SCHOOL OF ART

Today I don’t have much news to report, but this is a lazy Thursday afternoon and so I find myself with some spare time. Namely I am waiting for clothes to be dry and don’t want to leave the premises for fear that some other very small girl will want to take my clothes.

I went to the art building today to work out my classes, but before I go into that I’d just like to say how excited I am about the art building itself. It’s a huge white building with a clock tower that has huge silver letters that say "SCHOOL OF ART," a piece of abstract sculpture in front of it, and a very retro feel. It reminds me simultaneously of an old transistor radio and a train station because It is very wide at the front entrance and there are virtually no other buildings round it. It also gives me this feeling because there are stripes and geometric decorations that remind me of futuristic designs people made in the past, if that makes any sense. I’m thinking I’m just going to have to take a picture.

Each area of study has its OWN WING in the building! Coming from a building that is mostly owned by an architecture school that sometimes lends us studio space and where each area of study gets one or two rooms, this is fantastic. I walked down an entire hallway of studio space with huge windows and easels, and I am very excited for class to start, except that painting doesn’t start until Wednesday. (For those of you who were worried about all of my extracurriculars, I have one four hour class per day, and that’s it, and the one on Monday doesn’t start until 2. If I can work the system correctly though, I might be able to have two classes Tuesday and none on Monday, yay for weekend trips!)

Anyway, the reason I went to the building in the first place is that I’m trying to work out what other class I should take. I’m taking 8 units worth of painting, 4 in art theory (it’s called Cool Old Masters, can’t wait!), and I have 4 units left over for ‘complimentary studies.’ My choices have been narrowed by necessity (I thought of ceramics, but having to ship clay home would be terrible) to life drawing or ‘field studies.’

No one except for the professor of field studies seems to know what field studies actually are, and he is pretty bad at explaining himself, which probably perpetuates the problem (unintentional alliteration I assure you). As near as I can tell, ‘Field studies’ is a class where you take field trips to remote areas, sometimes visiting aboriginal land to be ‘inspired’ by your surroundings, and then you make art in whatever medium you desire based on that inspiration. This sounds good to me except that I would have to take it instead of painting, or with painting, because the complimentary form of this course seems to be more of an independent study type of thing.

Anyway, I’m off to see if I am allowed to do an independent study in field studies, if my professor is even around, (I think I saw his office the other day, and he seems to be the piles of everything especially books absolutely everywhere type of guy) since I will be taking a few caving trips and weekend trips of my own that I can draw material from. (Caving is exactly what it sounds like, by the way, climbing through caves. It is usually very wet, muddy, cold, beautiful and fun) And yes, I would be a coxswain for the crew club here; they seem pretty excited about it as I think they are very short of coxswains right now. Right now I’m leaning towards joining, because it’s a fun way to meet people, etc, but they do have all morning practices, which should be interesting.


PS. I wrote the above earlier and just got back from visiting with my professor. I am going to enroll in field studies, which involves 3 5-day field trips to a town called Tumut and surrounding areas, plus camping. This class has no scheduled class time, I just check in with him periodically and paint and take any other trips on my own time.