Oh, man – this is really going to end, isn’t it? I just got back to Sam’s after the Fine Art school’s end-of-semester student exhibition and everything is just so bittersweet. The show was really great, SO satisfying; I was kind of worried about how my final piece would be received, since it’s kind of, well, out there, but once it was finished, with all the layers of drapery finally materialized, it just came together exactly how I wanted it to. And I’m so happy that Kirsten asked us all to write artist’s statements as well, because in all honesty, mine really did need an explanation to be fully understood and appreciated, and just knowing that people would actually have the opportunity to UNDERSTAND the piece made me feel so much more relaxed and allowed me to enjoy the show in a way that I just wouldn’t have if I knew that everyone was going to be walking around being like “yeah, the show was cool, but what was up with that one freak-show piece with all the red satin??”
And luckily it WAS received pretty well – I overheard some girls who I had never met before being like “yeah, that one was definitely my favorite”, and my professor told me that the director of the entire Syracuse in Florence program LOVED my piece and was trying to find me to introduce myself but had to leave before she was able to track me down. So flattering! All my bests came to see my stuff and DJ even brought me a little rose (red, of course, in the spirit of the piece haha); just a great evening overall. Host mamma Elisa came and despite my broken attempt to explain abstract artistic concepts in my limited Italian, she seemed to really genuinely love the piece. So cute.
But now I’m just hanging out at Sam and Tyler’s apartment, doing homework while they cook their dinner, and it’s just been a really nice night. I feel like I have such a family here, and as the trip winds down, we just want to be with each other 24/7 – we seem to have all loosened up on feeling the desperate need to do everything and see everything we originally set out to do and see from the start of the semester, because we realize now that Florence will always be here for us, relatively unchanged, but what IS fleeting, what IS really unique about this whole experience is getting to do it all with THIS particular, dynamic group of people. We can always maintain the individual friendships and can always return to the city of Florence, but the integrated experience, the combination of THESE people and THIS place, is something we really will never have again. And it’s not that we have no interest in trying that one last restaurant, or crossing the Arno one last time, or finally seeing that church; it’s just that, instead of being destinations, they have been recast as the extraordinary settings in which we get to experience our last week all together.
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