My Tower of Inspiration

The pain in my right shoulder is becoming unbearable as I trudge up yet another flight of stairs. My mind focuses not on the journey, but on the goal- on the moment when I can finally unburden myself of the giant black purse that has plagued my existence since I stepped out of my apartment this morning, my design portfolio. A giant number 4 greets me as I pull the handle on the last door I must strain to open before I reach my destination- Hopkins Hall 480. To many art students who come here, this is nothing more than a classroom, yet another temporary space in which to learn a subject. To me however it is so much more. It is a chamber of solitude, a vault of stories, a place of possibility. From the pin speckled walls to the paint covered tables, everything about the room speaks of creations past and conceptions to come.

At first glance, the room might not seem very artistic and creative- after all it is rather bare. No paintings adorn the walls as they do so many other rooms in OSU's main visual arts structure; no witty sayings or evocative posters greet your eyes when you walk in the door. If they did however, I believe it would detract from the purpose of the room. The room is not a place of endings, it is a place of beginnings- a place of creation, not of display. What the room does have in spades, however, are windows and tables. Windows that even on the gloomiest days (and so far this quarter there have been many such days) still manage to waft in brilliant shafts of light like a miniature cathedral. Tables whose visceral paint encrusted surfaces have become their own canvas- scored with the edges of knives, etched with the ends of countless pens, unfinished and waiting for whosoever will to add a bit of themselves to a tapestry composed of years of students' brainchildren. The pin pricks in the walls are a constant reminder of all the drafts that have been hung here for criticism; works that have flown to who-knows-where, that received their beginnings in the space in which I now sit.

I throw the giant bag from my back onto one of the waiting, haplessly arranged tables in the delightfully asymmetrical suite I have just penetrated and place myself onto a challengingly uncomfortable stool. I am ready for class now, and the room serves its overt purpose well enough. Later, though, I will return to unlock its true calling; and there will be new etches on the tables.

Erik Russell

____________________

"The world is but a canvas to the imagination"- Henry David Thoreau