Hooooome! Neglected to mention that I would be at a Fine Arts festival in Fort Worth over Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and would therefore be away from the computer. Hurrah for ISAS! No one really knows what it stands for, so a girl I met there suggested "I Suck At Sports". We all readily concurred. Because the festival has gotten so huge over the years, Hockaday had to cap the number of students on campus at a time, and therefore only the Performance artists got to go on Friday, the main festival day. Because I only came for Studio Art and Photography, I was out of luck. Bah. Of course, the teachers put together a day of museum visits and such to keep us occupied, so it wasn't a complete waste.

Thursday: Carried lots of really heavy boxes for Mrs. Yoshii, hung my photographs, hung my art piece, t00bed about. After Hockaday's rather useless photography critique, I generally ignored all workshops and galleries and turned my attention to the Showcase Drama category, where all the musicals were. Saw the tail end of a performance of the first act of Romeo and Juliet, which looked more like RENT than anything else, then highlights from The King and I, including the at-least-15-minute "Poor Eliza" sequence, which was hilariously well executed and summarily well mocked by my friends when the show was over.

It said in our schedules that South Pacific was next, but something was switched, and Witchitaw's Les Miserables took its place. GOOD LORD, IT WAS AMAZING. Every one of those kids could have gone straight to Broadway. Easily the most powerful high school production I've ever seen; "A Little Fall of Rain" had me in tears. Gravy. Next up was South Pacific, but hell, nothing could have followed Les Mis.

Friday: We went to a bunch of different museums, each of which I had seen at least twice in the past three months. Joy. We got an hour of free time afterwards, where I worked on a drawing to replace that godawful Men at Arms: The Musical picture. A "before and after" study, I suppose, to see how my drawing ability has progressed in the last year. I was quite satisfied at the results. I'll post it when I'm finished.

Afterwards, we drove to UT Arlington (whyyy???) to see Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, which was excellent. The actor playing Henry was fantastic. Gravy, I love Tom Stoppard. Must see/read more of his plays. ::nods::

Saturday: I worked more on my drawing for a while, then went to the 2-D Art critique, which was absolutely worthless. I think our adjudicator was senile. Seeing my image of a goddess bust in charcoal and acrylic on mylar, he suggested I try eraser drawings, which was pretty much exactly what I did, only about 7 steps backwards. I had used erasers and turpenoid to remove the charcoal and re-expose the mylar, so he was basically telling me how to do something I'd obviously already done. The ridiculousness was even worse for Peri, who did a collaged self-portrait of faces, hands, and feet, using layer upon layer of tracing paper to achieve the effect. He told her to experiment with layers, suggesting techniques she already used in the image. The entire art department shared a unified "WTF?" Hurrah for useless art critiques.

But all was not in vain, because it turned out that there were seperate adjudicators who gave critiques to students who signed up on a certain list. I got a woman named Andrea to critique my photography, and it was a fabulous experience. She was genuinely intrigued by my work and offered insightful suggestions and dialogues. I discovered more about my own work than I have in ages. It gave me quite a lot of enthusiasm to undertake future projects. I think I'll print some more tonight, in fact.

And now I'm back home. I feel especially happy because on the bus rides, I read The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster) and The Book of Three (Lloyd Alexander -- part of a series), which were two of my absolute favourite books in third and fourth grade. Being a senior has given me the desire to reexplore the things I loved as a wee kidlet, and these books were the first step. Yayfun!

So all is merry, and I'm back. Now it's time to catch up on what I missed. ::dives bravely into her ridiculously long LJ Friends list::