Blogging is my once a week office job. It is to me as the Daily Bugle is to Clark Kent.
My secret Super(wo)man job is modeling for the art department. My hours for the art department are irregular and sometimes bizarre, giving the impression that I have a secret identity. While there is no epic tearing of a button down shirt and tie to reveal my uniform from planet Krypton, the modeling is nude.
Most recently I’ve been modeling for a sculpture class. As opposed to painting classes where I need to remain as still as possible, for sculpture I sit mounted on a kind of enormous lazy susan and the students rotate me every once in a while. It is interesting to see the interpretations of space and mass in sculpture as opposed to light and drawing in painting.
This is the beginning of a sculpture done by a friend of mine
For whatever reason, it also shocked me to walk into the sculpture studio and see the array of media students use to sculpt. Most impressive to me was an enormous three-dimensional key made out of cardboard.
Similarly, it is interesting to see the way that multiple students interpret the same image as they paint it onto a canvas. While not all the painters view from the same angle, the choices they make in what to put on the canvas are interesting. With sculpture I can see the work happening in front of me, but in painting the artists’ work are hidden behind their canvases. I see paintings come together in a more interrupted process, while sculptures change before my eyes.
This is a painting that hung in the Jewett Art Gallery
Modeling for Wellesley students is a special kind of job. I find that because it is a women’s college the artists pay extremely close attention to the uniqueness of female anatomy. It feels special to me to have my Wellesley sisters pour themselves into work focusing on one of their peers. In the art that I’ve seen produced as a result of my modeling, I’ve seen both beautiful representations of my own body, but also artistic representations of a Wellesley students imagination.
While the rumors are true and we do pour over books and homework most of the time, Wellesley is a wonderful place to harness and exercise you creative imagination.