Madien Voyage
Yup, first post and near the end of October too…I have no idea where the time goes anymore.
Here’s the quick explanation: I’m a sophomore (fine arts) attending New England School of Art and Design, Suffolk University. The university is located in Boston and its campus is pretty much the boston common. Unless you’re an art junkie like me-then you pretty much live in NESAD. They’re pretty much my second family now. ^_^
I’ve got five classes a week and a ten-hour work study, so I’m pretty busy. My classes this term are Drawing: Structure and Expression, Printmaking, Ideas of Western Art 1 (Art History), Imaging, and Intro to Sociology. For my work study, I’m working in two departments: the front desk and the NESAD library. I’m familiar with the front desk because I worked there during my freshman year. It helped introduce me to everyone, peers and professors, so I’d recomend that for incoming freshmen with work study.
Class wise, I have Drawing with Gabe at 9am and Printmaking with Randal at 2pm on Mondays and Wednesdays; Tuesday and Thursday is Art History with Afshan at 8:30am, Sociology at 11:30am, and Imaging at 6pm with Matt.
What’s going on right now:
In Drawing, I have a crit to prepare for. Crits (critics) are pretty much review sessions. You put your work up and review with the class, talk about your strengths and weakness. Drawing is mainly a studio class, so I’ve produced most of the work during class time. Gabe gave us a list of work to show, so I have to locate those out of storage drawer.
Printmaking: Randal is also having a crit (It’s almost mid term, so I guess its review time). We’re exploring transfer prints with gum arabic, so we’ll be taking a look at the pieces we’ve produced using that technique. I did a couple which were alright. The last one was probably the best-the black microscope with the purple text background. That took me practically no time at all and got the best results. If only everything came that easy.
Western Art 1: We’ve run through Stone age to Greece. Pretty much Stone age, Near East, Ancient Egyptian, and Greek art from 54000BCE- to about 31 BCE. Unlike the Drawing and Printmaking which are both studio classes, Western Art is a lot of lecture and note taking. You’re still oscillating from the left side of your brain to the right however doing analysis. My midterm is on the 27th so I made flash cards for that. There’s also an analytical paper due Thursday, which I had to fix. There’s still some editing that needs to be done on that…
Sociology: It’s another lecture that takes place on the Hill (Beacon Hill). I leave school and it takes about fifteen minutes on the T to ride up to Government Center and get to class. The subject matter is pretty interesting. Class attendance is crucial because he doesn’t give homework or require a text. If you miss class, you pretty much fail unless you can understand second hand notes. Attendance is never a problem for me (unless Afshan set up a trip to the Museum of Fine Art-then I miss the last fifteen minutes trying to get there for one). Even when it is, Alison, a girl in my class, lets me borrow her notes.
Imaging: For some reason this class is taking a forefront in my mind, hence why I saved it for last. Matt is being unorthodox this term. I had him before for Design Issues and Process in the Spring, but this class is different. Usually, all the classes focus on product instead of the process behind it. Matt’s decided it was more important for us, as students, to learn about ourselves, and therefore track our process. Our projects are not worth as much on the syllabus, but our Process Folio will be the main grade. It’s good because you learn about yourself, but it still makes me kind of nervous because you have to share it with other people and that’s a bit personal.
Right now Matt’s assigned a couple of different things. Due next Thursday are two pieces: one having to do with symmetry and the other merging two pictures together. The one due this Thursday is replicating a duck image with nothing but the eyedropper tool and paintbrush in Photoshop. His class in general has a lot to do with Photoshop. I’m generally a hands-on kind of person that gets confused with software easily, so its been educational to say the least.
Other than that, tomorrow night I’ve got Self Defense training. I meant to take it Freshman year, but never got a chance because I had two night classes and the homework was a bit heavy. This year, I actually have time, lol, so I’m looking forward to that.