The MoMA

For our art history course we visit museums every class. We are transported to the museums via subway and our chaperone, a Pratt student. Our chaperone is named Steph, short for Stephanie. Steph is a tiny girl with a rainbow of colors in her black hair. She wears black clothes and gladiator sandals. Her major is in fashion design. She is soft spoken but very sweet. Once we get on the street she pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and says, "Smoke. I don't care". Only one boy lights up, huffing smoke into my face.

First we visited the Frick Collection and then the MoMA. The Frick was comprised of very old pieces in the Frick house. It wa

s interesting, but not my favorite thing to look at. The MoMA though was very fun. I loved their crazy contemporary floor. In one room they had an art piece that consisted of people heights marked on the wall. The cool thing was that you could have your height put on the wall. So I did! It was such a fun afternoon.

Silkscreening

I have had the awesome opportunity to learn how to silkscreen here at Pratt. I went to an initial workshop where I learned the basics or silkscreen printing and how it works. The instructor, Chance, is a newly graduated graphic design student and is always more than willing to come to the workspace to help us print on his own time. A couple other girls and I have been going to silkscreen several times a week because it is so much fun! I went to the store Uniqlo to buy solid color clothes that I could print on, making perfect gifts for friends and family. The store is like American Apparel but very cheap. I am so glad that I got the chance to learn how to do this and am very excited to keep doing it!

Action on the Pratt Campus

Yesterday was an exciting day for Pratt students; a movie starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long was being filmed on campus. The Pratt campus was being used as Stanford University, which I found comical since the two look nothing alike. Palm trees were brought onto campus and signs were replaced to imitate those of Stanford. It was very interesting and slightly shocking to see how much equipment and how many people it takes to shoot a single scene. Pratt girls camped out on the lawn to observe the happenings and hopefully get a peek at Drew or Justin.

Drew, portraying an art graduate student, sat in classrooms and strolled the beautiful campus throughout the day. Everyone saw her. Well, everyone except me. Oh well!

Twins!

Over the course of my first week at school, people started confusing me with someone else. They would come up to me and say "Hey May!" or start talking to me about the visual and critical studies program. Once I made clear who I was, they were very surprised and informed me that I have an identical twin in the program. Disbelieving that there was someone that looked so similar to me, I started looking for her, but our paths rarely crossed. And when they did, we would not notice each other. Everyone else did though. People were trying to get us to meet and I felt as though was being set up for a blind date or something. Finally one day I heard someone talking to someone called May and so I turned around and introduced myself.

She was smaller than me with short brown hair, tan skin, and freckles. We had very similar eyes, but our face shapes were different. I would not have recognized her as my "twin", but we do have similar features and coloring. We sat and had lunch together, and she told me she was from California as well, from LA. She is the only other person I have met from California. Leaving the dining hall, everyone seemed to be looking at us and whispering in delight how the twins finally got to meet.

I had lunch with May yesterday, I she showed me her new nose piercing. I laughed and said, "I have always wanted a nose piercing! I thought about getting one for a while."

"Of course," she said, "we are twins." Then she pulled out her Ray Ban sunglasses and put them on.

I will try to get a picture and post it on my blog!

Life at Pratt

I was very relieved to be placed with a room mate who I get along with! Julia is from Rhode Island and is studying illustration at Pratt. She is a vegan and we both agree that the food at Pratt is horrible so we have been going to local grocery stores to buy healthier and more edible food.

Last week I had my first art history class, which seems like it is going to be great! Every day we meet we are going to go to a different museum and on the last class we are going to do a presentation and turn in a paper. I am very excited and was fascinated already on the first day of class. We went through five thousand years of art since we have so little time, gathering general knowledge about different time periods, styles, and artists.

Right now in my painting and drawing class we are working on painting still life (fruits and class bottles), which I find extremely boring. However, it is something I have never done before and really need to work on. After still life we will move on to figure painting, which will be much more interesting.

In my art foundations class we are covering basic elements of art, color, positive and negative space. Last class we had our first opportunity to work with a model and develop our figure drawing skills. This was very fun, and extremely refreshing from still life! I enjoyed the gesture drawing, where the model would hold poses for one minute and we would frantically try and sketch her in that short time.

I have not yet had my portfolio development class, which I am looking forward to. The class only meets three times throughout the program, and I am curious to see what we will be doing. So far so good!