I have posted a new image in the Portfolio gallery. It is the Trump of the Plaza at the End of the World in the Courts of Chaos, as described in the new novel Dawn of Amber (a new trilogy of books based on Roger Zelazny's Amber setting).

The book describes a "gloomy keep", with the sky behind it neatly divided almost in two. The left half of the edifice is lost in night and storm, the right is lit by a dazzling sky of red, yellow, and orange, as if someone had taken a jar of these three colors of sand and shaken it, leaving every grain visible, but no one color dominating.

I depict a slightly different interpretation of the right-hand sky. I decided that each color would behave slightly differently, produce an eternal competition for dominance. The red patches seem to reach tendrils out to one another. Yellow runs like liquid or drip and melt like hot wax. The orange forms whorls and eddies between and on the other colors, eternally mixing and blending them to create more of itself.

In the original novels, Chaos is also described in similar fashion. Red, Orange, and Yellow are probably not the only colors in the color-mad sky, and the Chaosians in Merlin's series seem to tell time by the dominant hue, along with the "turning" (the sky revolves slowly about a point directly overhead). (This paragraph is from memory; I need to reread the books.)

"Bluesky, third turning" would mean a mostly bluish colored-half which has made two complete revolutions without losing dominance.

I'd imagine that the sky turns fast enough to be useful as the division of a day, probably something on the order of once per hour.

The colors probably shift dominance in larger periods of time corresponding to several turns. Each "sky" then, would be a larger division of a day, like "morning" (bluesky), "noon" (yellowsky), "evening" (redsky), and so forth. It has order, after a fashion (otherwise it would be useless for telling time), but anyone looking at the eternal war of the colors could hardly call the sky of Chaos predictable. (The idea that Chaos contains randomness AND order should not seem strange to anyone familiar with the eponymous branch of mathematics dealing with it.)

I I have placed what I think is a pretty nifty new image up in my art gallery.

Feel free to post comments, etc.

Today is the first day of spring semester. So far so good.

Nothing major to say here, just wanted to get that out of the way.

Here is a screenshot of my full dalek model in lightwave

Today I had my BFA portfolio review. I did not get accepted.

There were some valid points made by members of my committee. My work could probably stand to have more “me” injected into it (I've done work that I suppose you could say has that quality … I didn't show it because it's only a secondary interest for me. Ideally, I want my work to inspire people, not preach at them.)

Partly it was also my fault because I let the choice of committee (at least one member was rumored to be particularly harsh on condidates) and the general stress of facing the firing squad get to me, leaving me unable to clearly express more or less anything. Maybe ten minutes into the half-hour inquisition, my mouth was completely dry. It didn't help that our Art Studio Building is a converted tobacco warehouse, and has the complete lack of moderate temperatures to prove it, and which is probably responsible for a significant fraction of my continual respiratory issues. (Also, I'm never at my best before around 11 am; the only thing I'm passionate about at 9:30 is going the hell back to sleep. Especially when anxiety and respiratory distress conspired to keep me from getting more than a half-hour of sleep at a time all night.)

However, I flat out disagree with the process and with the committee on several points:

• I believe the committee should consist of one member chosen by the student (as it is now), one chosen by the department (as it is now, opaque though the process may be to the students) and the third chosen by the department from among those faculty who actually work in the same medium.

• Any given work of art in the real world will never achieve unanimous acceptance. Why, then, should we expect students to achieve it, to say nothing of doing so with a much more constrained, and therefore statistically meaningless audience? Acceptance into the program, at the very least, should be by majority vote, not unanimous decision. Ideally, awarding the degree at the end of the program of study should be as well.

• It is not the committee's function to validate or invalidate certain types of art. I had photographers telling me that a certain thing was not art (game design work, specifically). I am given to wonder if they realized the irony of that judgement, given that photography itself hasn't entirely shrugged off the stigma of that particular question. In all issues of whether something is art or not, I attempt to give the benefit of the doubt. There are exceptions, but they usually involve (literal) human excrement. (Whether I think something is good or interesting art is a completely separate question … probably two.)

• Also, whether or not my committee sees “no value” in a particular form of creativity is of absolutely no interest to me. I see no great value in Abstract Expressionism for me, but I don't bust the chops of other artists just because I don't like the style (I primarily grumble about it when I'm expected to actually do it myself).

