In the last few days, I've made significant progress in my painting! It's more than halfway done, but still, I anticipate the completion of my painting by Saturday. That leaves me enough time to finish every detail and also find an appropriate frame for it. When I've completed the painting, I'll post a picture here for you all to see. Meanwhile, I'm still working on the painting...or better to say, waiting for the paint to dry so I can continue work.
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Today, I'm starting on a painting that I should have gotten around to perhaps a year or two ago. Back when I started painting, a friend of mother's asked me to make her a painting, so she'd have an original before I got famous. Ha, the famous part isn't going to happen, but still, I promised her I'd paint her something sometime when I had a little bit of free time.
The landscape I'm painting this time will be of the Gem Lakes, her favorite place in the Aiken area. It'll be a calm and beautiful painting when it's completed. Meanwhile, the canvas is barely coated in paint. I started off with a blank canvas today, and God, that's intimidating. Sometimes, I have trouble starting a painting because I don't know how to begin or how to not make a mistake from the very start. From previous experiences, I know the painting process gets easier as I go along. Meanwhile, I had to make some mark on the canvas to actually make some form of progress. So far, I've generally sketched out the picture and I've laid in the background of lake water, sky, and ground. It's rough, but I'm confident that this painting will be finished eventually. Key word: eventually. Don't rush me. For the last few weeks, I've been helping out with a summer arts program called acGATEWAY. This Aiken County program headed by Mr. Joseph Laorenza is a program for elementary, middle, and high school students. The program offers five divisions of the arts: music, drama, dance, art, and creative writing. As a former student of the acGATEWAY program, I decided to return this year to visit a few of my former music teachers. One of the teachers who had been present for the premiere of my composition asked me if I could serve as a guest speaker for her conducting classes. About a month ago, I was honored to speak to all of the music students about conducting, composing, and what the life of being a musician is all about.
After that first visit back, I continued to return to the program every single day just to help out and be useful. Originally, I had come to talk about conducting an ensemble and from there it advanced to assisting and coaching the strings masterclass...and then I was asked to compose three fiddle parts for a country tune...and then I became the designated page turner for the accompanist in chorus! In the last few weeks, I've done everything from fixing flutes to tuning violas to setting up equipment and performance areas. Honestly, I enjoy helping out teachers and music students so that the school day run as smoothly as possible. People have asked me if I'm a teacher. Not really. Then that question is usually followed with the insinuation that I'm a student. Nope, I'm not that either. What am I then? Well, one teacher has dubbed me as an "intern" and I suppose you can say that I'm kinda in that category. I consider myself a volunteer who doesn't mind helping out in the slightest. The acGATEWAY program is all about improving your art and always striving for excellence. By helping out with the program, I must say I'm constantly learning something new each day. I'm learning how to be an good music director, how to play any stringed instrument you throw my direction, how to help young instrumentalists find their sound and be proud of the beautiful talents they possess. I look forward to this final week of the program, and I certainly look forward to the showcase performances of these young artists on Thursday of this week. For anyone interested, the showcase will be held at Kennedy Middle School on July 11th at 7 pm in the gym. That's all for now! Helping out again with Gateway tomorrow bright and early tomorrow morning! Stay tuned to my blogs ab Hello to all! It's seems that I've been slacking with the blog writing. For that, I apologize, and I also propose a "creative" solution to remedy this problem. For the two months, I'll be blogging about my artistic/creative endeavors. For two solid months, I want to fill every moment I can with something creative and exciting. It'll be a summer long adventure of creative writing, playing music, composing music, painting, and much more! Already, I've been busy doing artistic jobs, but starting now, I'll start writing about my latest projects. So why exactly did I want to take on this challenge? Before the summer began, I vowed I wanted to enjoy the summer to relax. In my definition of relax, I take my completely blank calendar and fill it with all the activities I want to do. Happiness for me comes with doing anything productive and not mindless. So far, I've had a summer of absolute bliss! It's absolutely splendid to get a chance to enjoy things that you normally don't have time for! Check back tomorrow for my next blog about my summer "internship" adventures! 1. Pick up a book that you've meant to read for over a year now.
