stephanieNY

Tuesday night, the Empire State Building shone blue in honor of Columbia's 2010 graduates. I didn't take this picture, nor see it...but I felt it. (Thanks New York)   

As the fog in the picture shows, Tuesday was a wet rainy mess.  My graduation gown doubled as a poncho and half my guests sat out in a cold tent and watched the ceremony on a monitor. (Thanks Adam, Sarah, Matt and Lizzy)  

It's all felt pretty amazing to finish up.  I've been anticipating this moment for what feels like soooooo long.  It's also been a bit anticlimactic since, as usual, the end of the semester finished with little deadline after little deadline.  Even after graduation on Tuesday, I had to go up to school yesterday to pass in a final studio assignment.  

I think the moment where I can actually say that everything ended was my walk home from school yesterday.  It was so perfectly, poetically final as I carried with both hands an open-topped cardboard box with my personal belongings from my desk at school (like people do when they get fired).  I got in the elevator, hit the ground floor, and as the doors closed in front of me, all I was missing was a green plant peaking out from the box and a cameraman filming the moment from the other side so it could be replayed in slow-motion later.

I proceeded to go home and fall asleep on the couch to Barefoot Contessa......aaaaaaahhhhhhh.  

Pictures of everything that preceded, here.

I handed in my comprehensive, all-the-work-I've-done-at-Columbia-in-three-years portfolio today. Check out the blue cover strip with the little pocket slit.  It's my favorite part.

It's happening.  Graduation is next week.  I picked up my tickets to the ceremony and reception today.  Check out how cool they are.  Mine's the green one and my guests get the orange ones.  

And (nerd alert) check out how uncool caps and gowns are.  At least everyone else will be wearing them. 

As of Thursday, I was officially finished with my classes.  My final final was for my graphic design class, the best class I took all three years.  I had these two really great professors, both from 2x4, Inc.  It made me wish I had studied graphic design instead.  False alarm though.  I think this falls somewhere with my furniture design dreams.  I'm just really good at liking good graphic and furniture design, not really making either.  Here's Michael Rock standing with my final diagrams (in black on the wall).  

And here are my diagrams (inspiration for color palette and dots from AB):

I've been working on my portfolio for the past few days, which requires sifting through my hard drive of semesters of work. Some of it makes me cringe and some of it makes me laugh, and that which doesn't do either has a chance of making it in. This one made me laugh.  I made it at the beginning of my housing studio.  I like it.

Apparently, there was a chance that Roger Waters was going to be a critic on my final review tomorrow but cancelled. Apparently, he's trained as an architect and apparently my profs know him somehow. Apparently, he met some of his band mates in architecture school way back when. Now, all I can think about is how cool it would have been to say that Roger Waters came to my final review in architecture school, and I'm mad that I can't. So as consolation, I'm writing this post to say that Roger Waters was almost a critic on my final review. Hmph.

This is the number of days until graduation. The campus is already transforming in preparation. The grounds crew is sprucing up the area with proper fences to contain the crowds and new shrubbery to impress them. This time, I don't have to sneer at them when I walk by out of resentment for the people that it's for. This time, I can smile and wave instead.

But now, it's time to go into my end-of-semester military mode schedule. 12-on 12-off starts tomorrow. I'm kind of excited for it. It's very satisfying when you start producing final images of a project that you've been working on all semester, and I imagine producing final images for my final studio will be that more fun.

Finally, my final finals.

I also handed in my final icon designs last week.  I settled on 4 modes of transportation...kind of generic, but I wanted to create something that I could use in my studio project somehow.  From fastest to slowest, it's train, bus, bicycle, and pedestrian.  I was really into the Munich Olympic icons that I posted about.  They used straight lines at 45 degree angles to represent the moving figures.  I set up a 14x14 grid and used quarter circles to turn all corners.  The tree was my favorite (until someone in my class told me it looked like a smiling elephant...thanks.)  

Ok, this is the last one. My other two classes won't be "down" til May. But today, I finished my final renderings for my third 1/2-semester class, so that means it's pretty much over. The assignment was to create a set of three renderings of an architectural project, whether it be your own or something designed/built by someone else. I modeled and rendered Alvar Aalto's Experimental House in Finland.

So in my renderings, there's a creepy lady that lives there by herself.  I got a little carried away with the whole fire-pit-at-the-house-in-the-woods-at-night scene and ended up adding a creepy lady to each image.  She changes race and dress in each image, and she's either waiting for guests to arrive or she just killed her guests. I'm thinking it might be the latter.  She's crazy.  Take a look...you'll see what I mean.