I interviewed my mom, Robin Goodridge, who graduated from Colby College with a double major in French and Art History.  She loves the arts.

What made you decide to declare an Art History major?

I knew going into college that I wanted to major in Art History.  I was inspired by a teacher in my high school. He was phenomenal. He should have been a college professor. And also, you just get acclimated and orientated to something you’re good at.

What were some things you learned from studying Art History?

I really loved learning about Impressionism and the High Renaissance – that was when there were geniuses in a lot of things, like art and literature. With art you’re not just studying a particular style, but you’re studying particular people and places. That was what was so fascinating. There was always a story behind it, a story behind the painting. It really encompasses a lot: sociology, psychology, history, and culture. When you think about it – what remains from a lot of ancient civilizations? Art. So a lot of people when they look at paintings, they don’t realize that the subject matter is really important with regards to class, occupations, and religion. All throughout time, people’s styles have evolved and gotten more sophisticated and refined. But even the most primitive styles told a story and that’s how you can discover things out about a society. Art is kind of like music in its beauty, and you need beauty for your well-being. In life we need to be surrounded by beauty. Like I can’t imagine a world without music and art. If you think about it, when you go into people’s homes they have art on the walls. It enhances your life. It’s not just one focused thing because you are studying about different parts of the world. Sometimes you can say, “This is definitely Greek or this is definitely French.” So you can learn about other countries. It’s really fascinating. It really is. It’s enriching because you’ve studied the history, politics, architecture of the world through generations and generations. To me, people who comment and say things like, “What is an Art History major good for?,” don’t know what art history is and what’s involved. I didn’t study it because it was a specific career that I was going to go into. People don’t necessarily go on to have a career in what they study at a liberal arts college. As it turns out, I ended up in a field that is actually more scientific that what I studied in college. Sometimes people just have more creative pursuits. I knew that I loved French and Art History so that’s what I double-majored in , and I would do it all again. My studies certainly came in handy when I went to Europe.

What was it like to study abroad in France?

I loved knowing about all the history in Paris. Everywhere you go, the visual history is in the buildings. I took a couple art history classes in French. That made it more difficult, but it was a great experience. I studied art history very thoroughly, starting in high school and then pursuing it in college so when I actually went to Paris and lived and walked in the historical places it was indescribable. It’s a field where you need to go out and see things. We would take field trips to the Louvre, Versailles, Chartres Cathedral, and Mont St. Michel. I felt totally immersed in what had been in my notebook months prior.

What advice would you give to students who are curious about Art History?

I would recommend anyone to take an art history class. If you are interested in learning about history through the ages, take a class. I had some friends who took introductory classes to fulfill a distribution requirement and they loved it. It is a lot more difficult than people think. You have to have a good memory. But, you remember things you are more engaged in.

~ Courtney G.

make your eye a nomad,

go up to churches and strange

cathedrals in the midday heat

of a weekday and press your face

against the windows. Act like this

toward every part of your city,

like an infidel, a barbarian,

like someone deliberately lost.

Forget how to speak. Enter

the restaurants and order

the strange names with gestures.

Taste those alien words like fruit,

like the fruits of another planet

on which you are marooned,

these fruits which may bring death,

or visions, or eternal youth.

– from Cities of Rain

Wow, I thought.  I really liked that – simple as that.  I read it again, but this time I envisioned the “city” as the campus, and the “church” as Gunnison, and the “restaurants” as the Pub and Dana.  Ben said regarding his typewriter poetry that people have told him after receiving their poems, “Oh my God!  That is exactly what is going on in my life.  This is me.”  It’s like when you listen to a song on your laptop or the radio and find ways for the words to relate to yourself.  Maybe the words never related to you until that moment.  Perhaps, one of the beauties of art is that even though something isn’t intended to speak to you personally (because the artist doesn’t know you), you make it speak to you personally; it’s as if the poem was written for me or the song was written for me.  I suppose I made this poem written for me.  I envisioned myself walking around campus by myself with the intention of wandering: no obligations or care for the time.  I am not speaking, rather I’m using all of my senses to engage with SLU non traditionally, by touching the buildings as I walk by or tasting things on the menu that I’ve never ordered.  I pretend I’m a visitor who only has one day on campus.

