This weekend, I really should have been working on my studio art assignments. Or at the very least sleeping in my own bed. Instead, I was spending two nights in a row in a cramped digital media lab doing a last-minute editing marathon of a four-minute movie that I plan on showing at the next show production of my campus Asian American theater group.
I believe this is the first time that I ever wore the same clothes and the same contact lenses for three days straight. It was not a pretty sight. Have I ever done the same thing for an art class? Never.
Because while this just might be college seniorities talking, I am currently not feeling the whole art thing. I am not feeling the whole sitting around in a studio space and going into extensive conversations about lines and shapes thing.
I miss my sophomore and junior year when I could afford to take Japanese language classes or interesting Asian American Studies classes on contemporary literature or different ethnic communities. As much as I hate to admit it, taking only art classes for an entire quarter makes me rather unhappy.
And as my graduation date begins rearing its ugly head in the not-so-distant future, I realize that the fine art world does not particularly light my mental fire. I can manage to get excited about waking up at eight in the morning on my Christmas vacation to work on writing a one-act scene for my theater group.
I can suck it up and spend entire weekends with the Nikkei Student Union painting elaborate backdrops for our annual Cultural Night, even if four to six hours worth of work is only going to be on stage for 10 minutes and get promptly trashed that very night.
I get psyched about meeting new people in conferences for college students like myself, whether they be for Japanese Americans or Taiwanese Americans who wanted our group to present a workshop on AAs and the performance arts.
Somehow, I don't get the same excitement at the idea of going to art grad school and schmoozing in the museum circuits to get gallery openings for large-scale paintings.
And so many of my classmates are realizing the same thing with their own particular majors as they get sucked more and more into their Asian ethnic orgs.
Clearly I am not the only species of this particular breed of AA college students: crazy people who choose to kill themselves over extracurricular activities and student-run ethnic organizations while conveniently ignoring the fact that they are full-time students who technically should have classes.
We are practicing dance steps for our next Filipino American cultural night in isolated parking lot spaces instead of studying for our physics exam. We are helping organize events in Little Tokyo, fundraising money for the campus Asian Pacific Coalition and mentoring kids in Koreatown.
Meanwhile, our textbooks and course readers gather dust in the living room. Post-it note reminders to search for summer internships in biomechanical engineering magically disappear from our attention. And somehow this so-called extracurricular becomes instead, a possible career opportunity - even a life calling.
While art-making will always play a significant role in my life, I sometimes wonder if the art I'm really interested in is not so much the brushstrokes on canvas that strive for artistic immortality, but the art of building connections within a community, however tenuous and difficult.
I have been neglecting my latest painting project for my extracurricular activities. It sits in the corner of my studio space, a blank white canvas waiting to be filled in. Just like my future.
Published March 2, 2007
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