Bachelorette of Fine Arts

(No, I'm not feministic enough to want to change "bachelor of arts" into a non-gender specific title...heh )

I've been thinking a whole lot more about bioart and how it could apply to my degree and interests. I have no CLUE what I will do with an art degree, but there is some satisfaction in creating a message that people get.

For instance, our college has recently installed a new student center which the gang calls "Neo-Foy," for it has replaced our old nerd headquarters of the James E. Foy Student Center, and while attending a session of "What kind of pizza will they serve today," I brought up the subject of fine arts to a few newbies of Neo-Foy. These newbies are guys who are among programmers, physicists, or engineers, and they really have no clue what art is really about. They lament on the inaccuracy of a line, the misplaced curve, or the tedious time spent on exacting the length of a rooftop. At one time I would have lamented with them, cursing my failing precision and scribbling out more and more sketches of random scenes which I would only take on to impress myself.

Being an art major forces you to look at lines entirely differently. These guys had no clue what "value" was, or the significance of contrast, or Dutch still life (or pronkstilleven-but to be fair, at the time I didn't know that word either!) or any general term for art that helps to explain the significance of composition. At first he nodded silently, probably not accepting my laissez-faire brush-off of still life and precise architectural drawings, both the subjective and objective, but then I decided to show by example.

I took out my sketchbook, telling them of a young boy I know who has the same confidence problem with "correct lines" as they do, and that he showed me some of his sketches from the past few years. There was one drawing this boy did that was very gestural, moving, and reflective, and he thought it was the worst thing he ever did. Of course, the subject was partly of his father, so he was awkward about it anyway. As I was telling the newbies about the boy, I was drawing a broad, gestural scene of people, with some objects like a window and a table- very simple, gestural, brief, and connected.

When I was done I showed them the picture and asked them what they thought. They pondered for a moment, then began to interpret the lines in many ways. One of them thought he saw man's face, no, two men's faces, and he could make out that there was a sense of distance between him and the objects; then the other guy said he thought the second face was a mirror, a reflection, of the first one.

Before they went further, I smiled at them and said, "Isn't that more thought-provoking than drawing something exact? Don't you tend to see more?"

Then their head-nodding was based in some understanding- I explained that art is about what you choose to reveal, just like an actor chooses certain ways to develop and present a character. They say the best kind of actor is the one chooses in the most interesting way, and this is the same with all artists.

Once I had planted some understanding of art into their heads, they began to ask different questions. I talked about bioart, bad art teachers, fads, my installation idea, and then that spiraled into a project for some new guy who wants a subject of a robot Raptor Jesus eating a metal sandwich on pumpernickel with a little white-haired Moses between the bread slices... I think I'll pass on the whole of that little nugget of nerdiness and possibly go for the metal sandwich alone. He said he'd pay me $35 for it.

Anyway, what to do with a degree that has no bioart focus...