The classic was unloading the weekend's photos from my camera last night. I plugged in the camera, turned it on and connected it to the computer, downloaded half into a folder, then switched my brain off and walked away for a while... went down to the supermarket, cooked dinner, watched an episode of West Wing (working our way through the 3rd series at the moment, lent by a friend who has them ALL), then came back to the computer and realised that my camera had been sitting patiently until it ran out of battery. So I can't unload the rest of the images until I recharge the battery, the recharger is for some reason at my artskool office, and I'm working from home today.
Sigh. It's because I stopped juggling my various tasks and caught up on some sleep. It reset my brain, and now I have to try and pick up all the juggling balls again, and most of them seemed to have rolled out of reach.
Well, I can share the first half of my photos with you, at least. I'll save the weekend for later in the week. Suffice to say it was a lovely weekend, down at my parents' prickle farm. We took the cats as usual, and they had a grand run around with the chooks and dogs. Today they're catching up on their sleep, in various corners of my home office.
It's the end of semester at art school. I love walking around being surprised by arty things appearing in odd places, and consequently assessment times are my favorite times of the academic year. I don't think the students would agree with me. I certainly wouldn't have agreed with me when I was a student. Heh.
Some of the following images aren't current works, but they are part of my walking day, so I thought while I had the camera out, I'd share them. Walk with me...
Drawings on the furniture come and go pretty regularly. They usually get painted off for the end-of-year graduating exhibition. One student a few years ago turned one of the back fire doors into a blackboard, then drew an exquisite line drawing of a bear on it that no-one has had the heart to erase yet.
Another example of art that lingers. If you can see it, the top half of the photo is a huge semi-trailer made from coloured vinyl stuck onto the roof of the stairwell like contact paper. It's pretty impressive, but even so, taking it down would damage anyone's neck, so it will stay there until someone can be bothered putting in the effort. The orange thing is an on-site drawing that seems to be lingering, but I think it will be erased at the end of the year, as it's not terribly endearing.
Another old snippet. I vaguely remember that this was a text piece using lines from daytime soap operas. There are lines of text scattered throughout the art school. You can see them while you wash your hands in the toilet, or walking down a corridor, like this one. I like them a lot. They feel like friends -- or maybe it's just the year I spent stoned in front of Days of Our Lives as a uni student.
Then there's the moment you walk around a familiar corner and get smacked in the face with something large and temporary. I came through that door at the back right and got a faceful of this large dark carved foam figure.
I walked across towards the women's toilets and saw a row of bottles above the door. 'Student party' was my first reaction, then I looked closer.
Penguins! Looking very Aardman, admittedly, but I'm taking a punt that there's a political message in those oil corporation logos on their fronts. See what I mean? A simple trip to the loo and I'm having a new experience.
This is a drawn work made especially for the Moth and Butterfly Symposium I posted the other day (scroll down). I love this piece. The yellow circles are outside lights, full of old dead moths. The closer you get, the more the shapes break into small moth-like marks. So let's move closer.
The artist is a PhD student who is a very talented printmaker. She's working on spiritual connections with the landscape. This work looks stunning at night.
On my way home I go past the Sculpture workshop yard, and it's always worth glancing in at this time of year. Most of the time people work on their components out at the forge in the yard, and put things together inside in their spaces. The brightness of this piece made me stop and have a closer look...
...and I fell in love. It's a Transformer! Sitting on a stool! This is one of those times I wished Bumblebee was with me. Apparently this is made out of the student's old car. It looks like it's trying to work out how to do up a shoelace without falling over. *Double sigh*
See what I mean? I'm paid crap to be at the art school, but it's so worth it! Don't you agree? OK, time to concentrate. Picking up brain cells with tweezers isn't easy.
2 comments:
Certainly beats what I see when I walk out of work. That said, we have some fairly nice corporate art. If I can work out a way taking pics without getting too many questions asked, I might have to post one or two.
Aren't those moths fantastic?
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