Update from Chris

OK here goes: after camp closed :( I was lucky enough to get into an innovative, alternative high-school which allowed me to study art and photography in-depth. The schedule was like a college in that we didn't have the same classes every day. The totally revolutionary thing was that attendance was OPTIONAL! for real! that was both good and bad for me as you might imagine, it was for many. I managed to graduate with multiple piercings and a punk rock attitude.

After High School I slacked around DC working in a video store, renting regular and adult videos to many of Washington's powerful elite. (If you want names you have to meet me in person and buy me a beer). I had the privilege of removing Traci Lords's best renting adult videos from the shelves when it was discovered that she was underaged when she made many of her most popular films. I also watched the challenger disaster live, on 10 TVs at once and shook Stevie Wonder's hand.

After about three years of contemplating life in retail, I decided to go to college, art school to be exact. Like Dr Mintz, I needed to get far away from my overprotective mother so I opted for a small school in Atlanta, where I got serious about art and life. I got a dog, a little poodle named katy. I never gave Katy a stupid poodle haircut so most of the time people didn't realize she was a poodle at all. (No, this was not good for my physical health.) During my third year in college, I was diagnosed with Keratoconus, a thinning of the corneas that causes distortions (great for my painting) and possibly leading blindness. Just my luck to be developing a commitment to a career in visual arts while my eyes were going bad. Luckily, Emory Univ. has a good hospital. There I got both my corneas transplanted, each one, one year apart in '09 and '91. It wasn't easy taking notes in class with a sharpie and getting people to read my reading assignments to me, but painting was great fun!. My vision changed rapidly for years. I credit this experience with changing my approach to making art. I began making art as most do, by representing what I could see through fairly traditional figure painting, but because of my eye situation, I decided to take a more conceptual approach to making art, just to see if I could indeed make art more with my "brain" than my "eyes."

Sorry if I get a bit pointy headed now and then, but that is who I am now :)

After undergrad, I worked as a teaching assistant in a private, pre-school program and drove for take out taxi. It was about all I was qualified to do with my BFA in painting. The experience at the pre-school solidified my commitment to remaining childless. Sorry to be so blunt about it but pre-schoolers are just like any other group of people, only smaller and louder. Some of them I liked, but many I didn't. I decided to go to grad school for art. In hindsight, it was definitely the right thing to do, but I'm sure you can imagine that to invest so much money into an art education seemed like a crazy bet. I applied to many good schools but chose Carnegie Mellon because it gave me the best deal and they had an innovative curriculum with an emphasis on the arts in society.

I went into CMU a painter and came out an electronic artist. CMU does that to people. Along the way I met the love of my life, John Sturgeon. It was the classic love at first sight thing. The moment I saw him I kicked my friend under the table and said "that's him! that's the guy!" It took us a few years to get it together but we did. While at CMU, I went to Vietnam with my Dad and visited family sites in the north and south. Needless to say it was a life altering experience. It was also almost a life ending experience as well since I experience anaphylactic shock several times during the month I was there. The thing is, I didn't know what was happening to me. I only figured it out much later after reporting the incidents to my allergist.

Also while at CMU, my feminist consciousness was awakened and I helped found subRosa, an artist collective that critiques the effects of new bio and information technologies on the lives and bodies of women. We were very successful and though I left the collective in 2003, they live and work on.

In 2000 John and I moved to Baltimore so he could take a position as Chair of the Art Department at UMBC. I took a job as project manager at the Imaging Research Center at UMBC. There I taught myself project management and a little grant writing on the job, along with various technical and administrative skills. In 2001 I quit smoking (yep, "Drum" and I rolled my own) and we bought a 100 year-old row house near John's Hopkins. It was a fixer upper then, and is still a fixer-upper today. I managed not to fall off the smoking wagon after 9/11. I'm proud of that since I was quite sure, the world was ending at the time.

In 2004 John Sturgeon, the love of my life and I were married in a unique ceremony in the Palm House at the Baltimore conservatory and botanic gardens. A month later I moved to Charlottesville, VA for my first full-time teaching job as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the art department at UVA. I loved c'ville but the best part of that was meeting my friend, Artist Dragana Crnjak who was also a visiting Asst. Prof. She had just graduated with her MFA and was newly pregnant for the first time. Dragana is an incredible woman for many, many reasons but the thing that impressed me the most was that during the last week of the spring semester she told me she was ready to give birth. Then she finished her classes, turned in her grades and her water broke. I went to the hospital with her and ended up staying with her through the entire birth of her son Sava. We didn't plan that--maybe the birthing team thought I was a doula or something. By now you know I have no kids and that it is by choice. I will say that though I think not everyone needs to have children, everyone SHOULD be required to witness a birth. The world would be a different place if we could all appreciate the sheer labor, bravery and risk involved in our own births. it is humbling to say the least.

Moving right along, from fall of 05 through the spring of 07, I was an Assistant Prof. at the Art Department at UWF. The day I arrived on campus I walked into the Chair's office and she said, "hi! nice to see you again!" then she handed me a giant wad of plastic and said "could you unplug and wrap up the computers in the lab? We're evacuating!" And with that the reality of Katrina entered my life. Pensacola was spared as you may know but my days on the gulf coast were numbered after that. I couldn't take the stress of knowing all I worked for could be washed away at any moment and there was only so much I could do to protect my self and stuff from hurricanes. (I guess I'll never live along the west coast either.) For Katy, as for so many old beings, Florida was good place to live out her last days. Taking care of that little dog during her last year of life took a lot out of me. My hair started graying and her death forever changed me.

Now I am an Assistant Professor here at Clemson University. I am a city person so learning living a rural part of the country has been a challenge. Last weekend, in an an effort to embrace my new home, I went to my first rodeo at the Clemson livestock arena. John and I bought a cheap little 10 year-old house here in SC and we can tell you it's true, "they don't build them like they used to." We are still in a commuting marriage, full of love but short on time together. It's not all bad, but we are looking forward to this stage of our marriage ending soon. I love my job and the people here. My artwork, which by any standard, is not conventional, is thriving here and the country is beautiful. I am teaching digital art in the Art Department and "Visual Rhetorics" in the Ph.D program in Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design. I'll be presenting my work at conferences in Richmond, VA and Singapore this year.

John has three artwork in a show which opens in March at the Getty Art Museum. We'll be in LA for the opening and visit his step-daughter, her husband and daughter, Coco. BTW, being a grandparent, even a step-grandparent, is GREAT!

Obviously I took some time to craft this post. I feel I should say that I blog like a meteor: it may be a rather substantial event, but it will happen rarely and erratically, with long stretches of mute silence in between sightings/postings. I just want to be up front about this so no one is offended or disappointed if I seem unresponsive. I eagerly look forward to receiving news from all of you and will do my best to check in as often as I can. i know I have pictures from camp but they're in Baltimore now, along with most things I love. On my next trip home I'll dig them up, scan and post them.

Christina
PS I was engaged to some other guy for 8 years from just after HS an on into grad school, and it gives me GREAT PLEASURE to relegate that entire relationship to a footnote here ;)