I’m gonna ramble for a bit here, so bear with me.  If you want a straight explanation for how stuff is organized on this site, head to the bottom.

I’ve been around the arts for quite a while, grown up teaching myself filmmaking and creative writing, always with a focus on the message or the core a piece is communicating to its audience. It’s always been important to me that there be something valuable in the piece itself, and in the process of its making; essentially that all parties involved benefit in some way, be it the creative satisfaction of a design team, or the lone writer seeing their words put to screen, or some kid far removed from any of the making simply loving the piss out of every moment of story or drip of paint in a work. The emotional fulfillment of making and consuming art is what it’s grown to be about to me, what I strive for in everything I do now, and what I’d hope will be all I ever strive for in anything I do. Well, that and paying the bills. There’s no denying the world, after all.

This site is where I keep records of every creative project I’m involved in. It’s certainly lacking in its collection of early work; there is very little film and video stuff compared to all I was involved in before I started this site, but everything from freshman year of college onward will be collected and written about.

I started it in that year, you see, as a way of showing off all the work I was doing in school (it was a second try in post-secondary schooling for me, and a change in my field of study, so I wanted to keep people up to date). But it became more than that. It evolved into a way to think about and reflect on what I was doing, how I was doing it, and to maybe more fully comprehend each project after it was completed. A way to seal the deal on each project, and to clear up any scraps of thought I had about it lingering in my mind before embarking on the next. It’s been nice to be able to reflect while the thoughts were still fresh, and explain my artwork while the theories and the inspirations were still in my head, and to show off what I hope that makes a pretty authentic version of what I’ve made, and sort of extension of who I am.

That’s one more note, I suppose, about this stuff – and I’m sure any artist would say the same – is that what I make is at its heart a direct expression of some aspect of myself, my life, my mindset, or even just thoughts or feelings I’m having at the time of making it. For me especially, knowing all the inner workings of my mind throughout the time, it’s fascinating to look through freshman year and watch the build-up of skills and confidence and time management in the first semester, and to watch it all come to my aid in the larger, far more personal and in some cases painful projects of second semester (my map of life, or my diagram of depression, for example).

As far as this site itself, though, it’s laid out pretty simply.  Perhaps a bit less organized than some might like, but it serves its purpose.

• Portfolio – This is my best stuff.  I double-post these things, once in the blog and once in the Portfolio section, because they’re something creative I’ve done, but they’re also something I’d link to an a job application, serious showcase of my work, or a synthesized version of my skills and talents.  Updated less frequently, but [hopefully] always with seriously awesome content.
• School – Pretty self-explanatory, this is all of the work I do at or for school.  I’m an art student in Boston, double-majoring in Sculpture and SIM (Studio for Inter-related Media), which basically means a lot of concept-driven 3D or mixed-media work.  And it’s probably safe to assume that most of it is pretty ambitious.  It’s a curse I have.
• Older Works – Also pretty self-explanatory, though potentially a misnomer, this is either work or mediums that I don’t work in anymore, or so infrequently or on such a minor level that they don’t need as much attention as my real focus – school and personal projects – do.  Still interesting though, and possibly pretty funny.
• Personal – This is tricky territory.  In here are projects I do for myself, but since time for those can be pretty scarce, it also includes things that don’t fit into other categories, like travel courses, extracurricular projects, some more bloggy entries and roundups, that sort of thing.
• About Me – Where you are right now.

With another year only a few weeks away as I write this, there will be plenty more content arriving soon enough, and I’m sure plenty of other thoughts and experiences, and maybe even new things I’ll try out on the site for the site’s sake.  But until then, enjoy my work, my ramblings, and what the site is really meant to convey at the end of it all: me.

Pleasure to meet you,
Blake