the idea: make a drawing as big as you can, only to be told that it’s only 32% done

You do strange things when you’re in school,especially when you’re in art school.  Some of these things stay with you, some you forget about until, say, you’re helping your mother go through the basement.

I only had a month between the time I graduated college and the time I moved to Boston so there are still a few piles of stuff tucked away in corners of my basement room.  Tonight, after months of bringing it up whenever she had the chance, my mother and I finally went downstairs to go through some of it.  In doing so, I picked through a pile of my old artwork.  One of which, was this drawing.

Now, I use the word drawing loosely here, as we did when I was in school.  It is, indeed, made on paper, but that paper was gessoed together in great sheets until it was over six feet high and five feet wide.  On it, I used charcoal, oil sticks, and other random drawing supplies.  The assignment form my Drawing II class back in 2009 or so was to combine pictures we brought in, an object we brought in, and a random picture my instructor gave us into one drawing.

When the critique finally came, I hauled my huge drawing off of the two drawing boards it occupied and staple-gunned it to the wall of the critique room.  After a few minutes of conversation, my instructor looked at me and said, “Miranda, I think this is about 32% done.”  I was crushed and didn’t understand until he explained.  “I like what you have so far,” he said.  “I just see it being so much bigger!”

In the end, the drawing never got much bigger because, really, how could it?  But hopefully, at some point, I’ll lead the kind of life where this can be staple-gunned to the wall of the art studio, half covered by more recent drawings from other students.