The semester – the last one for the seniors – is almost coming to an end.  As Ben quoted, people can sculpt their own realities; poetry isn’t just about reflecting on “what is.”  This poem calls me to action, to embrace my last few weeks here until summertime.  I encourage you to find a poem, or song, or story that was made for you.  Be a sculptor.

Courtney G.

When she leaned into him, whispering with her freshly manicured fingernails resting lightly on his thigh, he choked on the ice cube that had snuck into his mouth like an unwanted visitor, floating just barely above the purified water in his small disposable plastic cup. It was short-lived, under the radar. No one knew it had been there, lingering in his mouth like the last glass of chardonnay on her heavy breath: warm and dense, but empty against his neck.

Before she leaned into him, whispering with her freshly manicured fingernails resting lightly on his thigh, she had handed him a disposable plastic cup full of purified water from the glass water cooler on the table in the back of the room, behind them, behind the rows of chairs full of English students and English professors and random parents from the community all joining in this one room to listen to a man speaking at the podium with a shaky voice and long, bony fingers that covered his mouth when he giggled. Yes, she handed him the disposable plastic cup full of purified water and leaned into him, his arm across the back of her chair. But he pulled his arm away, resting it instead in his lap. Grasping the small disposable plastic cup full of purified water in both hands as if it was full of lead. As if he was not strong enough. Because he wasn’t, really. Was he?

“This isn’t working,” she whispered, leaning into him. And the ice cube that had slipped into his mouth suddenly slipped further, down his throat, a momentary panic as he felt the cold suffocating the lining of his esophagus and then halting in his chest before he let out a short cough, barely audible, and in that brief second, he knew: this is what it felt like.

They remained sitting next to each other, their shoulders barely touching in the second to last row of the room that bore too many shades of blue, everyone still facing the man at the podium, his preaching words nervously flipping pages of printed essays, muffled by the thought of counting each second until the End. Until they could stand up and walk out separate doors and pretend her freshly manicured fingernails were never resting on his thigh, pretend her breath was never warm against his neck. Pretend they hadn’t been pretending all along, floating unintentionally down this river of uncertainty.

Later, the man at the podium took a sip of water from the fancy glass next to his microphone. The crunch of the ice against his chattering teeth filled the stagnant room, the speakers vibrating with the scraping of cold against warm against hard against hard against hard. He knew it would be hard, but the sound was so beautiful that he had to turn to look at her, even though they were supposed to be pretending to not be pretending anymore. But she didn’t hear the ice, didn’t look up at him. She was only staring at the strips of her long blonde hair between her fingers, mindlessly snapping off split-ends with her freshly manicured fingernails, the fingernails that had earlier rested lightly on his thigh when she leaned into him, whispered, “This isn’t working,” right before he choked on the ice cube that had slipped into his mouth like an unwanted visitor.

-Maggie Sullivan ’15

This Wednesday, 4/17 there will be a performance in the Black Box (aka Edward R. Miles Theater) of Parallel Lives.

Thursday, 4/18 will be another installment of the Young Artist Series at 4:30 in the Brush Art Gallery.

In case anyone’s forgotten, Spring Fest is Saturday, 4/20!

The St. Lawrence Review‘s launch party for their 2012-2013 issue is Tuesday, 4/23 in Sykes Formal lounge. Not entirely sure about the time of that one but I imagine it’s at 4:30 or 5.

The Dance Showcase is Friday and Saturday, 4/26 and 4/27.

The Laurentian Magazine‘s launch party is Tuesday, 4/30 at 5 in the Brush Art Gallery! There will be readings from students and faculty, and as always, some awesome refreshments.

Have a good remainder of your semester, everyone!

~Caitlin S.

On Thursday creative nonfiction writer Jessica Hendry Nelson spoke in the Brush Art Gallery.
She is currently an editor for The Fiddleback is an online arts and literature magazine (much like our very own Laurentian!).
Check it out here!

