I Thought We Were Pass All This!

Over the weekend, I saw something very depressing.

My mother knew I wasn't going to have fun, so to make up for it, we had a little detour. We went to a local art gallery. This isn't your normal museum. It is also a studio area for local artists. Basically, people can walk right in and look around while you work. You can show, sell, and produce your pieces in one location!

Well, what I saw made me sad. I saw pretty much nothing but "Old Lady" art. What I mean by that is that all I saw were watercolor paintings of flowers, oil-on-canvas paintings of local buildings, and charcoal drawings of people. Nothing interesting and nothing thought provoking. Nothing that made me ask "What is the artist trying to say?" but things that made me ask "Why did this person produce this?"

In defense, I will say that a few things did catch my eye. A woman working in clay had some rather interesting things, as well as some rather cute things I wouldn't mind having around the house as conversation pieces or decorations. It is worth going, yes, and I can appreciate the time and talent of everyone in that building.

Their choice of subject and style is just not my cup of tea.

Fast forward to today. I was hoping to see Jason D.'s Graduating Gallery show during the first break I had in class. When I walked into the building and pass the gallery, I saw something that made me even more depressed than what I saw in Virginia.

There was a curtain large enough to divide the gallery.

It's obvious what this is for. During the opening on Friday, there was a sign hanging on it. This sign was the very same sign from last October as far as text. It was just typed bigger so people would see it. They told the naive that the reason the curtain is there is to distinguish whose show was where. Anyone that has been keeping up with the Watkins censorship/Fine Arts events as of late knows what the real reason is.

This whole thing makes me depressed. Here I am in a school where I'm trying to learn how to produce things I can be proud of, art I can enjoy both in the creation and in the final outcome. I didn't come to this school to learn how to draw super realistic. I did not apply because I wanted to learn how to make pretty paintings. I came here because I wanted to learn how to do what I want to do well enough to turn some heads at attention.

Yet all of this had to happen. The censoring of penises while exposing women's breasts and vaginas. I seriously thought we were pass all this! I guess we really aren't.

No wonder Jason O'B. said he was going to leave after this semester.