"Interesting" is a word far too passed around to do my stint in Reporting and Writing II any justice. "Peculiar" would be a better word. The fact that I was also taking Editing II, a class which is supposed to come after Reporting II, was a bit of a conundrum as I was essentially taking two classes for the exact same thing, only in one I was required to generate content on a weekly basis and in the other I only had to do so every three. Needless to say, I put a bit more effort into Editing II.
This isn't to say that I wrote off Reporting II as something below me. I enjoy writing, it's what I do. Every assignment was given just as much thought and attention as any of my other journalistic undertakings this semester. It was all a very simple process really. Recognize an audience, formulate an idea for a story that would interest them, contact whoever needed to be contacted, interview, compile the data, and edit it into a flowing piece of journalistic art. Bing-bang-boom.
Some weeks I questioned why I even came to class. I was either already done with everything I needed to do or knew exactly what I was going to do for my next story. Class seemed to just fill space and time that could have been spent doing something more important. But I've got more honor than that. For one thing, Chris Godsey, the busy, busy man, spends hours of his valuable time to educate us on reporting and writing (although some might say that educate is a relative term when it comes to journalism). For another, I'm paying for the privilege of him to do so. Anyone can get everything I've learned book-wise on journalism for free on the internet, we can call up journalists and talk to them about their careers for free, we can write articles and blogs for free, but we cannot get professionally dictated assignments aimed at assessing our skills and aimed at improving those skills into something useful in the career-world. After four years, I've grown tired of passing people in the hallway who talk about how much they skip classes because they really don't care. This world is lost on false rogues and mental bandits, people who think that they are more devious than they really are.
I had fun this semester. Writing stories. Not giving lessons. Lessons felt like busy work. Lessons felt like time-filling in a class where the majority of the work was done outside of class. And then I was in a group with Mary. The week we presented she came up to me and asked, "Is twenty-five minutes too long for my topic?" She asked this before finding out that the rest of us had around eight minutes of material combined. It really put me in a sort of power struggle as I was the unofficial leader of the group. I'd arranged our meetings outside of class, got ideas on the topic from everyone, and I had something different than enthusiasm. What was it? A sort of assertiveness that the members of the group, save for Mary, kind of submitted to. In the end, I got her to cut down on her topic a bit, but I don't think she was happy about it.
Chris was an awesome teacher. Maybe its that I thought of him more as a mentor than a teacher. He's still in grad-school for crying out loud. And I'm 22 for another thing. It's hard to hold onto the student-teacher mentality when the age gap me and an increasing number of professors in becoming recognizably small. I've got brothers that are his age. People with lives and careers who may not have the most experience but who can iterate that experience so much more clearly because they can remember it so much more clearly than say an elderly professor would. And maybe its the fact that this isn't just another class-lecture-book-study-test-repeat class either. I joined journalism because I got sick of that formula. There's no creativity there and I wasn't very good at it anyway.
I'm pleased with my work this semester. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and reporting on things that not only interest me but the Duluth community as well. Via LakeVoice, I know that my stories were fairly well received, the Left 4 Duluth story and Tiona Marco stories especially.
Going forward, things are a bit unsure. I've had a number of interviews so far where I was told that my writing is very good, but I have no experience. Or at least, I have no marketable experience. Regardless of how good my writing is, businesses want an experienced person to employ. This makes my life a bit of a peculiarity as I am no longer in school to get college-based internships and no job will take me without experience under my belt. It seems like nobody tells you how to get in the door until its closing time. This isn't to say that I've given up. Applications for fall internships at many publications are coming up soon, ones that require degrees, so I'm still hopeful. In the mean time, I'll start a blog. I'll write every day. Because I write, it's what I do.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Whatever happened to Tiona Marco?
Five years ago, a local artist began to generate significant buzz
around town for her work. Tiona Marco captured the attention of the
community, artists and coloring enthusiasts alike as she created
lifelike scenes and portraits using nothing but crayons and paper. But
recently, it appears that she has all but disappeared.
She closed her studio in the DeWitt-Seitz Marketplace. Her blog has been wiped clean. Even the Etsy account
from which she once sold her works of crayon art is empty. For someone
who seemed so well publicized and known around Duluth, it begs the
question: Whatever happened to Tiona Marco?
I was quite a fan of Tiona’s work during the peak of her popularity, talking to her on occasion back when her studio was open. We talked about art and being an artist amidst the thick smell of wax shavings and wood. Tiona would describe the long hours it took to make a single crayon “painting” while I asked about her different techniques. She had mentioned that times were tough, money wasn’t coming in because of the recession. But she also didn’t seem like the person to give up her life’s passion so easily. Going off of an old email address she’d given me, I decided to reach out and try to contact her.
