Yesterday I woke up early (early for my Aussie vacation aka 9 am) and embarked on a long trek across the continent that is he University of Newcastle. It took me twenty minutes to walk from the residential end of campus to the end where Orientation ( and therefore the food) was located. I feel that days like this will be the days where I miss my lovely and adorable small campus.
Once I arrived to the Great Hall for Orientation, or O Week as they call it, I was greeted with free oatmeal bars and water and fruit and waited for the speaker to begin. I’m not sure who the people were that were speaking since the auditorium was filled with the sound of every individual whispered conversation in the room, from people who thought they weren’t going to disturb the peace of the event. Whoever they were, they gave the standard intro to Uni speech complete with warnings about excessive partying, reminders to attend class, and a challenge to be well rounded and healthy individuals. After they were all done they divided us into departments, or faculties, and sent us on to faculty tours and info sessions.
There were only three students out of the entire auditorium who were students for the Faculty of Fine Art.
THREE.
& two of the students were non-traditional transfer students who were already moms with other degrees under their belt. I all of a sudden became overcome with this fear that I was going to be in classes designed for professional level artists. However, I soon learned that the school had gotten rid of the Faculty of Fine Art in favor of the Faculty of Creative Industries. This new faculty would offer a lot o the same courses, but would have a focus more along the lines of advertising or business based art approaches. Why make this switch? I have no idea, but this is the reason why no other new students were in the program: they weren’t allowed to be.
So, we went on a little tour through the five different buildings that make up the art precinct of the school:
- Design
- Textiles & Ceramics
- Sculpture
- Painting & Drawing
- and Photo media
Combined, these buildings would take up half of the campus at Rollins. Coming from a school where everything is located in one building that would probably fit within one of their buildings, I was massively impressed with the amount of resources that they had. However, it made me wonder about the dynamics within the faculty. One of the many beautiful and amazing aspects of being involved in such a small department back home is that all of the different art students and professors mingle together and feed off of each other in creating their work. We all hang out and talk with one another and use each other as inspiration for our own work. I wonder if that same cross pollination happens in such a massive building?
So that was basically my day touring the art building. The day of introductions and walking ended up taking till about 5 arvo at which point I had decided that I was deserving of a quick nap. I still have a few days left until I begin my courses, so I will make sure to keep everyone informed as I too become informed.
Until Next Time…..