My First Day At Art School ✹ Revisited
In this series, I revisit (and polish up) an article from the Headless Greg archives. I originally wrote this blog post in 2017 when I had just started studying art school in Dundee…
I found out that I had been accepted to study illustration at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (or DJCAD, as we apparently call it) back in March. Cue six months of excitement and anxiety as I prepared to move to Dundee to commence my studies. During this time, I became increasingly intrigued about what my first at art school would involve.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect due to the wildly different accounts I had heard of other people’s first days at art school. One story involved everyone on the course being given the challenge of decorating a chair. In typical art student style, someone covered their chair in condoms before it was revealed that these were the seats they would be sitting on for the duration of the semester.
Others I asked, recalled being asked to do little more than a draw mind map on their momentous first day. Would I be thrown in at the deep end of a creative challenge? Or would the most exciting task be writing my name on a folder? Only time would tell.
Some chair-art inspiration provided by Studio Cocolia
Having spent the entirety of my Summer in anticipation, my first day as an illustration student finally arrived. To kick things off, a welcome meeting gave us a quick overview of what our year would look like. This chat managed to strike a balance between readying us for the challenges ahead and calming any initial nerves. In short, they said: You are more than capable of completing all of the upcoming assignments without having a major breakdown. It was a comforting message to hear.
The schedule then gave us a few hours to get to know each other. A room full of people I have just met but know I will be spending a lot of time with is not what I would describe as my ‘comfort zone’ but I quickly realised that I had nothing to worry about when it came to befriending my new classmates. Conversations about everything from anxiety disorders to RuPaul’s Drag Race soon began to flow.
“
Conversations about everything from anxiety disorders to RuPaul’s Drag Race soon began to flow.
Greg McIndoe
When the time came for us to receive our first project briefing that afternoon, we had all partially forgotten that we weren’t at a social club - we were here to learn things. We shuffled into the seminar room; a welcoming space full of green sofas, a riso printer and a library of art books, with walls covered floor-to-ceiling in illustrated inspiration.
The unexpected sight of a massive lemon drawn on a blackboard welcomed us into the space. “Can anyone tell me what that is?” asked our mysterious new lecturer. This was met tentatively with the reply of “…a lemon?” from one of several perplexed students. Within an hour, this curious piece of fruit had been transformed into the challenge of creating an artist's book. Art is apples, books are pears and so an art book is a lemon - makes perfect sense, right? The metaphor was fuzzy but the brief itself was luckily much clearer.
Beautifully lemony photography by Estúdio Bloom
No time to think about what kind of book we’d each my making though - there was drinking to do. Another hour later, the seminar room had been transformed into the venue for a welcome party. All three year groups mingled together with the lecturers, discussing an assortment of conversation topics just as broad as before. As we clinked our room-temperature ciders together and made a toast, I was already starting to feel at home.
My arrival at art school had already been filled with firsts. I had my first project briefing, made my first new friends, shared my first drink with classmates and saw my first confusing drawing on a blackboard - all of which, I am certain there will be many more of.
A present-day note:
The article above kicked off a column called Art Schooled which I wrote for three years, documenting the ups and downs of life in creative education. Out of all the articles in that series, this is one of my favourite ones to re-read. I can hear how optimistic I was about the adventure that was ahead of me - and I was right to be.
I was already getting the impression that the new building I was in and the community I was surrounded by would become very special to me. However, I had no idea just how creatively and personally transformative the next few years would be for me. I look back on my time in Dundee with such fondness, perhaps I will revisit it again soon.