The Gap
I spend the greater part of my work week teaching and interacting with college students. There are a handful of undergrads in the studio whose commitment to their work is motivating. There are some with an extraordinary handle on color and some whose line is intuitive and beautiful. It is good to be surrounded by people making art. It’s also frustrating, as I spend most of my time in the shop teaching, assisting and cleaning rather than drawing.
My job is certainly social, between demos on resists, etching, exposure and one-on-one critiques there is conversation, and music. The students entertain me by recounting their idiocy when they were drunk or high the night before or gossiping about professors. They make me CDs and t-shirts and bring in comics that I’d definitely never read on my own. It’s a funny match, I’m only slightly older by years and I think that is invisible to many of them. While I really enjoy the friendships, it’s my own vision that is colored by years in the working world. Sometimes however, I give myself away.
This month two students asked me to go to Critical Mass where they planned to sell their freshly printed “Fuck the MTA” t-shirts. I said I’d think about it, but by Friday I had plans for a dinner party at my house. The boys approached me at the end of class and I said, “Well I would but I’m having a dinner party...I just bought two pounds of mussels and I need to go home and soak and scrub them, and you know, I’d like to clean the bathroom before my guests arrive.” They looked at me blankly.
Later the next week during our “pre-college” program one of the high school seniors asked me for advice:
“Rebecca, I reeeeeally want to go to this show tonight and I don’t know how to get in, what should I do?”
“Well it’s been a while since I was underage, do you have a fake ID?”
“Ughhh, no, here’s my license how can I try to alter it??”
I took the license and tried to recall how people would re-mark the birthdate, until I noticed the little number and responded in shock, “You were born in 1988!?!”
I’m happy where I am, here in my late twenties, figuring things out. I’m happy that the mistakes I made in college and patchy confusion are behind me. It’s good to be reminded of this, even while I wear my new “Fuck the MTA” t-shirt home on my bike after work, over the Brooklyn Bridge.
My job is certainly social, between demos on resists, etching, exposure and one-on-one critiques there is conversation, and music. The students entertain me by recounting their idiocy when they were drunk or high the night before or gossiping about professors. They make me CDs and t-shirts and bring in comics that I’d definitely never read on my own. It’s a funny match, I’m only slightly older by years and I think that is invisible to many of them. While I really enjoy the friendships, it’s my own vision that is colored by years in the working world. Sometimes however, I give myself away.
This month two students asked me to go to Critical Mass where they planned to sell their freshly printed “Fuck the MTA” t-shirts. I said I’d think about it, but by Friday I had plans for a dinner party at my house. The boys approached me at the end of class and I said, “Well I would but I’m having a dinner party...I just bought two pounds of mussels and I need to go home and soak and scrub them, and you know, I’d like to clean the bathroom before my guests arrive.” They looked at me blankly.
Later the next week during our “pre-college” program one of the high school seniors asked me for advice:
“Rebecca, I reeeeeally want to go to this show tonight and I don’t know how to get in, what should I do?”
“Well it’s been a while since I was underage, do you have a fake ID?”
“Ughhh, no, here’s my license how can I try to alter it??”
I took the license and tried to recall how people would re-mark the birthdate, until I noticed the little number and responded in shock, “You were born in 1988!?!”
I’m happy where I am, here in my late twenties, figuring things out. I’m happy that the mistakes I made in college and patchy confusion are behind me. It’s good to be reminded of this, even while I wear my new “Fuck the MTA” t-shirt home on my bike after work, over the Brooklyn Bridge.
posted by Rebecca at 11:38 AM
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