To my surprise, she answered in a few days. From there I was able to contact her by phone to ask about her supposed disappearance. And firstly, she wanted me to make it clear that Tiona Marco was only her artist name. Her real name is Kristina Nelson, and she hasn’t really left.
“I closed my studio back in November of 2011,” Nelson told me. “I was
at a crossroads about what to do with my art. I received an opportunity
out in Massachusetts so I went out there for a while. When I was out
there my health just deteriorated.”
She described to me how her muscles got really weak and she felt tired all of the time. Nelson was seen by a number of doctors, but none of them knew what was really wrong with her.
“I came back to Duluth in August of 2012 and I saw more doctors for about the span of a year,” she said. “It turned out that I had lupus.”
Systemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune disease wherein the immune system, responsible for fighting infection and disease, becomes hyperactive and begins to attack healthy tissue and muscles in the body. Essentially meaning, your body starts to fight its own structure as if it were a disease. It is often hard to detect as its symptoms are similar to those of other diseases. Lupus is difficult to live with as it comes with chronic pain and flare ups of inflammation.
“You wake up every day and you don’t know how your body is going to function for the day,” she told me when describing living with the ailment. “I get tired easily so I have to be careful about stress.”
When asked about her art, Nelson told me that she does a little here and there.
“It’s mostly sketching or watercolors, easy stuff I can just pick up and put down.” Nelson said. “Crayon art is a very laborious process and with lupus, I’m not able to do it anymore. It would take a radical shift in my health before I would be able to go back to the way things were.”
From my own observations of her working, it’s understandable that she
gave up crayon art due to lupus. Pieces of art take days or even weeks
to complete due to the hours of shading and marking with wax. Hundreds
of layers could go into one surface shade. One needs to be completely
aware of the amount of wax already on the page and what needs to be
added in order to achieve the desired look. This is something not
reasonably feasible for Kristina.
Most of her work as Tiona Marco was sold off in a final sale before she closed her studio. Yet she kept a few select pieces for herself and donated the rest to charitable organizations around Duluth.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get back into art professionally,” she said, lamenting the obstacle to her passion, “but I’m still an artist. At the end of the day, an artist has a creative energy; it can go into crayons or painting. As long as it’s creative, I’ll find something.”
Nelson described the cold weather of Duluth as wreaking havoc on her health. She expressed an interest in staying because it’s the place she considers her home, but she said that she will possibly be moving to a warmer climate. With any hope, Kristina will recover and Tiona won’t be gone from our community for good.
I was quite a fan of Tiona’s work during the peak of her popularity, talking to her on occasion back when her studio was open. We talked about art and being an artist amidst the thick smell of wax shavings and wood. Tiona would describe the long hours it took to make a single crayon “painting” while I asked about her different techniques. She had mentioned that times were tough, money wasn’t coming in because of the recession. But she also didn’t seem like the person to give up her life’s passion so easily. Going off of an old email address she’d given me, I decided to reach out and try to contact her.
To my surprise, she answered in a few days. From there I was able to contact her by phone to ask about her supposed disappearance. And firstly, she wanted me to make it clear that Tiona Marco was only her artist name. Her real name is Kristina Nelson, and she hasn’t really left.
She described to me how her muscles got really weak and she felt tired all of the time. Nelson was seen by a number of doctors, but none of them knew what was really wrong with her.
“I came back to Duluth in August of 2012 and I saw more doctors for about the span of a year,” she said. “It turned out that I had lupus.”
Systemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune disease wherein the immune system, responsible for fighting infection and disease, becomes hyperactive and begins to attack healthy tissue and muscles in the body. Essentially meaning, your body starts to fight its own structure as if it were a disease. It is often hard to detect as its symptoms are similar to those of other diseases. Lupus is difficult to live with as it comes with chronic pain and flare ups of inflammation.
“You wake up every day and you don’t know how your body is going to function for the day,” she told me when describing living with the ailment. “I get tired easily so I have to be careful about stress.”
When asked about her art, Nelson told me that she does a little here and there.
“It’s mostly sketching or watercolors, easy stuff I can just pick up and put down.” Nelson said. “Crayon art is a very laborious process and with lupus, I’m not able to do it anymore. It would take a radical shift in my health before I would be able to go back to the way things were.”
Most of her work as Tiona Marco was sold off in a final sale before she closed her studio. Yet she kept a few select pieces for herself and donated the rest to charitable organizations around Duluth.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get back into art professionally,” she said, lamenting the obstacle to her passion, “but I’m still an artist. At the end of the day, an artist has a creative energy; it can go into crayons or painting. As long as it’s creative, I’ll find something.”
Nelson described the cold weather of Duluth as wreaking havoc on her health. She expressed an interest in staying because it’s the place she considers her home, but she said that she will possibly be moving to a warmer climate. With any hope, Kristina will recover and Tiona won’t be gone from our community for good.
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