let lemons be angry

It was hell but i miss it already.

I don't know what to say to people who think that art school is relaxing. Yes, I don't have to hole up in a library and stare at words for hours, and I'm thankful for that. I've written paper after paper before and I know the feeling. But there is a mad taste in the mouth when art school exhibition week comes round, churned up by the desire for perfection and the impossibility of perfection given the time crunch.

We're here because we want to create something that will make you look twice, that will make you think, that could be more than just "nice". So we make endless train trips and walks to source for paper and locations, we fork out our own money to print books and posters over and over again, we sew, we cut, we redo, we stay up all night for nights. All to produce an exhibit that you may just walk past without understanding, or for a one-minute screening in an auditorium. The grade? We don't care that much about the grade. We want to know that we have thought of something new in this saturated world, that we are doing something more lasting than the print flyers you take and throw away.

So the work never ends, not the way a book is closed and an exam is sat for. We're never detached; the best of us put their lives into it. Our work becomes our lifestyle, the thing we order on the menu, the magazine we pick up from the stands. It's not good enough to just get by, because in this visual, throwaway world, only the best is ever seen.

No, art school is not the easy way out. But i'll let people think that way if they want, because I wouldn't go through hell week for anything else.