At 3:54 PM -0500 9/16/00, David Baptiste Chirot wrote:
>never having been to art school wd be glad to learn of what all goes
>on there--do they provide good access to lot of free materials?
Ha! Would that they did. Free clay is about the only material you'll
ever get in abundance. Everything else requires significant
investment and outlay. Is the ink in printmaking free?
The paper isn't. Lots of light, time, others and often space. Alas,
no materials. Though some schools have materials at a discount and
you can even score at term's end when students decide they'll never
paint or draw again.
Nor does art school have reverse slide exams, as they should: Sketch
the "Night Watch" by Rembrandt, model the "Burghers of Calais" by
Rodin, block out an 1879 still-life by Cezanne. Identify and script
the "Auntie Fluxus event 2-2 for Eryk." Illustrate the similarities
and the differences of a Greek Kora and a contemporary fashion model.
Instead you are generally required to identify slides with name,
date, title and sometimes all the rest. Nice and neat, easy to grade.
Some people are naturally good at this little trick, others massively
deficient though possessed of a detailed and accurate plastic memory,
just not much corpus collosum activity twixt verbal and visual.
(Personally, I was fortunate not to have a lot of trouble
affording art materials, but I have severe psychological restrictions
on defacing exquisitely made supports and wasting gorgeous gobs of
materials. Luckily, I have given myself leave to destroy, remake and
vitrify clay, though not too much.)