• When I say that I am interested in uniting traditional and digital painting, don't turn around and tell me that I should be trying to find some way that digital painting gives me something I can't accomplish with pigment. To ask that question is to fly in the face of what I'm doing. I don't WANT digital art to look consciously digital. Digital is just another way for me to get at what's inside, one that I'm slightly more fluent in, just as in certain ways I'm more fluent in painting than in drawing, and far, far more so than in (say) printmaking (which I've not studied at all) and sculpture (which I find far too tedious).

Ultimately, I don't actually believe there is a meaningful difference in results between most pairs of two-dimensional media. They all put value and color on a surface, and the eye simply will not care whether a particular image is generated with paint, inkjet ink, photographic emulsion, or tiny tiny grains of sand. A sufficiently skilled painter can concievably make a painting that is so photorealistic that it IS essentially a photograph … the only difference being the materials. One could concievably make a masterpiece with a set of Crayola Crayons, or even drawings made by scratching a sharp rock on a sidewalk, and maybe in a few decades there'll be tools around so that we could build a sculpture molecule by molecule … but honestly, I don't see the problem with doing something a bit easier and therefore more likely to be successful. Convenience is as much a virtue as it is a sin, often more.

Suffering can make good content, but suffering in order to render the content in a tangible form just makes for an incomplete piece and an artist who is too blocked by the medium to actually create anything. It's the creative equivalent of a speech impediment.

There are differences in how light interacts with material (in sculpting, for example, marble is translucent, granite is not … painting media have similar concerns. There are also issues of permanence and durability of various media. These are the only major differences that affect the final image on some level other than “how easy is it to accomplish what I want” that I can think of (at least the only ones that I really care about). I think none of them are actually problems that can't be worked around, and in any case they aren't primary concerns for me at this stage.

• I find nothing so offensive as the arrogant disdain that some Art Professors hold for anything that even vaguely resembles commercial art. It's nothing more than intellectual snobbery, cultural incest, and ego wanking. It'd be nice if we could all be tenured instructors (or otherwise assured of a reasonably steady income to allow us to do what we are driven to do) but one great painting in two years doesn't pay the damned payments on the $30k student loan that is buying that piece of paper, buddy.

Neither will two hundred bad ones, but I like to think that there's some happy middle ground that is being ignored here. Consider that before you tell me that I shouldn't worry about deadlines and such. And I say all of that as a person who isn't exactly enthusiastic about financial matters.

I'm not terribly surprised that I bumped up against the Fine Art/Commercial Art dichotomy somewhere in my academic career. It was bound to happen, given that I think that the distinction is about as important and useful as …

… actually, I can't think of anything that I find less useful or important right now. Not even sloughed-off skin cells, household pests, or my appendix.

One of my classmates also was rejected. If anyone seemed likely to get accepted on the basis of having a consistent style and promise, I would have said it was her (actually, I did). She has work that I'd judge much more consistent and distinctive than mine, and I've actively considered buying a painting from her. Then again, I think she also bumped up against the “this is not art” issue.

She was pretty torn up about it, too.

What's worse is that (some part of) her committee seems to be actively trying to force her to change her work … if she goes up again, she apparently has to face the same group so they can “make sure she goes in the right direction” (I doubt all of them felt that that was entirely necessary). I think the usual practice is that your committee assignment is more or less a crapshoot each time … if you get the short straw and wind up with one that is unsympathetic to your direction, then you can always hope for a better one next time.

Bah.

Addendum:

Just to be clear, I'm not overly distressed at not getting in. I can always try again next semester, and if I never make the cut, I still plan on taking precisely the same classes and graduating at the same time, so the ultimate result will be that my degree has one less letter. I came to school to learn the fundamentals of art and provide myself an environment in which I would be able to explore them. I didn't come for a piece of paper, and I most certainly did not come for approval or validation from the instructors or the larger academic art world. Frankly, the acceptance of the academic art world means less to me than it would to your average blue collar worker.

No, I'm simply annoyed at not getting in because of (in part) what I consider stupid reasons.

This is a transcript of what was written in the notes section of my BFA application. It is a photocopy of a handwritten summary of the hadwritten notes taken during the review, and as such, only vaguely resembles what was actually said. I intersperse my own editorial.

• “Stronger in landscape than when objects in them.”

