Crucial Viewing: Lotte Reiniger

An Introduction to my So-Called Life, that shall result in Art.

Hi. I'm AG. I live in a rowhouse in Baltimore City with 2 dogs, 3 cats, and 7 other adults. Honestly.

The house is called Monster.

See, we all work at this garden...

The south-western corner of the Ash Street Garden

And it's very beautiful, and we love it a lot. But we don't make very much money, so we all sort of became a family, in order to survive "the Depression."

People that live in my house include:

Andrew

Jamie

Allison

Billy

Joiya

Kenny

My partner, Mastodon

and me.

That exquisitely radiant creature I'm holding is the love of my life, PNut.

I have six paying jobs, but I'm always laid off from most of them. In order to survive, we all do little things for money, here and there. Sometimes, the things I do are very successful, but even then, they don't usually bring in much money. Recently, a piece of art that I made appeared in a prestigious blog called THERE WERE TEN TIGERS, and even in the Washington Post, but I didn't make any money off of it.

I grew up very poor, and it's hard to miss something, when you never had it in the first place, I guess.

Sometime last month, it occurred to us, we are so poor, the government will pay us to go to college! All of the gardeners decided to go, not just the ones I live with.

There was much rejoicing.

I'd gotten used to thinking I'd never be able to afford to go. This was a real eye-opener for me. We had to figure out what we wanted to take very quickly, as school was starting the following week. Most of us opted to major in Horticulture, but I choose Environmental Science, because the idea of following "Conventional" farming practices, with their heavy petroleum inputs, offended me; and because I've always been interested in ecology, and biology, and Environmental Science seemed like it might somehow blend those two things.

However, this is admittedly a last-minute, and hare-brained, scheme. Art remains important to me. I haven't taken an art class in 22 years, so I opted to take Digital Design Foundation, as a way to get a more formal perspective. This blog is an assignment for that class, which means that future installments will center more around my interest in visual art, in general, and probably cartoons in particular.

I hope you've enjoyed feasting your eyes on my lovely friends, because it's going to be a lot more Masters of the Universe from here on out.