Flaw: You're about five pages into the book and you're already analyzing the author's writing style and figuring out how to make your own writing as interesting as this bestseller. Suddenly, you're overcome with guilt that you've been neglecting your own creative writing. Eventually, you put the book down after only a few minutes and you begin work on rewriting your old stories. 2. Watch some TV. Mindless television is the perfect way to relax, right? Flaw: You're flipping channels when your attention is caught by a symphony orchestra performance--and this is no community orchestra--it's the New York Philharmonic. You watch the concert all the way through, but then when it's over, you're tempted to practice. Practice just a little...maybe just do a few warm ups on the flute...but you should definitely play through a few Berbiguier etudes before you call it quits for the night...but now that you've been working on etudes you might as well work on a Wohlfahrt etude on the violin. Before you know it, you've been practicing for about four hours and you want to keep going. 3. Read through the newspaper. Such a mundane activity for relaxing. Flaw: You found the Sudoku puzzle. It's all over now. You're addicted. 4. Invite a friend over to help you chill for the afternoon. Flaw: She saw your half-finished level three Sudoku puzzle and she wants to help solve it. You spend about ten minutes staring at the boxes with numbers to deduce that it's unsolvable...at least for you at the moment. Perhaps an overachiever's attempt at relaxing is actually being productive. Try to figure out that paradox! Just yesterday, my composition titled "Valse" premiered at South Aiken Presbyterian Church. I am extremely proud of the performances yesterday and I'm proud of every musician that helped make yesterday possible. As requested by a friend, down below I have posted a YouTube video of yesterday's performance. Enjoy! Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique are all famous musical compositions loved by symphony goers and pieces of music studied by musicians all over the world, but how did these compositions come to be so well-known? What is it that people like about these musical works? How did these composers create such masterpieces that would be popularly played in concert halls many years after the deaths of their creators? These men were musical geniuses and all of their greatest masterpieces began with an idea and sheet of staff paper. Now that I've begun a summer long composing project/job, I'm beginning to comprehend agonizing madness and creative beauty of writing down melodies in your head. At this early stage of learning the craft of composition, I've discovered that taking on the title of "composer" means spending over five hours at a piano and writing down maybe eight bars of music and being perfectly content with the fact that you actually have something on the page now. Composing means praying to God that your musicians can hopefully play the ridiculous sheet music (which resembles more of a toddler's sketchbook) you've placed in front of them at rehearsal. Writing music means being a creator of something beautiful or raw or perhaps thought evoking. Composing is more than drawing dots and lines on page of staff paper. It's an art. This week, I'll be rehearsing my finished composition with a group of talented musicians for the premiere of my composition on Sunday, June 2nd at South Aiken Presbyterian Church. My composition utilizing two violins, two cellos, a viola, a bass, and a piano will be performed at 8:45 and 11:00 a.m. service. I certainly look forward to hearing my piece performed in a week from now! Just recently, I received word that I had won first place in the CSRA Adult Division of Poetry Matters Competition. My award winning poem is titled "Get Me Some Flowers." Check out the video of me reading my poem! Have you ever been super proud of something small that you've accomplished and even though it's quite small and seemingly unimportant or insignificant or blah, you're still bursting with excitement to share it with the world? That's currently me right now. Today, I composed a short little melody for a project that's due later in the week. It turned out much better than I thought it would! I actually am really proud of my work and maybe someday I'll write a full composition with this melody somewhere in it. Give this a listen! Click and download the file and hear my hard work for the day! Comment if you'd like!
Why do you write?
Do you write because you're required to? Because it's simply part of your job or because anyone coming out of elementary school is taught how to do so and it's the norm to keep it up if we want to be intelligent, literate, or successful in the world? Why do I write? I write to express myself. Like a painter blots splashes of color on a blank canvas, a writer scribbles his or her words on paper and creates a masterpiece with metaphors, chains of ornate adjectives, and an idea that holds everything in place. Emotion lies in the words we write and speak aloud. Writing serves as an escape from the world we in which we live. If anything, it serves to distract, even if it is just for a little while. With diary entries, I vent my heart without restraint and pen all that plagues my mind. With poetry, I can create beauty or pull the curtain back to reveal the monsters beneath our beds. With novels, I reflect on the world and weave a story that speaks truth. I love taking somewhat of a philosophical stand in my writing but somehow, I also take pride in leaving the answers to the big questions somewhat muddled. I enjoy reading stories which always end nicely and neatly, but those novels that can make me squirm in my chair with the unsettling reality left on the final page are the ones that inspire me to keep writing. If a writer can move you internally and emotionally, the job is done right. I write because there is always a story worth telling, a speech worth preaching, and a phrase worth a moment of reflection. I write because I think too much and if my thoughts were not scribbled on paper, you'd find brain goo pouring from my ear. As egotistical as it may sound, I write for myself because some days I just need it to revive me and keep me sane. I write for people who have no say and remain powerless and helpless when they crave for change. I write for that one person in my audience that might be moved by my spoken word performance that she'll find a tear escape and break across her stony cheek. I write because writing is a part of me and it's who I am. I'm proud to say I'm a writer. |
AuthorKendall Driscoll is an accomplished writer/ musician/ artist/ academic scholar. Archives
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