Inserting the Catalyst of Change

College for me has been an experience of placing a round peg into a square hole. When I first got here I enjoyed the social setting and the drinking; I found very quickly that college is not for learning, but is instead for memorizing. Learning in many ways implies that you are given tools that you can use. I have found that memorizing has more of an association with learning a set of rules that you must follow and not deviate from. In many ways, college is like a cookie cutter and in this world that is rapidly changing for the worse, the people it produces are often unable to cope with sudden changes that they need to adapt too. The past few years for me have been a journey of self discovery. One day I thought I had found myself and then by the next I realized that I was merely transforming into a zombie.

This past year has been a great experience, realizing that I in fact am capable of standing on my own two feet and I have become confident in what I can do. Art for me is not a hobby, it is a life. I am dedicated to it. If I am not painting, I am writing or drawing or as recently I have been trying to figure out to introduce art to people who may not otherwise be receptive to art. I have found in Dada, a chance to express what is often otherwise a difficult matter with the English language. How do you take a cold, rational institution like college and make it laugh at itself? You could simply label it a banana and walk away. It is quite irrational, but just as the Dada artists of the early 20th century discovered, such intense rationalism can only lead to destruction. Some of the best ideas as far as solving the problems of the world right now are coming from people who are not afraid to look at a discarded soda bottle as being a brick for a house.

More and more I realize that my peers at college think of me as being completely insane. What few of them realize is that there is a method to my madness. Humans have a naturally tendency to look for patterns, even when logic dictates that one is not present. We see faces in clouds and Gods in the stars. To place something illogical around in words or images, they immediately begin to think about a pattern. Even though anybody sees a urinal and knows that it is a urinal, calling it a fountain immediately causes people to ask "Why?" The "Why-factor" leads to further thought and before you know it, a once dormant mind set on following the memorized rules becomes actively engaged. Their involvement with the art in trying to interpret it ends up making them part of the art. Even if they never answer "Why?" they have still taken the time to consider it.

As I embark on my day's journeys, I will leave you with this: