greenville, PCJ was a logical choice to continue employment. So, I am currently working at PCJ as a store manager, soon to take control of a new store poised to open on Augusta Road. I have been training staff and dealing with logistical details since I returned on June 1, and hopefully will be opening in the next couple of weeks.

this fall

My primary plan for this fall is to get married. As most of you know, I proposed to Crystal Marquardt on August 28, 2005 in Baltimore, MD after a long friendship and brief dating period (original post of the engagement). Our wedding date is set for October 13, 2006 (yes, that would be a Friday, we’re quite aware) at a small bed and breakfast in Lancaster, SC. We both wanted a smaller wedding, so the ceremony and reception will include just family and close friends. We’ll just let all of our friends throw the big weddings! Crystal will be moving to Greenville at the end of August at the conclusion of her (and my) summer quarter at SCAD. At this point, she’ll be finished with her coursework for her MA in Art History, just leaving her master’s thesis to finish. I will continue taking classes, with a projected graduation date of August 2007, including my thesis.

the near future

For the near future, we plan to stay in Greenville while we both attempt to finish our masters degrees and pay off our student loans. I plan on staying on with PCJ for the next year or so while I finish off my coursework, and hope to eventually teach on the college level. In the more distant future, I hope to go back to school (for the last time, I think) for doctoral work. After spending much time researching Design doctoral work at a handful of schools (Carnegie-Mellon, SAIC, NC State), I feel that a more standard academic doctorate in Art History would serve me better for the long haul then a shaky degree in a still amorphous field (degree programs are still sketchy at best, including virtually no faculty with terminal degrees in the area of study). My best and most hopeful prospect for the future at this point is Emory University, which would be fully funded if I was able to get in (they accept only five candidates per year into their Art History program). Crystal and I are praying that God would lead us in the right path over the next number of years as we attempt to complete our education, and find the next thing He has for us.

We would welcome getting together with our friends that we’ve lost track of, or have inadvertently broken contact with. Although this summer will be busy with school, wedding plans, and work, we would welcome getting together with you as we finally get a place of our own in the Greenville area.

Well, I never quite got back to elaborating on my classes this quarter as promised. If there be any doubt, I’ve been quite busy this quarter, between three classes, freelance work, training employees at my “new” job, and commuting back-and-forth to greenville, I haven’t had a whole lot of recreational blogging time to keep things up-to-date.

Following that lengthy proviso, I will provide updates to two of my classes, the third is stilll wrapping up. I posted a preliminary paper for Pre-Columbian Art in Mesoamerica a while back, and over the past several weeks, I expanded the material culture method (read: no research) into a real, live, 15-page research paper complete with cool footnotes, figures, and everything. Who said academia is dead? Suprisingly, I already received the paper back from the professor, and aside from minor notes and elaboration on minutia I would have no way of knowing anything about, the paper was well received (for all those keeping track, that was a B+). So, for that class, I just get to present my research on Wednesday for all of the adoring mesoamerican students.

In semiotics, things have also been grand. Lectures have been stimulating, and I’ve had a number of chances to talk about Christianity within the theoretical and philosophical realms as it relates to our diverse and broad discussions (including evaluation of truth, beauty, behavior, creativity, the sacred and profane, color theory, et al). Suffice it to say, semiotics has been a whirlwind of thought and a dramatically affective construct to write within. The paper that I posted below has gone through some changes, hopefully positive, establishing a better overall conception of semiotics, and the essence of style, both in a universal and specific sense. This discussion of style allowed me to synthesize with art history, which is what I really love anyway. Fortunately, only a rewrite (or edit) of this paper was required for final submission (which, incidentally, is today), which becomes even more positive when considering the aforementioned mesoamerican paper, and a large digital studio project that is coming due this week as well.

[Just an editor’s note: if you don’t know what semiotics is (and I sure didn’t before I started my graduate degree), it’s OK. I provide a reasonably concise explanation of the semiotic model in my paper, attached below.]

I’ll just briefly note the digital studio project, since it is still in the final developmental stages. All quarter, my group (consisting of four members) has been developing a web site from the ground up for the Savannah Civil Rights Museum, aka the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum. I was fortunately able to sign on as the technical lead, primarily building out the site in code, while others dealt with the visual design and content. I say “fortunately” with my tongue-in-cheek since one of my group members decided to not do the aforementioned visual design. This resulted in me doing the entire visual design, in addition to all of the other responsibilities I already had. This has especially been evident this past weekend, where I spent three days of my holiday weekend working at this project. My only solace is the fact that the project is due on Wednesday.

Attached Files:

Political and Religious Symbology at Río Bec B: Power as Symbol in Temple B(yes, it’s the same title)

A Semiotic Analysis of Post-World War One Graphic Design: An Associational Study of Signs in De Stijl(same here)

Things have been quite busy this quarter thus far, and I’m finally able to come up for a bit of a breather. I had a major test in Mesoamerican and a paper due in Semiotics this week, so I’m finally able to post a bit of work from the topics I’ve been studying. In the context of Mesoamerican art, I am working on a paper exploring a the concepts of power and religious authority within the scope of a minor Maya site in the Yucatan called Río Bec. I wrote a five page introductory paper using a material culture method of exploration (the [Jules] Prown material culture method). The resulting pre-paper allows exploration into the object itself, and associated cultural connotations without significant research. I have since developed an extensive bibliography, and am now working on a final fifteen-page version due later this quarter.

In the realm of semiotics, lecture has been fascinating, and the paper that I recently completed ties many of the concepts we have discussed into an analytic framework that allows a semiotic analysis of a specific object or movement. I have chosen to work within the graphic design and traditional art movement of the De Stijl in the Netherlands (1917-1928), analyzing the sign functioning of complex gestalts and anti-naturalist features within the style. Further, I briefly explored the movement from introduced complex gestalts to the eventual recognition or comprehension of these complex gestalts as simple, or natural gestalts. This transformation of sign denotatum in the universal context allowed the perpetuation of universal signs, primary as logos and graphic symbols, later in the twentieth century. I’ll be writing a revision and expansion of this paper later in the quarter, hopefully using a more significant portion of my extensive bibliography in my citations.

Political and Religious Symbology at Río Bec B: Power as Symbol in Temple A

A Semiotic Analysis of Post-World War One Graphic Design: An Associational Study of Signs in the De Stijl