Model librarian
Because my status at school is a weird one (not technically faculty, but not regular staff, either), I'm always looking for ways to get involved and make myself visible outside of the library. I've chaperoned field trips, I'm judging an essay contest for the spring arts festival, I attend lectures and performances when I'm not tied to my desk.
For all practical purposes, our curriculum is divided into two halves, academic vs. studio, and the two rarely meet. For obvious reasons, most of what I do, both in the library and outside of it, is related to the academic side of things. Because the school is on two floors, and I'm on the one that's devoted mostly to administrative offices and the like, I don't spend much time in the studio area, physically or otherwise.
A couple of weeks ago I was working the graveyard shift (Tuesday evenings, when I'm generally alone not only in the library but also in the school, keeping the library open on the off chance that one of our commuter students will miss their train home or something), one of the painting instructors dropped by. He's also the faculty adviser of something called the Friday Painting Club, which is pretty much what it sounds like -- on Friday afternoons, when our commuter school doesn't have any classes, a group of students get together and paint for fun and practice, no grades involved. In conjunction with this, he maintains a blog where he posts his paintings from that time and his thoughts on the process.
This instructor is also a non-native English speaker, so his main reason for stopping by was that he'd heard about my former career as an editor and he wondered if I'd mind doing a little light editing on his blog posts. But he also had another request. The club does head-study paintings, meaning they paint from a live model from the shoulders/neck up. The school has a regular rotation of models who pose for various classes. But because this is an extracurricular activity, the club members took turns posing for the group instead. Which was great, but they'd already painted everyone, so they were looking for faculty and staff who would agree to take a turn.
So I figured why not. Because of my weird, faculty-like schedule, I'm done on Fridays when classes end, so I wouldn't have to arrange for a sub. And it'd get me into the studio classrooms and give me a chance to interact with students in a different way and to see work of theirs besides their research papers. Obviously I didn't have much competition, because not only did the instructor schedule me for one of the very next Fridays, but he also put up a bunch of fliers around the school advertising the opportunity to paint the "special guest model."
Two Fridays ago, I closed up the library, headed down to the painting classroom, and took my place on a platform in front of about 8 students and the aforementioned instructor, whose easels were ranged in a half-circle in front of me. And for three hours, I sat still and focused on the wall behind them while they painted my picture.
Yes, I said three hours.
It wasn't quite as bad as it sounds. Every 25 minutes we took a 5-minute break, and at the halfway point we took 10. And because they were only painting my head, I just had to hold my head still; I could still move my arms and legs. Apparently I did pretty well, so much so that the instructor made a point of telling me that I was allowed to blink. (I actually wasn't trying not to blink, but I've been told by my eye doctor that I don't blink enough; apparently this is proof.)
During the breaks I got to walk around and see what everyone was doing. It was a little odd to see my portrait shaping up (and I saw way more images and angles of my nose than I ever needed to). I was wearing a striped sweater, and one student painted it so that it looked like I didn't have any arms--kind of like a mummy. But it was also fun to see the art students in action, especially the ones who I've only worked with on less-than-stellar academic endeavors.
Since this is an extracurricular activity, there's no requirement that the students finish the painting, and about half of them left at various points throughout the session ("bad painting day," I was told). But four or five of them stayed until the end, as well as the instructor. His painting is posted on the club blog.
The other thing about modeling for Friday Painting Club is that if you do it twice, you get to keep one painting of yourself by each participant. I thought this was more like a suggestion, but I've been scheduled for another round in a few weeks. What I'm going to do with five paintings of myself, I'm not sure. Next time around, it sounds like they're going to change up the pose and have me looking down like I'm reading. Which I guess is befitting a librarian.
For all practical purposes, our curriculum is divided into two halves, academic vs. studio, and the two rarely meet. For obvious reasons, most of what I do, both in the library and outside of it, is related to the academic side of things. Because the school is on two floors, and I'm on the one that's devoted mostly to administrative offices and the like, I don't spend much time in the studio area, physically or otherwise.
A couple of weeks ago I was working the graveyard shift (Tuesday evenings, when I'm generally alone not only in the library but also in the school, keeping the library open on the off chance that one of our commuter students will miss their train home or something), one of the painting instructors dropped by. He's also the faculty adviser of something called the Friday Painting Club, which is pretty much what it sounds like -- on Friday afternoons, when our commuter school doesn't have any classes, a group of students get together and paint for fun and practice, no grades involved. In conjunction with this, he maintains a blog where he posts his paintings from that time and his thoughts on the process.
This instructor is also a non-native English speaker, so his main reason for stopping by was that he'd heard about my former career as an editor and he wondered if I'd mind doing a little light editing on his blog posts. But he also had another request. The club does head-study paintings, meaning they paint from a live model from the shoulders/neck up. The school has a regular rotation of models who pose for various classes. But because this is an extracurricular activity, the club members took turns posing for the group instead. Which was great, but they'd already painted everyone, so they were looking for faculty and staff who would agree to take a turn.
So I figured why not. Because of my weird, faculty-like schedule, I'm done on Fridays when classes end, so I wouldn't have to arrange for a sub. And it'd get me into the studio classrooms and give me a chance to interact with students in a different way and to see work of theirs besides their research papers. Obviously I didn't have much competition, because not only did the instructor schedule me for one of the very next Fridays, but he also put up a bunch of fliers around the school advertising the opportunity to paint the "special guest model."
Two Fridays ago, I closed up the library, headed down to the painting classroom, and took my place on a platform in front of about 8 students and the aforementioned instructor, whose easels were ranged in a half-circle in front of me. And for three hours, I sat still and focused on the wall behind them while they painted my picture.
Yes, I said three hours.
It wasn't quite as bad as it sounds. Every 25 minutes we took a 5-minute break, and at the halfway point we took 10. And because they were only painting my head, I just had to hold my head still; I could still move my arms and legs. Apparently I did pretty well, so much so that the instructor made a point of telling me that I was allowed to blink. (I actually wasn't trying not to blink, but I've been told by my eye doctor that I don't blink enough; apparently this is proof.)
During the breaks I got to walk around and see what everyone was doing. It was a little odd to see my portrait shaping up (and I saw way more images and angles of my nose than I ever needed to). I was wearing a striped sweater, and one student painted it so that it looked like I didn't have any arms--kind of like a mummy. But it was also fun to see the art students in action, especially the ones who I've only worked with on less-than-stellar academic endeavors.
Since this is an extracurricular activity, there's no requirement that the students finish the painting, and about half of them left at various points throughout the session ("bad painting day," I was told). But four or five of them stayed until the end, as well as the instructor. His painting is posted on the club blog.
The other thing about modeling for Friday Painting Club is that if you do it twice, you get to keep one painting of yourself by each participant. I thought this was more like a suggestion, but I've been scheduled for another round in a few weeks. What I'm going to do with five paintings of myself, I'm not sure. Next time around, it sounds like they're going to change up the pose and have me looking down like I'm reading. Which I guess is befitting a librarian.
posted by Madame Defarge at 4:21 PM
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