My First Day of School!

So yes, today was my first official day at ESBAM!

I think it went okay too, there are plenty of other Erasmus students, so I'm not on my own or anything.  It's quite different to Camberwell!  Firstly, it's nowhere near as nicely decorated (can you believe it) and secondly, it's just really different...  The program is fine art, and then within fine art you have to sign up to which studio you'd like to work in and be a part of, which is basically like dividing everyone into all the different disciplines, although not quite like that.  There's a lot of freedom to do what you like, even so much as you can sign up for a second studio and have another practice on the go.  There are studios for sculpture, photography, sound, crazy conceptualists etc...  Then for painting there are two studios - fields of painting (which I suppose is like the painting course at camberwell - the teaching is based in painting and everyone thinks about painting, but you don't necessarily have to produce paintings as such) and pictura est/ouest (which is actually two separate studios, not sure what the difference is, which are more geared towards painting painting).

Okay, so that's good.  But it's not just a matter of choosing a studio and working in it - first you have to present your work to the tutors for that particular studio, and they have to give their approval.  The reasons they may tell you no are that either the studio is full, or, they feel that your work doesn't really fit in with the theme of that studio.  Hmm!  But if they tell you yes, then great, you can find yourself a space in the studio and get on with it.  Tomorrow morning I'm presenting my work to one of the tutors from Pictura Est/Ouest, and I'm hoping he'll let me in, as I'm pretty intent on continuing to work with fabric collage and I'm not 100% sure if that's what they're into in that studio...  But I've chosen that over fields of painting as I've heard the tutors are much better, and I really need good tutors around me so that I can develop as much as possible!  And also I'm desperate to start making work, because I haven't even been here a fortnight and I'm already very aware that four months is not a long time at all...

Anyway, after I'm signed up for a studio I have to choose a few other things, the first being my sort of workshop/elective type thing.  I've read about the different options on the school's website, and none of them really do anything for me... aside from DRAWING - yesss!  Apparently this option includes life classes, so I am very pleased indeed and will be the first to put my name down for it.
Then I also have to choose a theory course...  This I don't fully understand yet, I haven't been given a list of options or anything, and the best I can find online is a list of first year lectures.  I'll have to check tomorrow what's going on there!

It seems very complicated!  Probably because I don't speak the language fluently, but it could just be that they're all mental here, haha!  No, I'm just a bit concerned because we were given a list today of all the separate things we have to do, and how many credits we'll get for each specific thing, yet there wasn't a lot of info on how to get the ball rolling with all the different classes, that's all.  I'm sure I'll figure it out tomorrow.  Oh, and fingers crossed me and my lovely new French chums are moving into our flat in Marseille tomorrow - I'm so excited!  It's in a really nice area and it's all painted in nice bright colours, and it'll just be great to finally be able to settle in.  I've got a back of brazil nuts in my case that I'm really looking forward to cracking open in celebration!

So, wish me luck for tomorrow and I will be back with an update soon!  Oh, and some photos I hope - at last!