Parental SuperVision Needed(Wanted?)

So, Thanksgiving is over, and in my somewhat successful attempts not to write my Art History 35 paper, I'm Blogging. Thanksgiving was just alright this year. I had mixed feelings about going home in the first place, since I usually don't enjoy my visits home, but I thought that because it was Thanksgiving, I should get in the family spirit and appreciate them a bit. So there I was, regrettably excited to see my old room and indulge in a weekend of gluttony and laziness, and I get home, come up to my old room and it's EMPTY! Well, not truly empty, just all remnants of my presence were gone! No more fashion mag photo collage (which I worked quite hard on), no more bookshelf filled with Leilani knick-knacks and yearbooks, no more 19th century print ads, and no more pictures of baby me and my friends! Now, I know that I pride myself in being a good, upstanding, rebellious Lynch daughter. Independence is my motto and rebellion is my cause, but this hit me suprisingly hard. I was dumbfounded and frankly a bit hurt that my parents had stripped the room of my presence and packed all my memories into paper bags shoved in the closet. What hurt me even more was that after asking my brother why I hadn't been notified of this change, he replied, "Well, you don't live here anymore,". Well, I guess I don't. But where do I live? Now that I live in the dorms, am I from Berkeley? I've always looked to my Hercules house as my home, reluctantly, but still, as my base. Having this base suddenly disappear was jarring. I guess maybe I deserve it after years of blatantly displaying my dislike and disinterest in spending time at home and with my family. Perhaps they just assumed that I didn't want my room anymore. The truth is, as much as I lament 'going home', the act implies a destination, and now that destination is uncertain, and I don't like it. "Grow up" I tell myself. "Moving out is part of becoming an adult". While I acknowledge that this is true, I had never had it shoved in my face so clearly as this weekend. OK, but now I'm back in Berkeley. My new home. With my friends, cheesy but I really consider them as my family. In Berkeley I feel like I am who I want to be. I dress how I want to dress. I act how I want to act. I say what I want to say. That isn't how I am with my family, so why am I whining about not being stifled anymore?? I don't really know.

Anyway, the good things that came from Thanksgiving break were (A) new/old clothes acquired from my parents' closets, (B) seeing my old friend Julia, (C) my amazing purple shorts that I found at the secondhand store run by my highschool called 'Seconds to Go'! And, because on Tuesdays and Thursdays I get out earlier than Mindy and Stephanie, I took the liberty of having a photo session to document the amazingness of my shorts. My original goal of this blog was to capture my outfits if I do remember correctly. That sounds horribly self involved and pretentious, but hey, we're all writing blogs here, so let's not judge. Here's what I did:
Woo! And, basically everything I'm wearing is secondhand, minus the shoes! I'm proud. Saving the planet one vintage piece at a time!!

And now for something completely different. Recently, I've been really inspired by my Art History lectures, which is strange because I began the semester dreading this class (it focuses on Japanese art...I didn't think I was a fan). For the past few weeks we've been discussing early modern-modern Japanese art especially the interaction between Japan and the West and subsequent 'westernization' of Japanese art. Why am I so excited about this? Not sure...but something fascinates me about the visual, artistic evidence of one culture coming in contact with another. Not only did I find out that Japanese modern is amazing, but also, I didn't realize how much of an impact Japanese woodblock prints by Hokusai and Utamaro had on the Impressionist movement in the West! We didn't really discuss that in Art History 11, and I find it very interesting. It seems that for each movement in 'Western art history' ie Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism, the Japanese have had simultaneous movements! So, I'm going to be a total dork and show you guys some art I really loved:

First, the contemporary adaptation of Manet's Olympia by Morimura Yasumasa, Portrait. 1988.
Second, a video of the performance art of Murakami Saburo, Passage, 1994

And lastly, another video of an artist imitating the abstract expressionistic art of Shiraga Kazuo.

And here my entry comes full circle: I started out avoiding writing about Japanese art, wallowed, thought about fashion, then talked about Japanese art...irony.

Let me know what you guys think of this art if you please! I want to talk about art more in my blog...