Supermarket Panic part 11

Decided to get up to the Studio early again today. Not because of the heat, which lessened some today (though not the humidity), but because of rain.  The news mentioned that tropical storm Fay was on the way, would hit New Jersey before long and stick around all day and night.  This was not to be as bad as some we get, and wouldn't really hit until the early afternoon, so I figured I could get some early cutting in before it got too bad.  

Just a light rain this morning, nothing I couldn't handle.  I regularly drive through much worse on my way to campus on a school day.  Whether I will have more of those in the future remains to be seen.  Politicians have an opinion, and in recent weeks I have gotten a flurry of conflicting emails from administrators and full time faculty.  A lot can happen before the fall.

Felt in a blues mood today, and selected my disc with the pair of heavy Buddy Guy albums.  Picked up where I left off last time, more around the shopping cart.  Everything was already drawn, so it was just cutting today. I started with my shopper, cutting out her face and hair, the filter mask, her sorority sweatshirt, the gloves, etc.  Kept the flat of cans under the cart as generic, let the viewer decide what they are. In The Road Warrior, the only canned food was dog food, which went to people first, then the dog got to lick the can for scraps. Didn't see anything that bad, but all kinds of canned food have been in short supply at times the past several months- beans, soups, vegetables- so I'll let viewers decide what they are in this case. I remember once Roger Ebert talking about how in old black and white movies, the lack of specific information caused viewers to fill in the blanks, which maybe gave them an additional connection to the film. For example, a character pours a drink, but without knowing specifically what kind of alcohol was in the bottle, the viewer decides what it is based on their own experiences or expectations, and they add their own layer of meaning.  In the piece I made recently for the music video, I included two whiskey bottles, which anyone who knows alcohol would recognize as whiskey type bottles.  No problem, as the song specifies that she's drinking whiskey to get the bottles for her mission.  (labels are left blank, because brand names are not important there) 

The other thing I did today was cut out some of the background shelves. The shelves are fairly empty, all too common in the recent past, and still sometimes an issue these days.  Helps to balance against the big piece of white tiles on the floor.  As I cut more in each part of the block, I will maintain this balance. 

In front of me I could see through the windows and hear the rain, which alternated between heavy and light, as bands of weather were passing overhead.  The roof protected me from the rain just fine, but the humidity continued to build.  When Buddy Guy ended I was still working on shelves, and I continued as I wanted to get them done today.  I had brought lunch, but decided to just bring it home and eat it there. Had to wait up by the front gate for a few minutes for the rain to ease, but I knew we were getting waves of weather from the storm, so eventually it eased and I could get to my car.  On the way home I found route 35 near Belmar was closed- any heavy rain takes out that part of Belmar, there's just no drainage. Detoured us through the area on route 71, where I had to slow down for some deep water at times, but nothing my car couldn't handle.  Not much storm damage early on- just a few branches down.  Sun even came out for a while and I got quite hot.  But then the rain eventually came back.