Jessica Hendry Nelson was today’s speaker for the first “Young Artist Series” of the spring semester.  She read from her book, a collection of essays, that will out next year.  I enjoyed hearing the words read aloud because her emotion was weaved through the rhythmic beat of her tongue.  The repetition, “It is year… He visits us… Here’s to… In New York,” pulsated the room, like an unusual heart beat.  She said she enjoys writing personal essays because she likes that you can write about everything, and that you could break out into a rap song in the middle if you wanted.  This, I thought to myself, is comradery of the arts.  I found it interesting when she described how she has tangled herself in a web, since writing is her habit and most of her friends are writers, and that she can’t untangle herself.  “But, it’s so fun,” she said.

Next YAS will be on April 4th – same time, same place (4:30pm in the Brush Art Gallery).  Hope to see you all there!

In this moment, the man is not just another “Pub-worker,” as many St. Lawrence students have labeled him. Not just another person cooking or giving the students food, not just another person walking by wordlessly in the Pub. No, in this moment, he is much more than this. I assume he is a proud father, someone showing off his place of employment to his daughter. But I want to know more. I want to know what it is that brought him here today, why it is that he chose this chair in front of the fireplace. Why St. Lawrence University? This everyday man and his everyday moment leave me in awe as I continue walking up the stairs and watch as he holds his daughter closer. Although such a brief interaction, I am amazed at how much more there is to know about this man. He is a human of St. Lawrence University and I want to know his story.

This is only a small example of the work I will produce during my fellowship at SLU this summer. Inspired by Brandon Stanton’s “Humans of New York” project, I will be observing, interviewing, filming, and photographing the people at SLU with the intention of defining what it means to be part of this community. Keep your eyes open for a “Humans of SLU” blog and Facebook page that is aiming to start up in early June. To hold you off until then, feel free to visit the fascinating original “Humans of New York” page: http://www.humansofnewyork.com/

Maggie Sullivan ’15

After that, we made our way to the Guinness Storehouse, as if we hadn’t consumed enough of it the night before.  By this point it had started to rain and none of us were prepared for it.  We used our Dublin maps to cover our heads, but quickly realized that that was a pretty dumb idea.  We got inside the storehouse and got our tickets.  The tour started off with seeing the 9,000 year lease for the store house signed by Guinness himself.  He certainly was confident that his business would last that long.  Anyway, we went through the facilities, seeing the elements that made the beer and the different advertisements the company has used.  At the very top, we were treated to a free pint overlooking the entire city.  The Gravity Bar as it was called was packed with people looking out the windows.  You could see the mountains from which the company got their water from in the distance.  It was beautiful.

I was the only one who finished their pint before we made our way back down and out.  The rain had luckily stopped and we boarded the bus again to Kilmainham Gaol, a prison made back in the 1700s that played an important role in Irish rebellion.  In the beginning, the Irish would imprison people for petty injustice like stealing for upwards of 10 years.  Our guide even told us that a five year old was sentenced there for riding a trolley without paying.  Another prisoner was about to be executed, but wanted to properly marry his fiance before he died.  An hour prior to his death, they were wed in the prison chapel.  The couple only had 20 minutes together.  It was a moving experience as we walked through the prison, looking in the cells and walking around the panopticon central chamber.  You could feel the history everywhere.

After that, the sun had come out.  Our feet were exhausted so we decided to get some coffee and ride the bus around the city, listening to the voice over describe everything.  Dublin really is a beautiful city.  I actually liked it better than London to be honest.  I would definitely want to live there aside from the fact it’s so expensive.  Once we got off the bus, we spent the rest of the day shopping and walking around before we had to leave the next day.  Sunday morning was apparently protest day and the main street was filled with protesters for women’s rights, abortion rights, socialism and more.  It was quite the sight.  This one picket sign definitely struck us in the…well see for yourself.

Yeah, ouch.

The ride home took a while, but we made it nonetheless.  And to mine and my roommates surprise (disgust maybe?) our host brother was still blasting house music.

http://theoatmeal.com/tag/grammar

- Hannah Dz