I was under the impression I was heading to a typical day of class when my whole morning was turned around. I really was not looking forward to class because I had been struggling with the ideologies of art school for a few weeks. However, my class's unexpected journey began in the campus greenhouse. Caroline, a fellow classmate, was doing a performance piece for critique. Her piece involved us walking into the different rooms of the greenhouse as she would read about different plants and their spiritual effects on us. The piece was about self love as well as love for any person you chose to think of. At the end of walking through each room, we came upon an area with a waterfall. At the base of the waterfall were homemade flower cups that Caroline had created. We each chose a cup and then she gave us homemade rose and chamomile tea to drink. As I had said, I was feeling really down about art school, so this piece really helped me. I felt so much happier after leaving the greenhouse and much more inspired than when I came.
After leaving the greenhouse, I figured we would just continue critique in our normal setting. However, we ended up taking a hike across campus to the labs. This was such a foreign area for most of the people in the class, and at first we were all pretty hesitant. After a walkthrough of the different types of specimen were available to us, we all opened up a bit and began to become excited. We spent the rest of the class drawing specimen and talking about future project ideas.
I truly needed this morning. I was feeling so exhausted, uninspired, and uncreative. I felt my spirits rising and my outlook on art school is improving. There are still issues I have (and maybe will make a blog about), but I'm trying to stay positive.
