So Where Have I Been?Friday, July 20, 2007 | 4:38AM |
Well, New York for starters. The first time I ever went to New York was about 10 years ago on a family vacation up the East coast. This year I returned in February for the annual College Art Association Convention. It was cold and miserable.
Then I went back in the beginning of June for a “Summer Seminar” class with SCAD. I put that in quotes because apparently SCAD doesn’t count that as a summer class. This fact will be more important in a moment.
The seminar class was great. We got to shoot the Polaroid 20x24 camera. I got to meet Chuck Close and shake his hand and (almost) gush like a big photo dork (but I didn’t). We went to Coney Island. We went to the Apple store 50 times to check our e-mail. We visited a ton of galleries, not only in Chelsea, but all over the rest of the city as well. And on the last day we went to Brooklyn and visited artist Isidro Blasco’s studio. This is where I started getting my internship in line.
That’s right. I had been planning to do an internship in New York for several months, and the idea was that you pretty much wait ‘til the last minute to get an internship because, well… you kinda’ have to. Basically, if you call up a place and ask if they need interns, they might say no. But if they say yes, they’ll probably also say, “Can you be here next week?” Well, this can be a problem, especially when you’re on the quarter system like we are at SCAD-Atlanta. All the other schools in the country sent their students to New York to intern in mid- to late-May. SCAD didn’t get out until the very end of May, and then there was the trip.
So it’s halfway through June and I finally get the ball rolling with Isidro, and after returning to Atlanta, I commit to move to New York and work for him. It’s great. He’s gonna’ pay me, it’ll last for about 2 months, I’m going to meet tons of people. Only problem is, it’s stupid hot, most people in New York don’t have AC (well, at least in my encounters), and I really didn’t have a place to live. The last problem could be worked out in a couple of days, as Isidro was letting me crash at his studio temporarily.
However, this sucked, because it was unbearably hot and humid. I tossed and turned for 4 hours the first night. After that, I managed to sleep on the couch of a friend of a friend in Harlem, but it was an hour away from the studio on the subway. It was clearly a short-term solution.
Finally, I hear back from Financial Aid: no money. Why? I’m not enrolled in any summer classes. That’s right. That “Summer Seminar” was merely credit, and counted as an “Off-Campus Trip”. No matter that it cost the same as any other class and I got the same amount of credit. Or even that IT MET IN THE SUMMER. The other problem was that my internship wouldn’t count for credit either, because SCAD requires that you register it before the quarter begins. Mine wasn’t secured until after the quarter began, and I couldn’t fake the paperwork.
So after a week of work (and misery… really, don’t go to New York during an extreme part of the year unprepared), I had to pack up my things and head home to Atlanta. I can’t say I was completely disappointed, as I missed Stacy. And I know in the long run we saved a lot of money. Still, Isidro was a great boss, and I would have loved working for him for longer. I’m still considering trying to go back in the winter.
But anyway, I’m back in Atlanta, and I’ve been working on the videos from the June NYC trip. They’re all on PhotoAwesome.com. If you haven’t seen them, go look. I put way too much time and effort into them.
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