portfolio day

Today was a big day with a lot of walking--but it was well worth it. The National Portfolio Review people were here in San Francisco for a day, so Jeff and I decided to take advantage of the easy access to all the art schools and their representatives.
I took the 11:00 Larkspur ferry to San Francisco and met fellow portfolio-goer Jeff at Peets Coffee around noon. First we went inside the Hyatt hotel, just to see the huge center atrium place, those crazy lit-up glass elevators, and its awesome fountain and sculpture. Then we were off to find the Art Institute campus, where the National Portfolio Day review would take place. With a few glances at my new pop-out S.F. map, we were walking up the back streets and (unintentionally) through the "dirtier" part of town...we avoided that part on our way back...!
Finally found the street we wanted, Columbus, and just followed it up past Chinatown and through North Beach. I was amazed by the diversity of culture. To our left were Italian restaurants and bakeries and cafes, behind us was Chinatown, to our right was a cathedral, and driving by were taxis playing Spanish music. Oh, and we walked past some French-speaking people as well. Awesome!
Finally we made it to the Art Institute, although from the outside it looked like some ancient Spanish missionary or something. We saw people outside with big, flat, black rectangles, which meant portfolio day was already in full swing.
We got inside and decided to go somewhere "easier" first. The Academy of Art had a whole room to itself, and the wait in line wasn't too bad because they had two representatives doing animation at once. It's interesting that the Academy even had a portfolio review thing...they don't even look at portfolios when accepting students. Well, they liked us at any rate! One school down, and with good reviews to each of us.
Both Jeff and I sent off our CalArts portfolios last December (you may remember). He had been doing some life drawing so he brought his sketchbooks along. I hadn't been doing anything--school was out and life drawing went on hiatus. So I was pretty lame and I really had nothing to bring. Mom and I did take pictures of my portfolio drawings before we sent it off though, so I ended up using my laptop as a presentation tool and showed each reviewer a "slide show" of those pictures. I was nervous about using technology instead of actual tangible artwork, but it ended up working pretty well. My presentation was short though, so I didn't spend as much time with the representatives as I probably should have. But those people in line behind me got their turn sooner! The lines were quite bad; for the Academy it was not so bad, only 15 minutes more or less, but for our next college, the School of Visual Arts, we might have waited 45 minutes to an hour. At least, thats what it felt like. Again I had just a brief little presentation when I finally got there and we both received good reviews.
At last it was time to get to the Big Bad School. CalArts' line wasn't much better than the School of Visual Arts. Actually, the line itself wasn't longer, but the review board just had one animation representative and he spent a lot of time with each review-ee. We had to wait outside the room for a long time until a woman came up and asked for any animation students. We went in, all gittery with nervous excitement, only to get in another line and wait again. The reviewer was actually a guy who had talked to us at CSSSA last summer about what kind of portfolio to submit. Jeff was first and got great reviews and was encouraged to expand his experimental style even more. I got up next and found myself talking a lot quieter than I had at the other two review desks. I was quite nervous. He liked most of the drawings I did but wanted to see more of other artistic projects, like wire sculptures or clay or other things like that (which of course I don't have any of!). But I definitely appreciate that advice; I've been wanting to do more clay sculpture lately and it's nice to get just an extra push in the right direction.
We got out of CalArts' thing at just the right time, because I had to be back at the ferry by 4:30. Walking out of the review room we ran into none other than Paul Tuller! Nice to see ya, Paul. Tell me how your review went!
We made it a point to stop in one of those Italian bakeries on our way back, and I got a mint chocolate chip gelatto that was too big for me (that's unusual!). Like I mentioned before, we avoided the "dirtier" part of town this time and decided to walk down by the big pyramid building. We walked past a neat building called the Zoetrope Cafe. We couldn't pass by that without a look. It seemed to be a restaurant on the bottom floor and some kind of film writing studio on the floors above that. I don't really know for sure, but it sounded cool. We weaved our way through the cement jungle and found our way back to the Embarcadero area. When we were crossing through a park we came across a whole tree full of green and red parrots. There were people feeding them with apples below, and many were hanging off their arms and perching on their heads. I got a couple on my hand at one point and was hoping that they would not bite my fingers.
Finally it was the end of the day and I got on the 4:30 ferry back to Larkspur. I made it home in time to catch a family get-together for my dad's mom's 87th birthday. We watched old family videos, including a few of a grumpy and sleepy 3 year old Amelia. And we ate good chocolate cake too. Happy Birthday Grandmommy, XOXOXO