Business casual as usual

Yesterday Jamie met me for lunch, and we decided to wander around Columbia’s galleries in an subconscious effort to remind ourselves we’re those people who now refer to their “college days” as days long gone. The buildings are so different now, but the students much the same. We went inside the Hokin Gallery and Annex to see some of the MFA students pieces in the exhibit “Lost and Found.” There were a few interesting pieces, like a huge letter and envelope blown up to show one girl’s quest to locate a photo of her father from its owner, her long lost uncle. The piece I really liked, though, was called “Thinking of You” that had three other photographs attached called “Thinking of You Again.” They were all so longing and lonely (actually, one wasn’t, but the other three were great.)

I also grabbed a copy of ECHO, the student magazine at Columbia, which I was a part of in my last semester of school. It has a reputation of being pretty bad, which is at no fault of the profs, who certainly tried their hardest with the most difficult of students. Despite it being a chosen class, there were a few bad eggs when I was in it, and also overachievers who became stressed towards the end, realizing they’d taken too much on in their attempts to prove their future was at Conde Nast.

This issue of ECHO was less inspired than the one I was part of (“What does your shoe say about you?”), but of course, I’m a little biased. Certainly it’s more obvious to me now that it’s a student publication, but it was great for Columbia to offer the opportunity for some students to get printed on glossy pages before graduation.

Art school gets a bad rap, but I couldn’t think of a better way to have spent my college years. See? I’m totally that old woman now.