Renewal

So we had our summer quarterly art opening the other night. The main exhibits this time are sculptural and one of the shows is a juried show with an indoor section and an outdoor one. The juror for the show also has a show up in one of the other galleries and he happens to be one of my professors from the first college I went to. (I was in Art school for two years before transfering to Design school) I suspected he wouldn't remember me since he had a teaching assistant who did the everyday stuff and most of the critiques and things, but he did give us some lectures and critiques. I figured, since it was 15 years ago, the only way he *might* remember me was that I was in the same class with his son. Even though I didn't see a lot of this instructor, he did have a lot of influence on me, or I got more out of him and his TA than I did some of the other instructors there, and have thought about him and that class more often than most of the others. Although I did get a solid foundation at that school, and don't regret any of the courses I took, especially the ones that didn't transfer. Most of those classes were invaluable to me in Design school. He left the school about the time I did and started teaching at one that is about 45 minutes from where I live now. His son was the last student I spoke to that spring as my dad and I packed up the volvo after my last semester there as I was transfering to the other school in the fall. We had both been art majors and had several courses together, granted most of them were "survey" type classes whith loads of people in them, but his dad's class had been a bit smaller, and so we were on speaking terms. I'd often wondered what happened to him.

Fast forward about 7 years... I started doing some work for the local playhouse, first by designing posters and then on the acting scene. When I went to the building for the first time, one of the sculptures that was up caught my attention and I looked at the artist information on it... it was by this professor...a connection..
turns out, he is also a friend of the current exhibit curator, although this would have been for that juried show that year, so the museum curator wouldn't have selected the work.

Fast forward some more (about 8 years) to the present. This show. The professor was coming to the opening to present the awards, and I learned his son was coming as well. Didn't know if he would remember me either, since I figured his did would,n't, but it turns out he did remember me. We had a nice chat, a little about school and a little about what we've been doing since, and exchanged e-mail addresses. He is an art professor like his dad, although I think he is more 2D media where his dad is more 3D. They both seemed thrilled that I was still "in the field." I guess it didn't really occur to me how many art students like theatre students don't stay with it, since there are so many and so hard to make a living. It was a nice new prespective, so even as a graphic designer I'm still, however remotely, practicing art. (and then there are all the hobbist hours of theatre, pottery, knitting, and whatever else I'm making at any given time) The work in the professor's exhibit is lovely, abstract, with a connection to nature hard to describe so I won't try.. and completely reasonable. I'm going to purchase one of them.

Anyway, it was really great seeing both of them, and listening to what the juror had to say about the juried works. I always learn from these things, even if I'm nto agree with their opinions, and sometimes it sheds light on things I'm thinking about or grappling with artistically or otherwise. Here is a photo of me and my college art schoolmate at the opening.