I made this website a year ago to keep a portfolio of my most recent work. I meant to add blog postings and research I have done throughout the year, but I haven't been very accountable to that. This upcoming fall (2019) I am going to try and hold myself responsible for uploading my most recent work. I am trying to take some more time off work during the week to focus more on myself rather than what I did last year. Last school year, I tried desperately to juggle 35+ hours a week as a cake decorator at Sam's Club. While I enjoy creating beautiful cakes, it has been so hard to also uphold my 3.9+ GPA as a full-time student at the University of Arkansas. I managed to do it, but it cost me a lot of stress along the way. This year I will try to do better, I am going down to 20-25 hours a week at Sam's Club while still doing 15-16 hours of schooling during the semester. I do not suggest anyone trying to juggle full time at both school and work; it is not worth the stress.
With that said, I am entering my junior year in a couple of weeks, which means more classes going towards my degree plan, and I am so excited. I will be taking:
The era of the French Revolution
Intermediate German I
Survey of the Universe with Lab
Artists of New Spain
Northern Renaissance Art
Last year I took some pretty fun classes as well, such as Greek Art and Archaeology and Mining the Museum (Curatorial History) taught at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Considering my workload last year, I was incredibly proud of myself to have ended with a cumulative 3.9 GPA.
After taking some of the classes I have to this point, I am starting to find particular interest points between history and art. I have become extremely interested in Ancient art as well as the correlation between craft works (I.e., textiles, woodworking, pottery, etc.), lifestyle. It is incredibly interesting to view a piece of pottery with a practical home use as also a work of art. Their relationship to a person's lifestyle can be so intricate. Here is some research I did about Ancient Greek textiles and their relationship to Greek life that further dives into the complexity of the use of craft goods and art. I have a lot of interest in the Ancient world and the questions remaining around it. I also think my point about craft works transcends into current life and would like to pursue an interest in this research further.
My job at Sam's Club does get very stressful, but I want to write about my journey at this position. I was hired on last August (2018) straight away as a decorator with no experience. With my art background, I was confident enough to learn the skill in a mass production environment. It is a skill I want to develop further even when I decide to leave Sam's Club. This skill is almost nothing like the art I have been trained in. It was incredibly challenging to pick up and perfect. I am still learning and getting better nearly a year later. Writing on cakes is the hardest about this job in all honesty. It's hard to write on a cake with the pressure of knowing it could mess up the entire cake. The wrong format, a shaky hand, getting off-center, or even a simple miss-spelling could lead to trying to fix the mistake and almost costing the entire cake.
I always forget to take pictures of my cakes but here are some I remembered to. I kept them in chronological order so you can visibly see my journey.
I believe anyone can learn to decorate, it just takes a lot of failing and learning along the way! I want to start making more custom and fun cakes, unfortunately Sam's can't do custom, but at home I never have time.
And know we are caught up to August 2019. Classes start August 26th, I hope to continue posting but please understand why if I do not post often.
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