EXHIBITION OPENING!!!!

I absolutely love exhibition events.

So much student work in Book-Illustration!

Tonight the atmosphere at the school gave me the same feeling I had when I was a kid and my sisters and I put on one of our famous "Ludington Theatre" plays, or the same feeling I get every time we have a big party.  So much preparation . . . days, weeks, or even months' worth . . . all culminating in this massive gathering where everybody gets to show off their hard work and it feels like all your best friends are there with you to share in it and there is way more food than anyone could ever eat.

For the past couple of months, the Finkenau campus has been fairly mellow.  There are lots of students there during the week, of course, but in total only a few thousand students study in the art and design department there, so even during a school day it is never really crowded.  It's a pretty big building--it used to be a maternity hospital, and it is probably around 100 meters long on its front side and has five levels total (counting the basement floor).  But tonight, it had undergone a huge transformation!  It wasn't just a mellow university building--it had become an interactive art museum.  The best student work from the past two semesters was on display, filling all the classrooms and the walls in every hallway.  All the rooms had been cleaned up until they were spick-and-span, and pretty much every room had some kind of food in it.  Bernd, our book-illustration teacher, emailed us and told us all to bring something to share, even if it was simple like baguettes or cheese.  The exhibition didn't start till 6, but Petra and I had gotten there at 4, as Bernd had requested, to drop off our book dummies, and on the way I went to the Aldi at Hamburger Meile and got a jar of olives, some mini-mozzarella balls, and a couple of baguettes.  It was good that we were there early, because that gave us time to look at all the books from our class before the place got crowded.  By 6:30 there were tons of people in the building and the party was in full swing!  I munched on baguette slices (I had helped out by cutting all the baguettes---it took a while!), plenty of black and green olives, some really nice Gouda cheese, a yummy spinach-and-cheese muffin homemade by one of the girls, and a big slice of a homemade marble-cake loaf.  After that I wandered through the rooms in that hallway.  There was so much work put up everywhere that it was impossible to look at it all.  It almost reminded me of being in the Louvre!  I had to just sort of scan each room and see if there was anything that caught my eye, because there was no way I could see even close to all of it.  I've got to say, there are some really talented art students at HAW.  Photography, painting, printmaking, design, illustration . . . every department had so many incredible pieces to show.  Especially the illustration students.  WOW!  I feel like I've still got a long way to go, especially where my digital expertise is concerned.  But at least I had a completed book to present, so I was happy.  I think professionalism needs to be the next step for me, though.  Must set up a webpage for my art and get my work out there!

My Magic Flute series on display!

I had plenty of time to hang out in the book-illustration room and see everybody's work and eat dinner.  At 7 I went downstairs to the print shop for my "watching the artwork" shift.  (We were all required to sign up for an hour-long time slot.)  It was much quieter down there . . . I think because it was on the basement floor fewer people found their way down to it.  Which was a shame, because there was a lot of really nice work in the printmaking rooms.  I think I was prouder of my two print series than I was of any of my other work in the exhibit, even my "Rainy Big Wave Day" book, because I had put in so much time and effort into those prints.  Everybody's pieces looked great all framed up and displayed.  I was on duty with Sara, an international student from Italy who was in my intaglio class, and we had a nice talk while we were supervising the very mellow room.  At 8 our shift was over, but at that point Louise came in and I stayed to talk to her.  She brought flatbreads with olives, hummus, and a bell pepper-cream cheese dip (which is called paprika-frischkäse and is a big thing here, by the way), and I had a sort of second mini-dinner of it while we were chatting.  I'll miss Katrin and Louise so much!  They were such great teachers, and always super kind and friendly.

The painting exhibit

My paintings were on this wall, but it's too
complicated to point out which are mine . . .

At 8:30 I went up to the top floor studio for my shift in the painting exhibit.  Kenneth, my HAW buddy, had an abstract painting there, and two of my figure paintings were on display.  There were some cool woodcuts and a wall full of these amazing big origami animal heads in the next room too.  I have no idea how the guy made those animal heads . . . they were big enough to be used as masks and there were all kinds of critters depicted, from a fox to a crow to a cobra!  Marni was there at the time I was, so she kept me company and we talked while we watched everybody mill around the room.  We left sometime around 10, I think.  The place was still cranking.  Beer, champagne, and wine were of course flowing freely, people were still eating, and every room was still crowded.  Even outside in the courtyard near the cafeteria, there was some kind of food or drinks being served and people were sitting around out there enjoying the evening.  I didn't want to leave.  I never want to leave big events like that--it always feels like I haven't gotten to see everyone and everything yet, and I will miss out on things if I don't stay till the end.

CSULB really, really should do department-wide art exhibitions at the end of the school year.  It would be such a good incentive for students to produce genuinely professional-looking projects to get them ready for the real world.  I know that my art would probably already be way more professionalized if we were to do annual exhibitions like HAW does.

Marni and I decided to walk to the Stadtpark for a bit, since it was such a nice summer evening.  It was the first time I had been there at night and it was absolutely beautiful.  The lights from the cafés and biergartens were sparkling through the trees and reflecting in the Stadtparksee, and the (almost) full moon reflected in the water too.  The planetarium looked so nice and serene with the night lights shining on it.  We sat on the dock at the north side of the lake and stuck our feet in.  There were still lots of people in the park, and though we couldn't see very many of them due to the last of the daylight disappearing, we could see light from little bonfires and barbecues and hear them all talking, playing music on portable boom boxes, or even yelling.  That didn't diminish the peacefulness of the moment, though.  We sat for close to half an hour and sort of reflected on our experiences and what we think it will be like for us when we go home.  We've done and seen so much here in Europe, and like all the other international students, we're super sad to see the semester come to an end.  It has just been such a valuable experience, and it's broadened my horizons so much.  It's funny--if last July someone had told me that at the same time the next year I would be sitting by a lake on a dock at a park in Germany, having visited London and Paris and Prague and lived away from my family for almost five whole months, with an Australian girl who had become a very dear friend, I never would have believed it.  But now, here I am, and it's happened.  And it's been absolutely incredible.  I wouldn't trade these past few months for anything.  My hope is that when I get home, I'll be able to take the things I learned here and live life a bit of a different way in California than I did before.  Maybe I'll go back to the exact same routine, but I hope not.  I've discovered that changes, at least in environment and routine, are extremely beneficial because they force you to adapt to new things and broaden your horizons . . .

But I'll still be REALLY sad to leave in a couple of weeks.  I wished the night didn't have to end.