Reading through my New York experience in my diary's, I realise in a way just how far I've come, alot of it is emotional stuff, how I felt, soul searching being delighted by my creativity but at the same time starting to realise that there was more to life than being creative.
At Parsons school of design I took lots of different courses, computer animation, portfolio development, fashion marketing, product development, silversmithing, life drawing for fashion. They were big into constructive criticism . All the big US names went to the college and came in for tutorials, Calvin Klien, Oskar de la Renta, Issac Mirizza, Donna Karen etc etc as the college is based on fashion avenue they didn't have to come to far. Jasper Conran went there, he came for a visit but his dad did'nt want him to stay so he tore up his passport and trew it out of the window thus missing his plane home.What impressed me was there business like approach everything was packaged and developed. The credit system keeping you in check but it meant that you were never with the same students. There were students from all over the world. I remember one girl from Singapore that had her own 2 story condo bought for her by her very wealthy parents- she gave good party's. A girl from Vietham introduced a group of us to how to order traditional Viethamise food ( although I've never been able to use the experience and knowledge since)
Friends and family came to visit which was lovely, I was a regular visitor to the MOMA and Guggenhiem breathed in the atmosphere. One diary entry does say " I've just been to the statue of liberty for the fourth time, long q's in 90 degree heat" all my visitors wanted to see it. I loved the cultural mix of people but in another part there were times when I was very lonely. I got to know that "lets do lunch" meant " I am too polite to say, I'll probably never see you again but I cant figure out what to say to you. I learned how to deal with waiting staff in a professional manner, leave tips. So many things that seep in without you realising it, eat Japanese. Explain that there was more to Ireland than the South.
There is one event in particular that I remember we were having a group tutorial with one of the Fashion professors who worked for all sorts of different big names. She was telling us about her working life before coming to the college, one student asked why did she get into being a tutor and she said that " as a women at some point the question of family comes into it and that's important as well, so when that happens you have to decide how are you going to do it"for her all the big names were nothing compared to building a family.
Strange as it may sound it was the first time in all my art collage career that anyone had even mentioned the fact that there was more to pursue than creativity.It's something that I still see nobody mentioning that many creative people's futures are decided by what their personal relationships are like. This is particularly true for women still after all this time taking on the majority of the childcare responsibilities. For men it's a different kind of pressure how do you build a life around something so erratic? But that's another discussion all on it's own.
The Art collage sent me on all kinds of interviews where I pulled out my portfolio and discussed the opportunity. Many people do not know that there are lots of UK and Ireland trained designers working in the US and Europe under many famous fashion houses names because there is not the industry at home. Calvin Klein offered me a job. So what did I do?
http://www.parsons.newschool.edu/studies/index.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment