Life Lessons

Lesson #1

As a follow-up to my post two weeks ago, I thought I would share a little something. Remember in my last entry how I was so excited and thrilled about my Thesis Exhibition idea? Well, last week was a bit of a reality check for me. Firstly, it turns out that the Milwaukee Art Museum does not have every print Claes Oldenburg ever made. Go figure. (that's sarcasm, folks) So apparently, getting my hands on exactly the prints that I need will be a bit of a challenge. Secondly, last Thursday I was accosted in the Art History Office by the Head of the Department and basically told that my show was "impossible." The asshole scoffed at my attempts to defend myself and promptly began talking louder - over my feeble voice and laughed in my face at several of my answers. He told me that generally he disliked shows like the one I was planning and ignored my attempts to explain to him different display ideas, as well as my calm clarifications that I am well aware that I do not have a thesis yet! I have not made a formal proposal to the department - I am aware of it - and when such a proposal is made it will be well written, well founded, and textually supported. Well, hopefully. In theory.

At the same time, while I felt cornered and interrogated and very small and insignificant, I told myself, "Emily, this is good. He is challenging you to think about your exhibition. He is asking intelligent questions that you need to ask yourself." So, while what I really wanted to do was punch my professor in the face, go home, crawl under the bed, and never come out - instead I have vowed to make him eat his words and make my show a raving success. I want to laugh in his face when he has to come crawling to congratulate me. I want him to stand in the center of my show look around in wonder and say, "Oh, that's what she meant. Humph. I was wrong." (Not that that last one will ever happen... I think pigs would fly first...) While I was fuming over this situation - the first line of Emily Dickinson's poem popped in my head. I know that Emily D gets a bad reputation for her weird capitalization and strange hyphens and punctuations, and I'm not going to attempt to explicate this poem - but suffice it to say Emily Dickinson was a very imaginative person and would not be intellectually hemmed in by convention - even though in actuality she did spend most of her days confined to her home. But her imagination was never fettered, the lines "And for an Everlasting Roof / The Gambrels of the Sky --" basically say - "The sky's the limit! I can go anywhere, do anything, imagine anything - as long as I dwell in possibility..."

I dwell in Possibility

Emily Dickinson

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit." ~Helen Keller

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create." ~Albert Einstein

Lesson #2

I am a very non-confrontational person. I don't really rock the boat. I don't stand up to authority figures well, and I tend to take their words as fact. When someone tells me something I need is against their policy as a store, museum, or organization, I back off - I think, "Well, that's a bummer, but I'm sure they have a good reason for their actions." This weekend I learned that persistence and being slightly pushy can get you what you want.

I was in Atlanta, Georgia last weekend and I made it my mission to go to the High Museum of Art. The museum has one of Claes Oldenburg's sculptures there and I was excited to photograph it from every angle - at fairly high quality - and perhaps use these photographs in my Thesis Exhibition. Unfortunately and inexplicably, the sculpture was on a terrace, behind glass and museum visitors weren't allowed to venture outside. Crestfallen, I pressed on, "Well, I saw some pictures of it on the internet with people walking among the sculpture. I'm doing a Master's Thesis Exhibition and I was really hoping to get some of my own photographs." He was unimpressed.

That's when my aggressive friend and pseudo-big sister stepped in. She wasn't going to take no for an answer. "Can we please speak to the management about this matter?" And we did. He directed us to the security guard station, and with a little persistence and some use of pretentious words "Master's Thesis Exhibition about Claes Oldenburg's sculpture - specific to site and viewer relationship blah blah blah" I was escorted into the terrace and take all the pictures I wanted! Persistence! Ask and you shall receive! Knock on the glass and make faces and gestures and the door will be open to you... Go big or GO HOME! Or, more eloquently...

"I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen." ~Frank Lloyd Wright

"The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night."~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

....and then, of course, we have to hear from the realists... :)

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it." ~W. C. Fields

Believe in yourself, dwell in possibility, and be the best you can be every day. That's all that anyone can ask. That's what I learned this week.

Cheers, friends!