There was a comment made about the fact that I was better at landscapes than (say) figurative work. Which, as I pointed out, is because I've only recently gotten to the point of experimenting with putting the figure into my work. I'm not sure what the point of this was … it seemed to simply be an observation.

• “Instruct/insert his own work as far as subject matter instead of video game ideas?”

As far as the video game thing, that came 100% from my committee … not once did I say any of my paintings came from video games. And none of them do. BC said that it reminded him of Myst, and strongly implied that I was trying to imitate such work. He flat out said that game design work “ain't art”.

I do, in fact, enjoy the style of the Myst series (especially Riven), but I'm not attempting to emulate it in any fashion, and it was certainly not in any of the work that was in my portfolio that I can distinguish. (To be blunt, I think it's the only video game title he knows, and that he doesn't mean the style of that series specifically.)

Four of the ten paintings were sort of loosely inspired by pen-and-paper RPGs, and three of those are probably my best work to date. That's as close as I get to emulating video games, which incidentally, I think are closer to what I think of as art than any amount of abstract/modern art.

If you disagree, that's fine, but you aren't any more right than I am, even (some would say especially) if you are an art professor. The primary thing that art is, is “subjective”.

• “If going to paint, do paint more gesturally instead of digital.”

I believe that the actual comments here were BC saying that I should take a lot of painting classes with the more traditional painting faculty (I wonder what they thought I've been doing all along), and flat out saying that he saw “no value” in digital work.

Which, I suppose, is fair, since I see “no value” in making such comments.

• “Major suggestion, subject matter should come from more within.”

This is probably the primary point made that I could get something useful out of, but it was hardly anything that is news to me, and even it was tainted.

It's pretty hard to get much more within than the imagination. Imagination, creativity, and fancy are more or less the core of what I think of as important.

What they were strongly implying was apparently that my work should be more about communicating my emotions or something (there were lots of comments that anything I said about my work was “an intellectual construct” or “intellectualized”). Being emotive with art is fine and all, and I already do it to a certain extent, but it's definitely not what I came here to learn. I'm not especially reluctant to engage in self-disclosure or put myself on display (too much the opposite, in some ways); I'm just not particularly interested in doing it as the primary thrust of my artwork.

Nor do I think that emotional content is the end-all and be-all of what art is about. When it comes down to it, I got the strong sense that they were saying that this is what art is, and anything that doesn't attempt to do that, much less accomplish it, simply isn't worth their time. It may be the whole of what art is, for them. It is simply a subset of what art is, to me. Frankly, I think it's better to judge me on my terms than on theirs.

• “Push the mediums a bit further. (Painting).”

I believe the actual quote I heard was “I think that you can learn to paint” coupled with a strange analogy to a person with no morals learning to build weapons.

• “Find your own voice, son.”

I don't recall ever hearing this said. It might have been a comment made while they conferred amongst themselves before telling me the results (although I was pretty sure I knew long before that). It probably came from BC.

• “Don't spread self so thin though if time is issue push each medium for what they can give.”

I think this is a summary of RA's stance that I should find something that digital offers that pigment doesn't (thereby completely missing the point of what I'm trying to do), and my complete failure to communicate why I was actually interested in digital painting.

There is a lot that this summary doesn't cover (there's barely a paragraph of summary for a half-hour of commentary), but most of the remaining interesting stuff was more subtext and undercurrent rather than overt statements, so I'd have a hard time filling in the blanks any better than my original post did.

Oh, except for when BC more or less called me a “science geek”. I'm still not sure whether it was meant to be as insulting as it came across (even though I tend to be regard it as a badge of honor), as I can't determine to what extent the general tenor of the review was a contributing factor in how I perceived it.

“'What is art' is one of those eternal questions that divides people, by the nature of its answering, into one of two mutually exclusive groups. The first group, those who are interested in finding out, starts looking for things to include. The second group, those who are convinced that they already know, starts looking for things to exclude.”

Well, today was the last day of classes for the Fall semester here.

It has been a hectic semester, starting on Labor Day when I had to scramble to find a ride back from Tennessee and some way to get my car back the next day, on through preparation for my BFA review in October, and now getting ready for finals. Some of my classes were not entirely helpful in reducing the chaos.

Luckily, I only have two finals, on Monday and Tuesday, and then the only thing I have to do for the rest of finals week is show my last two paintings to my professor and work my shifts. Then I'm off until mid January.

