Whenever I feel ill at ease with the state of the world, I know I can always head to the Willard building. Not for the amateur theatrics of the Willard preacher, but for some anonymous pick-me-ups on post-its. Early last fall I was on my way to the library when a sudden urge for the bathroom hit me. Willard happened to be a perfectly en route spot for me to stop, where I found fate had suddenly delivered me upon the scene of an amazing piece of concept art in the first floor girl’s bathroom. Immediately inside the bathroom two bright post-its were stuck on the face of the mirror. An orange one proclaimed “Never give up”. A blue one read “You matter to me”. More than the actual messages making me smile, the thought that someone had the idea to write them on post-its and display them in the girls’ bathroom made me smile. I liked imagining some renegade artist stealing into the bathroom to tape inspirational messages on the mirror, in the stalls, and on the tiled walls. What a new age kind of graffiti. It seemed to me that art actually is all around.
Art being all around a college campus is something most people take for granted. With as many twenty-somethings crammed into one area as Penn State can boast, you would expect creativity to be bursting. Still, something my freshmen seminar professor said towards the end of our semester together continued to resonate with me: Penn State lacks that certain arts culture that is normally synonymous with university years. This was disheartening coming from my favorite professor who taught me the art of the first person narrative. And what made me even more reticent to believe this pronouncement was the fact that we were having this conversation in the mock living room of Irving’s basement. I couldn’t think of a more artistically tuned moment. I mean here we were, a group of vibrant college women, enjoying coffee and good conversation about books with our professor amongst the leather bound tomes on perfectly aged shelves.
But come to think of it, we were only a small percentage of the Penn State community at large, only a gaggle of freshmen English majors ready to romanticize the world. Unlike the description of my seminar professor’s college years, there was not a movement of the overall student body to attend free film showings, poetry readings, or student gallery openings. With that perceived lack of interest came a perceived lack of opportunity to partake in such art events. It became my mission to seek out any and all art events that happened on Penn State’s campus and enjoy every minute of them. I was truly after that bohemian college existence.
Now as a junior I feel like I have found just that existence by attending Outlaws performances in the basement of the Arts Building, spending Friday nights in the Forum for No Refund Theatre, and checking out the rotating exhibits in the HUB and Palmer amongst other things. My new mission with this blog is to share all of these artsy joys with you much like the anonymous author(s) of the bathroom post-its shared some joy with me. I am Paige Cooperstein and I vow to show you Penn State art, actually.