By CLAIRE WINTER
There’s something special about finding art where it’s not supposed to be.
Of course, this is a take so cold I could use it as an ice pack on my bruised ego. Artists all over the world- amateurs and professionals alike- have subscribed to the idea that art is not found only in the era’s “traditional” settings. For Renaissance artists, this meant nontraditional subjects, found in ordinary settings or made with unusual techniques. For more recent artists, this means anything from temporal art, such as “Untitled” by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, to million-dollar Banksy pieces done on the side of buildings. And, of course, the informal art that you find in everyday life.
Coming from a cookie-cutter community in which student expression was solely limited to school-funded murals and names scratched into desks (and little non-sanctioned art overall) I’m always enchanted by the variety of such that you can find in unexpected places at Beloit. Bushnell- the dorm I currently live in- features miniature paintings all over the brickwork on the first floor, while its mold-riddled basement has a riot of paintings from past residents. “LAMENTATIONS” is scribbled in black sharpie on the stairway down. Likewise, the Powerhouse bridge is often full of half-peeled stickers pasted on the wood or the columns, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom but am grateful for anyway. Small pink turtles or bronze butterflies stenciled onto walls and lightposts, the smiley face burned into the asbestos-tiled ceilings of my room, or the everpresent graphite marked into sterile classroom tables: these all tell me where I am. So too do the everpresent and everlasting dicks, which display another fundamental tenet of human nature.
These might not be the most “complimentary” marks that students leave on the college- I’m sure administration would agree- but they are signs of life, and the collective desire to leave a mark, however temporary. The HOA members among us can keep their perfect ideal of a sterile neighborhood. I’ve seen enough to know I’ll choose drawn-on dicks any day.
Featured Image: Betty Cavicchia’28
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