Back at school, back to reality!

Classes have begun, work is back to normal, and its time to buy books!

Here’s what my schedule looks like:

Monday- History of Italian City States

Tuesday- Accounting, Baroque art of Southern Europe, and Jewelry/Metalsmithing: Color on Metal

Wednesday- Work at the art gallery 12-6

Thursday- Accounting, Baroque art, and Painting: Figure/Portrait

Friday- Gallery 12-6

Tuesday, I went to my jewelry class and felt a little bit intimidated, to be quite honest… Every person in the class has taken at least 3 more jewelry classes than me and most of them are jewelry/metalsmithing majors! EEK! I felt lost in the discussion of what we would be doing this semester, but all of the other students seem genuinely helpful so I am going to take this challenge of working with people who have way more experience than me. I also felt better when we did our first mini-in class project: we melted copper and dropped it violently onto a stainless steel fry pan to make ‘copper splashes’. It was brilliantly unpredictable and fun!!

The current show at the gallery is a visiting artist show (a first for XL Projects, which normally hosts student and faculty work only). Stone Canoe is a group of artists who collaborate to publish a “Journal of Arts and Ideas from Upstate New York” each year. http://www.stonecanoejournal.org/  They also host a show that goes along with the publication of the paperback book. We are hosting three artist receptions this weekend. On both Thursday and Sunday, a few of the artists are coming to talk about their work. On Saturday, I found out that a very exclusive event is happening here: the publishing party! It is a pretty big deal- Chancellor Nancy Cantor (the biggest celebrity in all of Syracuse) and the dean of VPA (Ann Clarke) will be here, as well as some kind of former NY Senator. Normally, I would get the chance to meet all of these people by working at the party but I have to go home for the weekend L . Even still, working at this gallery has provided me a lot of opportunities to get to know important people (I did meet Nancy Cantor here last year) and get more involved with the Syracuse art world.