While in Phoenix the past several days, I decided to visit my old campus at Arizona State.  I attended the Art & Design Institute there for 3 semesters in 2006-2007 and have very fond memories of that stint there.  They have a fabulous art department, offering nearly every media.  I was also able to take courses only offered to the architecture department like Photoshop and Architectural Rendering.

I stopped in at the ASU Art Museum and the Ceramic Research Center there.  (Was not evident what they are researching, but the research room resembled a cross between a children’s activity center to a very clean science classroom largely empty.)  I stopped at the Museum-like desk attended by a young Asian student who greeted me friendly enough, but from that point forward, nothing he said made any sense.   I asked him if I was supposed to register or pay anything.  He said “where did you park?”  I told him I parked on the street, trying to figure out why he asked me.  He said “where at?”  I pointed off into the distance and said at a meter.  While pointing at a set of clipboards, he said “these are only to sign up for the parking lot?”  I said that I wasn’t concerned about parking, but wondered if I had to sign-in or anything to look at the museum.  He said “we’re part of the ASU Art Museum.”  I said that was nice.  He then said something like he didn’t know why I was asking about the parking.  I just walked away from him.  It was obvious at this point that it really didn’t matter what I had asked or if I had to register to look inside, he had no idea why I was there or what I wanted.

I’m always fascinated by ceramics since the semester I took a course at UC Berkeley in the Spring of 2009 from David Linger in Richard Shaw’s department.  I wasn’t good at it, but I loved the process and techniques.  Gave me a greater appreciation for how hard it is to make something beautiful and delicate and realistic.  I fell in love with Robert Arneson, an American sculptor ceramicist (1930-1992) who was an Art professor at UC Davis and had also taught at Fremont High School in Oakland, Santa Rosa Jr. College and Mills College, but he’s known internationally for his whimsical, cartoonish, realistic busts, largely of his own head and body.  Two of his pieces are part of the permanent collection in this ASU Ceramic Research Center gallery.