Heebie Jeebies

Last night Pete had his first art show. He's been doing a lot of photography lately so he joined a gallery in Boston's South End. Last night it was his turn to have an open studio at the First Friday art night.

He did a great job, the show went well and his gallery-mates are wonderful people.

For me though, it was a little traumatic. Among other things, it brought all the horrors of art school back to me. The very smell of oil paint wafting through the stairwell gave me the heebie jeebies.

I was trying to figure out what was so bad about art school. As far as "academic" achievement goes it seemed to me that I did pretty well in school. I loved my teachers and I learned a lot.

I think the hard part was that socially it was a nightmare. I have never in my life been around such aggressively conformist people. Most of the other students wouldn't talk to you if you didn't do work that was similar to theirs, if you didn't look like them or if you weren't in the same stage of life that they were in.

Maybe I shouldn't care what those dim-bulb people thought but it still sucked to be treated like nothing on a daily basis by the majority of people I came in contact with.

Yeah, that was really hard. That could explain why I want no part of any "art scene."