You know you're in grad school when your professors start saying things like, "Let's hold class an hour later. Class at 8am is uncivilized." Or, "Next week, we will meet at the beach. But first I would like to take you all out to breakfast." Its a strange transition from being a student to being a peer, and we're in the early stages of finding out how to relate to our faculty in this new way.

Luckily for me, the professors leading our thesis studio are fans of beachy locales, and so this past Wednesday we did, in fact, meet at the beach. But first we piled into a caravan of cars and headed to breakfast in Little Compton, RI. We sampled native Rhody fare of Johnny Cakes at the The Commons Lunch, and then proceeded on to Tiverton, RI, to the Goosewing Beach and Nature Preserve.

I brought a trunk full of stuff to play with, but ultimately ended up wandering around tidal pools and tall brush in my new rainboots, taking pictures and exploring the area.

Since my thesis is about reconciling old and new image-making methods, I decided to only use analog methods during this beach trip. Which means I am waiting for several rolls of 35mm and 120mm film to come back from the processor. Score one point for new technology.

I did break down towards the end and snap a few pics with my digital camera after I ran out of fim.. I also toyed around with some letterforms that I cast in concrete last semester, tossing them into the surf at various spots and seeing what happened. At one point I overdid it a bit:

I also misjudged just how strong this stream was when I threw the "ow" brick into the current. I had to dash into the surf to rescue it before it got washed out to sea!