(no subject)
Movin' on up in the world.
Well, in that one anyway. In this one, I'm not doing so well. Haha. Seems like the solid C I've got in Psychology is going to stick, and I'm not sure what my grade is in Art History. Probably B/C. I don't even want to think about the Foundation Drawing class I've been enduring. I'm just glad I'm not the only one who feels the way I do about the course, though that won't help me pass it.
I've turned in all of the assignments, but I've been absent four times (she said the maximum was six) and once I wandered out of class and ended up not going back. I can't really explain why I did it. I left to use the restroom and then I just went downstairs and sat in the corner of the locker room. Out of desperation I called Neil but he didn't pick up. He's not allowed to talk to me anymore now that he's engaged. I started crying with my head between my knees. I looked straight in front of me and saw a big demon painted on the lockers. When I looked up, I saw someone had carved Satan Loves You into the fluorescent lights.
Lol.
I went upstairs but I couldn't make it down the hallway. I left my things and then Ryan called me and whisked me to the duck pond. I felt a lot better. I came back around 5pm and got my things from the empty room.
Being in the room makes me sick to my stomach. It feels more like a shut-in still life sweatshop than a classroom. There's a tense atmosphere as she silently observes us. No one talks with each other because we never know when she'll interrupt us to re-explain something (though in the process just making it more confusing). We don't even know each other's names. We filled out "icebreaker" surveys at the beginning of the year and just turned them in. We didn't share them.
She forbade cell phone or mp3 player usage up until a few sessions ago, considering everyone was a lot more relaxed and focused when they had their own music in the Japanese gardens. Before, she would play her own music on speakers, which would switch from warbling hipster junk like Neutral Milk Hotel and Ben's Brother to salsa and then back again. She offered other people to play their music on the speakers but, once again, no one knows each other. One time a more outgoing girl took the opportunity and played Bob Marley for the three hours. Only the teacher played her music after that.
She hasn't drawn a single thing the entire semester. Not a single demo. At the beginning of the semester she gave us packets on drawing perspective, photocopied out of an outdated but standard "how to draw" book. We had a quiz on it afterward. We spend anywhere from 6-9 hours on each in-class piece, which means two or three full days of class, with her intermittently interrupting to struggle to explain some point of interest she's already poorly gone over. She's recently stopped giving breaks.
She simply shouldn't teach, at least not at the college level. She finds a way to make art confined, strict, rigid, dry, uniform. Like accounting. Like data entry. Gray and heavy and hard, like a cinderblock. She has a specific method of drawing that students are penalized for not following. First you must mark the planes and then draw the axes: the "X" marking the diagonals of length and width. Then you focus on the space around the object, not within. It's understandable that she wants us to focus on the space, not the form, but I don't think that constitutes her ripping up another student's artwork for sketching a few outlines.
She is militant about tardiness. I often come in around 1:02, maybe 1:05, and have had her pull me aside and scold me for being "10 to 15 minutes late every day". I once arrived a bit early and noticed she took roll at 12:57. For a LOT of people, those three minutes count, and if her syllabus says class starts at one THEN IT FUCKING STARTS AT ONE. Not 12:55. ONE PM. For a class that runs until 3:45, I guess I'm biased in saying she's being a little fucking ridiculous.
She has no interpersonal skills. Every compliment and bit of critique she offers is bittersweet and, if not sinister, then oblivious. She'll throw out a statement now and again about how so-and-so has really improved! She could tell that so-and-so was really struggling throughout the year, even though there has been little to no difference over the course of the few months. She complained that ALL--as in every single student's-- ink paintings at the Japanese gardens "completely missed the mark", yet every single one was different because nobody knew what the fuck to do. Some had long, winding brushstrokes; others were short and quick. Some had very dark areas of pure ink; others had nothing but gray tones. On the third trip to the gardens, she finally came around with an example from the previous year of what she was expecting. By that time, it was too late to fix anything or to start over. This year's paintings, she sighed, were MUCH WORSE than last year's. If you had, you know, actually SHOWN US what you want the drawing to look like instead of just giving convoluted, abstract explanations, you might have gotten better results. It's not like art's about visual learning or anything, you guys.
In our most recent drawing we're experimenting with temperature and conté crayons, where my still life includes a wicker basket (oh god wicker baskets). I had been concentrating on it for almost a full hour when the teacher came over and pointed out where I should show a greater contrast in temperature between where the light directly hit the weave and where a slight shadow was cast. That's not the way she said it though, lol. Her words were along the lines of "it gets cooler here, so use the cool brown. Since it's warmer here, use the warm brown." Lol, thanks. Couldn't figure that one out. After she left I shrugged and decided to leave the basket alone to work on the drapes for a while. She came back a few minutes later and circled with her pinkie where I had really improved the lighting on the basket. I hadn't touched it.
Anyway, I guess I'm just ranting and I'd better go before I'm late for class again.
Oh, and if anyone of authority or importance reads this, I stand by my words. I shouldn't be paying thousands of dollars for a required class where we're being treated this way.