I suppose I should start by saying that I am not actually in Germany yet. I actually don't leave for another week, but I thought I would do a test run of this whole blog thing by writing about my spring break.
Normally, spring break for OU students would have started Saturday the 17th after exams week was over. Luckly, all of my exams were over on Monday the 12th though, so I was able to drive to Louisville, KY for the National Ceramics Educational Conference with my friend Carolyn. NCECA is a huge deal to the ceramics world. People come from all over the world to see shows, lectures, panels, booths, and friends. This is really all I knew before I went there, but it turned out being even bigger and better than I expected.
One of the other huge highlights of the trip was that the two German students, Johannes and Yvonne, were going to meet Carolyn and me in Louisville and share a hotel with us. I was super excited to finally meet the people who I was going to switch lives with. Unfourtunately, Carolyn and I were a bit late getting there though, so they beat us to the hotel by several hours. There were no hard feelings though, and before long we were all off meeting all of the other O.U. people at Freddie's (a local bar).
The next day I helped work the O.U. booth and spent the afternoon checking out other colleges that I may consider eventually for grad. school. That evening we went to the O.U. faculty and alumni show at a winery/gallery which was really wonderful. It was a great show and I got to see a lot of former students who I was friends with. The next several days were filled with seeing lots of great shows and then going out to have fun with new friends at night.
Although my trip was filled with wonderful experiences, there were two things that really inspired me. The first was a art museum called the Proof Gallery which was actually part of a hotel. I had a feeling it would be a good before I even went in since the buildling had big red penguins on top of it. All of the art there was quite recent and there were only 3 or 4 artist who I had even heard of before. There was work from all different medias, including some video and installation art. My favorites, however, were several different photo series that were shots of small modeled people in snow globes and other settings, but since the enironment was set up,
photographed, and printed to a very large scale, the tiny scenes became far more believable and the viewer's sence of scale became very distorted. I have always had strong interests in both ceramics and photography, so this work really excited me and made me think of ways to combine the two.The other thing that really inspired me wasn't in a gallery or related to the conference at all. In fact, it was really just a coincidence that I found it at all. On Friday afternoon, Carolyn and I were walking around trying to find a gallery, so we went into this one building to ask for directions. It turned out that the building was an office for a large housing sky-scraper that is about to be built. The office was set up so people could come and rent their appartments in advance, so there were lots of virtual pictures and 3D models. The models were really really detailed and even had tiny furniture and people inside. I ended up spending at least twenty minutes peeking into each apartment and observing the lives of the fictional people within. Before I left I took a bunch of close up photos through the windows.
Between the Proof gallery photographs and finding the apartment model, I discovered how interested I am in minitures and detail and the idea of creating tiny worlds. I think these are ideas that I will take to Germany with me and try to integrate into my work.
So in conclusion...Louisville was awsome.
