Hanging with the art students

John's senior thesis show was last night, along with 135 other soon-to-be graduates of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. The place was packed, and a whole bunch of John's friends from high school came. Younger brother Al came down all the way from Minnesota, too. A guy came through, looked at John's photos of desolate, abandoned, shopping malls, and picked up a card with web site url. The guy asked if John had the pictures on the site, and when John assured him the link on the card would get him there, he said, "this is great - I'm an urban planner and I try to make sure this doesn't happen." I also got to eavesdrop on one of John's teachers, a graphic design teacher; he was admiring John's work, and talking about how John could do just about anything - even though John's major is photography, which at MIAD is a fine arts, rather than more commercial degree, the teacher said John did amazingly good work in graphic design & typography in his class.

At the end of John's first year at MIAD, I went to collect him on a Saturday morning in May. He'd been partying the might before - he smelled like beer & cigarettes, and said he thought he probably embarrassed himself last night. We went over to look at the senior shows in the galleries, then empty of people, and John could hardly wait for his turn, "in three years, I'll be up here, mom, and everyone'll come see" - I'm so glad they did.

I took him a bottle of decent champagne; we stayed till almost the end, and then left John & his friends at the gallery, and drove down to trendy Bay View for giant slices of pizza before driving back to Madison.