On the life of an art & design student

It’s a rare occasion for all of the three roommates that live in our home to gather themselves into some semblance of synchrony and sit down for a proper dinner in the dining hall. Because phenomena like this are few and far between, we decide it is all too appropriate to indulge in dessert and coffee following the generous helpings of exquisite dormitory cuisine. But alas, the perspiring lemon tarts, shrugging in a fatigued melancholy under the unflattering fluorescent lights looked as appealing as a hot poker to the eye. And alas, the community coffee holder was depleted of its contents. I had lost all my dignity while stubbornly and furiously depressing the button in hopes that by sheer force — by my superior cognitive and muscular might— some secret compartment within the device might open and coffee would, in a sudden happy deluge, spill forth into the awaiting cup. This did not occur.

To compromise for this setback, we decided upon a Plan. But before I divulge the details of the Plan, a little background information may be appropriate.

While one of my roommates is typically home, diligently learning two foreign languages and intermittently bending completely out of shape in the name of economics, the other one is mysteriously absent from her one-third of the room. Only between the odd hours of 1 and 5 am do we ever chance upon to hear the lock click and subsequently see a dark, disheveled, abstraction emerge silently from hallway. We have already crawled under our covers and we are now rubbing our eyes in sheer exhaustion and half-conscious confusion from reading an excess of cryptic Middle English. Because my brain emphatically demands sleep and possibly also because I am myopic, the construct of this nebulous silhouette diffracts and then liquefies into complete and utter incoherence.

The next morning, we find evidence of her presence by the chaotic array of blankets and enigmatic imprint of a body within the fabric. But for all we knew, she had vanished to the distant outposts of infinity.

This is the life of an Art and Design student living on central campus.

Now, you see, the Plan involved ascertaining that this roommate of ours was in fact still enrolled at the UM Art and Design School and not frolicking about on North Campus, engaging in an array of boisterous tomfoolery of which we had not been invited to. She happily conceded to our request to view her projects and so, on a Friday night tinged with the slight bite of the November air, we made our way to The Land of the Engineers and Artists and entered the Art and Design headquarters.

We immediately found that she had obviously not been engaging in boisterous tomfoolery and were quite taken aback at the talent of our peers whose works, poised tactfully behind glass, invited, and on occasion even, stole our attention. The reasoning behind her extended absences was explained in the series of cases, the manifolds of studios and workshops holding student art. The sheer weight of the ideas, the manifestations of complex and meticulous concepts combined with earnest workmanship, strained the architecture of the building.

After some preliminary perusal, she brought us to one of her pieces that she had worked on with a group in her multi-medium class: a school of fish cut from copper and held together by the continuity of their collective three dimensionality and the aquatic, streamlined body shapes they shared. Concurrently, each creature glimmered in its individual undulations to and fro creating patterns of shadows and playing with the physics of light to create a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing piece. Although anchored to the wall, it nevertheless suggested the concept of motion.

To continue the tour, she brought us to an art classroom where her most recent group project – the culprit responsible for her currently sleep-deprived state – stood in all its glory and casting sharp, impressive streaks of shadow on the concrete floor. We decided it was well worth the cost of one night’s slumber. The paper architectural framework appeared to burst in outrage; a tangible interpretation of an exclamatory, willing its viewer to come forth and inspect its integrity. (Interestingly, the work appeared to have toppled in exhaustion of its persistent visual strength, and needed the temporary bolstering of a chair.)

We eventually scoured most of the building. Every corner that we turned in the Art and Design building, we encountered more creations by students at our school – artists that would continue the revolution of visual art, define aesthetic appeal and cultivate notions of beauty in our era. They would do this, in exchange for coming home to their roommates, and in exchange for turning in for the night. There is no such thing as suspension of consciousness in their endeavors.

Sue majors in Neuroscience & English and tends to lurk in bookstores.