New York's Doll

This semester has been extra rough because for a month I was so sick I felt like I couldn't get out of bed almost every day. Finally, the super dumb Pratt nurses gave me antibiotics and I got bunches better, but for a while it was #struggzlife.

Most of my professors were extremely understanding, my thesis professor let me miss class and even sent me home early the next week when I tried to function in class. Strangely though, my freakin silkscreen professor was so unsympathetic. My class is 6 people and four of those kids are like too gangster or something to come to class. So clearly I am one of the more devoted and dependable students, but even if I came to class with a river of snot pouring from my nose and bags under my eyes that reached the floor my silkscreen teacher would still give me shit for missing two classes in a row. I brought a note from the school nurse that said something like "this student is too sick to function, please don't give her a hard time" and she was like "wut is this lol".

So once I felt better I immediately started working on my silkscreen final, even though I have miles to do in my thesis class which should really be my first priority.

For this print we had to bring in poetry or quotes that inspire us, so naturally I brought in Pablo Neruda. No, I definitely didn't. I brought in Bitches Ain't Shit (the Ben Folds version) and to my horror, everyone in the class brought poems by Robert Frost and one kid even brought an Albert Einstein quote (WHAT THE FUCK I KNOW RIGHT).

But honestly, that song inspires me every day. I put it on in the morning and it inspires me to get out of bed. I put it on when I'm getting ready to go out and it reminds me to not get in trouble and end up in jail because if that happened my cousin would most definitely get with my girl behind my back.

Here's what happened:

I started making a bunch of individual mini collages (not silkscreened).

I got the images from my favorite place in the world- the Mid Manhattan Picture Library. Every time I go there I spend 3+ hours looking at images of the most random things (cheerleaders, wallpaper from the '70s, swimming pools...)

Then I painstakingly scanned all the images (at least 50) and printed them all out, cut them and glued them!

I silkscreened some layers of lips and smiley faces to add to the "women are here to serve you" vibe.

I also added glitter to the text while the ink was still wet, which led to this extremely flattering and generously kind comment from my professor: "you're rather competent today!"

(she acts like I'm a slacker and I'M NOT I'M SO COMPETENT ALWAYS)