I think part of the reason I'm so tired this semester is because I worked all through summer for the first time since I've been in school. So I really need the break.

Once again it is time for BFA portfolio reviews (Tomorrow Morning). 18 hours from now.

I feel that I have a stronger body of work (or at least a more cohesive one) and a better sense of where I am and what I am doing as an artist. I've taken what was useful from last semester's review, and dismissed what wasn't.

I also feel a lot less trepidation and stress. Part of that is due to having what I consider a better (or at least a more appropriate) committee (though I never had any issues with my self-appointed committee chair last time). This time, I already know all of the faculty on my committee (my video professor, my drawing professor, and my advisor), and I've worked with two of them quite a bit.

Naturally, it's not gone completely; I'm still the center of attention, which I've never been particularly comfortable with. But it isn't preying on me to the extent that it did last semester, when I knew as soon as I got the committee assignments that I was going to have problems.

Allison (my friend who also didn't get in last time) also feels a bit better about her committee.

After tomorrow's review, I'll post the results and then I plan to vegetate the rest of the weekend.

And if I don't get in, I'll not be particularly annoyed.

Well, I didn't get accepted again. I simultaneously feel better about that, and worse.

Better because I didn't get too wrapped up in the idea that I actually need the extra initial in my degree, and because I felt this committee was much more impartial, so the vast majority of the comments were fair ones.

Worse because I actually know and respect the opinions of this committee far more than that of most of my previous one.

Last semester's review commented on how my work looked like “a bad imitation of Myst” and how “game design isn't art”, and how they saw “no value” in digital work. In other words, they were complaining about style, content, and choice of media and direction. It caused more than a little stress, worry, and ultimately, a period of self-doubt about what I was doing (creating a severe artist's block that I had to struggle to overcome earlier this semester), even though I knew most of it was really just bias.

This semester, the committee thought that my content and style were just fine, they simply had issues with my ability to pull off what I'm attempting in a convincing fashion. In other words, they didn't feel that my refinement, skill level, and technique were up to par. Since that's what I actually came to school to develop, that's a pretty fair criticism. It just means that I haven't fully succeeded yet. (I emphatically did NOT come to learn what style or subject matter I “should” be using, or what is and isn't art/fine art. I'm not only not interested in that, I actively despise the mindset, which smacks of pretentiousness.)

It has become increasingly clear to me that I make things far more difficult on myself than a lot of others do; any artist that attempts (or even approaches) photorealism has a much harder time getting across to the viewer when distortions are intentional and therefore not simply a failure to get something right. (In my case, there is a little of both.) In more stylistic work, distortion comes with the territory. In completely abstract work, there can be no question of whether it is right or wrong, simply whether it is interesting or aesthetically pleasing.

The thing I tried to convey to them was that my fascination as an artist and as a person is with boundaries, the dichotomies that they create, and the interaction at those boundaries. I explore where the boundaries are, which side I am on, whether they are real, whether they need to be there, how people react to them, whether they can be moved, and so forth. I poke at all sorts of boundaries: the real/scientific and the fantastic/mythic, rational vs. mystical, ideas of beauty vs. monstrosity, life vs. death, etc.

(That is essentially what I gave as my artist's statement, and what my work is about. It is pretty accurate, and has been part of my personality longer than I've been doing art, but it only covers part of it. I am vast; I contain multitudes.)

As Pete (one of the roomies) says, I am the Questioner.

One such boundary is that between different types of art, between Fine or High art and Commercial or Low art. I think I managed to say my piece on my opinion of that effectively, without coming across as rantish. That is, I definitely don't have much use for Fine Art in the sense where it is used to invalidate or set itself above “lesser” forms of art (which is why I intensely dislike the term “Fine Art” itself … it has an inherent quality of elitism). I've seen vast quantities of allegedly Fine art that I consider complete garbage or simply uninteresting, and just as much “low” art, “illustration” and “commercial” genre art (in the sense of belonging to the sci-fi, horror, and fantasy genres, not “genre art” as Fine Artists use the term) that inspired me or made me think in ways I previously hadn't. So it should be fairly obvious that I reject outright the notion that the latter isn't every bit as interesting as (or more than) the so-called higher arts..

But in the sense that I typically do art for myself and my own purposes, rather than simply because somebody else wants a particular picture, I consider myself a fine artist. There's more to it than a paycheck (though a paycheck is important, and no artist should be derided simply for that).

