Last Saturday, I shot portraits of my former roommate, Kristina, over on the Quad, for her senior recital invitations. It was fun to see her again. The photos seemed to have turned out pretty well for my first time doing formal shots like that! She made one of the shots her profile photo and it has gotten great feedback from her friends. Eight people have “liked” it and there are 12 comments below about how beautiful she is in the photo. I think I’ll call the photoshoot a success.

Sunday was installation day for my art show at artWorks Gallery here at JMU. It went well. One of my friends from classes helped me hang my pieces. Another one of the interns looked at my photo books and said she thought the photos in them were really good and she could see them in a famous publication. Aw shucks!

Monday was the opening! It went well. There was a big crowd at the beginning, which made the gallery boiling hot since there’s no air conditioning in there. Rich brought his Design Methodology class over to look at my stylized lionfish drawing. He said something like, “Come over and look at Sarah Derr’s stylized lionfish. It won an award!” I was a bit embarrassed with the attention. I did the drawing for that class and so he was showing it as an example for his new students.

My parents and my best friend’s parents came and saw the show. It was good to see them. It made me a bit homesick though. I didn’t get much of a summer because of summer classes and work, so I am missing them. A lot of friends trickled through and said hello. Saw Jerusha and her boyfriend. :o) Hannah, Derek, and Jess came and hung out with me. They are so funny. My best friend’s mom was saying that I should make a calender with my photos from my trips to the cabin this year and that people would buy them up from me. I do need to get around to making things that can be bought. I guess people could buy my photo books if they are interested since I can just order more of them from online. We will see.

My brain has really suffered this week between gallery install chaos and suffering through classes. Despite that, it’s been a great week. I had a lot of fun dumpster diving with classmates from Intermediate Sculpture, roller skating for the first time, and hanging out with friends in general.

Seems like my art promotes itself, which is a huge relief. All of my commission requests and inquiries come from my friends talking about my work to other people. I seem to have a decent reputation in the JMU art world. So grateful for that. A couple of years ago someone said that I was not worthy enough to have my hand drawing accepted into the juried Undergrad Art Exhibit because I don’t draw well enough. I hate to break it to you… but I draw damn well. It’s just that I don’t draw enough and care enough to really develop strong pieces all the time… my concentration is photography, you know. So I am concentrating on my photography and not my drawing ability. Both that hand drawing and my lionfish drawing got accepted into the Undergrad Art Exhibit (2009 and 2010) and that’s quite the honor, so I must be doing something right.