A little overwhelmed....

"Chastity: I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
Bianca: I think you can in Europe." Or Australia...

Wow there is so much to tell since the last time I posted; buckle your seatbelts folks this is going to be a long post.

First of all, it seems like there has been a decision made on our poll, people prefer crunchy waffles to pancakes, which is as it should be. Those of you who haven’t been to the Midwest or South, some day you will have to experience the culinary beauty of Waffle House, preferably around 1:30 am.

On to my week, which didn’t really start until Tuesday. Tuesday morning, I went to crew practice and after much debate was assigned to a four-girl sculling boat where the coxswain sits in the bow. I have never liked bow-coxed boats because the rowers sit behind me, and I can’t help them out because if I turn to look at them, I throw off the whole balance of the boat. Also of interest, all terminology in Australia is different. Port and Starboard are Stroke side and Bow side; weigh enough or stop is ‘Easy,’ and on top of all of these differences, I had no microphone so most of the time the girls couldn’t hear me anyway. Needless to say, it was an eventful morning, but I gut to row out onto lake Pauly Griffin and see hot air balloons and a sunrise so it wasn’t too bad of a morning.

After crew, I went to my art theory class, which was uneventful except for me constantly trying to not fall asleep. I was a good class, taught by the head of the art department, but after waking up at 5 in the morning, the last thing I needed was a slideshow.

Wednesday was the first day of painting workshop. All of the students were introduced to faculty and they told us that we had to write and present project proposals (I go next week) and then we were assigned studio spaces. Now, all of you know that my housing was mixed up and has been a source of significant stress for me over the past two weeks. I got through it in the end because I found a place to live, and because I LOVED the art school. They have huge studio spaces with lots of windows that I was very excited to work in, so naturally when I got assigned to a place called the “White House” for my studio I was confused.

This place had not been in our initial tour of the building at orientation, luckily the woman who assigned the spaced, Raquel, took me to it. I’m afraid I was pretty terrible at hiding my shock as I followed her out to the parking lot behind the art building—I had been placed in a detachable mobile unit that required key card entry. It had not been cleaned and had been used as storage over the summer for many students’ artwork. In short, it was terrifying. The place now houses myself, five other girls, and one student in his fifties named Kevin. I picked a little corner with two small windows and we proceeded to sweep, vacuum, and wipe down our new area. The key card swipe had not been activated for any of us, so we all shared one key card to get in AND out (an inconvenience at the least, a huge fire hazard at the most) and Raquel kept looking at me and asking if the space was going to be ok for me and offering to move me (I must have looked pretty bad) but I had decided to not be the spoiled kid who demanded to be moved under any circumstances.

Having been detached from the initial shock, I am now quite pleased with my studio, I have a big table, easel, chair, space heater and two windows. The girls have also decided to play house and have created a kitchen/lounge area with a mini fridge, extra chairs, and a tablecloths (bright pink and teal). Basically, all we have done for three days now is mess around trying to figure out what we want to do; the art school here is ‘self-directed’ in the third year, which as far as I can tell means that they give you a studio space and say ‘go’ we have no supervision which is amplified I am sure by the face that our studio space is in the middle of nowhere. Most of our activities have included morning tea, acrobatics, music, looking at pictures of my work, and gossiping.

Let me tell you, this art school is FULL of drama; mostly centered on one guy who is causing problems. The girls have deemed me the first normal/cool American they have met (apparently the last kid from orange county said that he thought Australian girls were not attractive and bitched about how great California was) and as such I am privy to all. Most of the drama is pretty standard except that this guy seems to make huge assumptions about people and then tell anyone he feels like; for example, he told one of the girls in the studio that I was a lesbian having never even spoken with me! I find this sort of amusing, and obvs I could care less what he thinks of me, but I am not surprised at all at his causing drama.

All of this discussion was highlighted by intense intellectual art discussions, them exclaiming over their love for peanut butter M & M’s which apparently they can’t get in large bags here (yay for Food4Less), and mild acrobatics. Needless to say, I am learning to love my studio space and the people in it.

As far as project proposals, here is what I think I am going to do:

Painting: A portrait series of people I meet in Australia including immigrants and Aboriginals, exploring cultural differences.

Drawing: This is sposed to be somehow connected to my painting project but not really; I want to make a series of postcards referencing Australia and also any other cultures I happen to research that have connections here. At the end, after they have been graded, I am going to mail them so email me your preferred mailing address for sometime in june!

Field Studies: This involves traveling around Australia and addressing some sort of environmental issue in your work. I think I want to do big watercolor landscape paintings at all of the locations I am able to travel and then find out what aspects of civilization might be threatening each one. Then, back in the studio I want to superimpose, in bright acrylic paint, whatever is threatening that area on top of the watercolor landscape.

On Friday I had lunch with my overseas mentor, a mature age developmental studies student named Helena, and her other two mentees Samuel and Marie, from china and Japan respectively. It was a barbeque with actual food besides sausage and was pretty good. They even have chicken, lamb, and Mint jelly. (a british/Aussie condiment that is an interesting flavor addition but waaaay too sweet) I got incredibly lost on my way back to the art building, which is far away from everything, and ended up wandering for about half an hour through the graduate school buildings until I walked past the brew boathouse and figured out where I was. Those of you who believe I have no sense of direction, I figured out what my problem is. It isn’t that I have NO sense of direction, I have a very strong sense of direction in fact, but it is wrong 75% of the time, but I follow it anyway because I feel like it is right in my gut, and it is not. On the upside I found lots of cool leaves and things for my postcards.

In other news, I had an amazing dinner on Thursday night at my new apartment. Micheal, the guy roommate, had been spear-fishing over the weekend and was going to cook his catch. That’s right, spear-fishing, and the craziest part was that each fish was speared with umm, intensely intimidating precision right in the neck. And he is also a very good cook, fast chopping and all. I realized the reason he was excited about me cooking was not so that I could cook for him, but because he is tired of being the only one who cooks. (Mani never cooks) Also, Mani is Buddhist (sort of, she was raised in a Buddhist household) and a semi vegetarian. Actual quote: “I’m vegetarian, but I find myself eating meat” she apparently ate two anchovies the other day because she was wandering around the kitchen wanting to ‘taste things.’ As we were eating Michael’s crème caramel, which had overcooked sadly, the girl who is moving out found out I’m staying in a hostel and offered to let me move in, at least sleep on the couch, earlier. Both of my other roommates looked as if this had never occurred to them, so I was glad that one person had thought of it!

I have now moved in to my new place, Mani picked up my stuff last night and gave me a key. I went back to get my bike, my food, and use up my internet that I had bought thinking I would be there longer. Sadly, the food was gone, and by the time I finished using the internet it was about 11. When I got back to the house it was totally dark inside, I felt really bad about being back late, but I had though on Friday night at least one of my roomies would be up past 11:30. Oh well, I unlocked and relocked the door with only a little difficulty and put new sheets on Bron’s bed, which she said I could use. When I woke up at 9:30, indie music was playing on the radio, the porch door was open, and the whole house was amazingly bright. I love this place already. Oh and they have a cat! I now have a surrogate, incredibly chill pet named Bella.

All in all, I have had an interesting week, but I am excited to start on my projects, I might go watercolor somewhere tomorrow, cheers!