I can't say that my work always has a deeper meaning behind it … sometimes it is just about depicting a particular scene or image, or creating something on an aesthetic level; that's part and parcel of the idea of transforming something unreal that I envision into a tangible form. Indeed, I actively resist trying to explain what many pieces are “about”, beyond the general level. I know that meanings are always there and always present, whether I want them or not, but I prefer the viewer to imagine their own narrative, or take away their own interpretation, or call up their own associations, than to bias them with what mine were.

So there you go. I haven't decided whether I will try again next semester. It depends on how much new work I can accomplish in the meantime that doesn't annoy me. Last semester will be literally the last time I could do it without having to stay in undergrad longer (which I doubt is worth the thousands of extra dollars on my loans).

More info when I get a copy of their comments back.

BTW, Allison got in this time, albeit with “resignation” (sic). (I assume that they meant “reservations”, but she said that's what they actually said.)

“Jimmy McKinney stated that his work was informed by his fascination with boundaries. For instance, he liked to contrast things like beauty with the grotesque; reality with unreality; live models with corpses; traditional media and new media. In each case he felt the juxtapositions of such issues provided the provacative nature of his work.”

“The committee's main criticism rested on skill issues. There was very little that could be said about his content, which was praised. The committee felt that more advanced painting techniques such as glazing might be necessary to pull off Jimmy's goals. There also seemed to be drawing issues in his figures especially in proportions.

The Commitee recommended Jimmy look at contemporary artists such as John Currin (more) and Joel-Peter Witkin. Historical figures suggested would be (Francisco) Goya and (Georges de) la Tour. We felt strongly that Jimmy was on the correct track, but would like to see him take larger risks with the form of work he has chosen especially in light of its connections to illustration.”

My comments:
Well, actually I don't literally like to juxtapose corpses and live models. :) It is more accurate to say that I'm interested in the line between life and death … sometimes I contrast the two, sometimes I'm simply at one extreme or the other. The piece that they were commenting on when this came up is one where I drew a model as a decaying zombie-like woman with lower jaw missing and jewlery hanging from the upper jaw. I was in a dark place that day…

Georges de la Tour is in fact one of the artists that I am inspired by and had intended to mention, and Witkin has been mentioned to me by another teacher previously as someone who has a similar mentality to me (I see the similarities, but he takes it in a different direction than I do.).

Impression of my first BFA review, courtesy of my brother:

“Guily or Innocent?”

“Innocent.”

“Feed him to the Sharkticons.”

This, my 8th semester, has very nearly killed me … both physically and motivationally.

Taking four studio classes this semester was a mistake, for all that one of them was an independent study. Four studios simply meant that when time I needed for one of the other three regular studios (usually Video) ran over, the time I designated for Independent Study (which doesn't have any regular schedule of turning in work, as long as it all gets done before the end of the semester) inevitably got the shaft. So now I have 3 of 6 paintings done, and two weeks remaining to finish.

(On the other hand, I know that taking only three studios per semester has its own set of problems. Mainly in that the need to maintain 12 credit hours for full time status requires a fourth course. Because god forbid that an 8-9 hour/week class (plus the frequent time necessary outside of the regular schedule) give you more than 3 credit-hours (what you get for a normal 3-4 hour/week class). This means that, as likely as not, the fourth class will wind up being either an unwanted, useless, and probably completely distracting course, or else nearly impossible to fit in the cracks around the studios.)

Taking so many art courses, on top of the four RPG nights (in a two week period) that I am involved in and their concomitant between-session activities, means that I'm also completely drained on the creative end of things. My artist's block may have started last semester after BFA reviews, but this semester hasn't seen much improvement because of the constant demands of projects from teachers who seem to have forgotten that their classes aren't the only ones we have. As soon as I get one project done, the deadline for another is looming almost immediately. I feel like I'm trying to maintain four or five different art careers simultaneously. I am looking forward to summer, if only because it'll allow me to staunch flow of the idea-hemorrhage.

What's worse, not only are my ideas lately slow to arrive and lackluster when they do, my execution (and enjoyment of the process) has also been suffering. I haven't had any discernable artistic development in months, mainly because I've been so busy just trying to keep up that I can't really put anything into making progress. My videos, in particular, have been kinda lame (or at the very least they were “not entirely successful” in critspeak). Which is annoying, because that class was the worst offender in terms of time consumed.

