Saturday, January 24, 2009

Memphis College of Art

While writing about living in Memphis, I remembered a bunch of kooky stuff that happened while I was in school there. This may not be for the faint of heart but it sure is funny stuff.
- I remember this girl who was a fiber artist. One day, she set up a giant fiber bird's nest outside of the cafeteria. She dressed up like a bird, sat on fiber eggs and, every so often, she would stand up and crow. Performance art. What are you gonna do?
- Believe it or not, bird girl was very attractive. My photo class had a session lined up with a model and she turned out to be it. She showed up with all these interesting outfits, some she had made, some very much like lingerie. She dressed up and posed and we took shots. It was going pretty well for a while but then it turned weird. Pretty soon, the other guys taking pictures were telling her to put on more sexy attire and eventually she ended up nude. It wasn't so much that she was nude but the creepy, perv vibe that permeated the room. I began to pack up my equipment to leave. One of my profs asked me why I was leaving and I told her that things seemed to be getting out of hand. I found out later that they stopped the session right after I left.
- On that same note, there were these 2 attractive blonds in my photo class. Every week we had to do an assignment and bring them in for a critique. Several weeks in a row, the 2 blonds brought nude self-portraits of themselves for critique. It was difficult to be neutral. They were, however, pretty good friends of mine so I tried to be professional.
- The smallest of the 2 blonds had a problem with a stalker. There was a creepy guy that followed her around all the time. If I'm remembering correctly, I think I pretended to be her boyfriend at one point to try and get him to leave her alone. One day, she went to her drawing class only to find out that they would be drawing a nude model. It turned out to be him. While they were drawing, he kept staring at her and eventually he got visibly excited. She was extremely embarrassed.
- I got stuck on the school's elevator once. It got stuck all the time. Me and another guy were on there with this girl and she went ballistic. We were only on it for about 15 minutes and she was acting like we were going to die in there. Very strange.
- While at that school was the first time I'd ever been hit on by a gay man. It freaked me out a little but I figured if I was gonna be in art school I'd better get used to it.
That's all I can remember right now. Needless to say, the art world can be an interesting place. I'll post more stories if I recall any.

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