I've starting to get pensive about my prospects post-graduation (mainly because I keep getting updated on my ever-worsening financial situation and ever-decreasing time remaining to sort my plans out).

The past year has all but destroyed any remaining interest in academia and the Fine Art world (as either a healthy environment to work, or as a career goal). Not that I ever really saw it as more than a backup plan, mind you.

On the plus side, I finally got around to upgrading my computer and Lightwave, and investing in a pool for this summer. :)

School wasn't even entirely bad this year. Met more friends, like Allison and Melissa. Learned a few new tricks. Found a new favorite artist or two, like William Blake. Grew more convinced that I couldn't possibly care less about Fine Art (as opposed to the other kinds), which is good, as it'll save me trouble down the road.

I've gotten my first actual commission to do artwork, from a friend in City of Heroes.

Just thought I'd let people know.

Woohoo!

I have been revamping my galleries a bit. I tried switching to an entirely different gallery management system, but the only one whose interface I really liked was geared a lot more toward photographers, and I didn't need to store a bunch of information like focal length, lighting, and all that. It would've been a pain to get the code to do what I wanted.

Anyway, here are the changes…

Done

• I've upgraded to the latest version of Slooze and gotten my customizations working with it.
• Several more pictures were added to the 2003 gallery
• I added 2004 and 2005 galleries
• The newer galleries have larger thumbnails.
• I've figured out how to get the topics to sort properly
• I've begun filling in the data fields for the older galleries (I've done up to mid-1999, plus some of the recent galleries and a few scattered pictures here and there). These all used to be filled in, but my database got corrupted a long time ago, and I never finished recreating the entries.

To-do

• I still need to work on the stylesheet and HTML to make it prettier and more integrated into the rest of the site.
• I am not done adding pictures, even to galleries several years old. That's what happens when you have as much data to keep track of as I do.
• The portfolio gallery doesn't have a lot of the entries I would put there.

Posted some new paintings in the art gallery and updated the photos on several existing ones (some of the really bad photos)

The galleries are 2003 and 2004

(Look for the red borders, which appear on any image updated in the last week or so.)

I have started a webcomic. Shadows Lying is the name (link goes to the first page).

That is all.

From almost the moment that I stepped onto the UK campus with the intent of obtaining a degree in art, I heard a name. It was at the summer advising conference. It wasn't people bitching about a teacher they hated, it was a recommendation. Study with Ross, they said. Ross Zirkle is a great teacher, they said. He's my favorite professor.

Over the course of my first year at UK, I knew only one thing for certain … which professor I was going to take for drawing.

So I did.

Since 2001, I took classes with Ross Zirkle as my schedule permitted. I remember the first day in his class and how he asked my name.

I was there when his sister died, watching how hard it was for him to talk about it in front of a few hundred students who wanted nothing better than to go home on a Friday afternoon.

He was always open to a student's individuality. He was always willing to forgive absences and give advice. He would talk to you, personally, about what you were doing, make cogent recommendations about who you should look at, what you might want to try. He was always enthusiastic about art, about teaching.

When I left school in 2005, it was with an incomplete in Ross's class. I had burned out on school in general, missed too many classes. For the next year, I had in my head “I've got to get back into the drawing studio and make it up to Ross.” In late spring/early summer 2006, I did get back in. Ross was the same as always, joking, cutting up, talking like Ross. (If you don't know Ross, you will have a hard time visualizing this, but any student of his would recognize the “Ross voice”.)

There was no hint of what was to come.

After I finished making up my absences, I got re-absorbed into my own problems. Later in the summer, probably less than a month since I'd last been in, Ross was diagnosed with cancer. It was not a mild cancer. It was Stage 4, which means it had already metastatized (spread to other organs). They gave him only until fall to live, but he beat those odds.

I did not discover any of this until I was preparing to return to school in December, attempted to take Independent Study with him again, and the advisor mentioned that they were not allowing Ross to teach it. I wound up taking painting instead.

When I came back to school in January, I saw Ross for the last time, in the hallway on my first day back. Same old Ross. I thought that I should take him out for drinks or something.

I never got the chance. Ross died Monday, March 12th.

There are few professors at UK with whom I have that have that level of interaction. Ross was the most important of them. Cheers.

No more edumacation! Yaay!