mull, mull, mull.
and not mull and cider, but melancholy-mull.

i'm surprised that i feel a kind of emptiness at the end of my art metal class.
it feels strange to not have something to worry over, not have something tangible to work on (perpetually) and not to have my professor breathing down my neck.

yesterday was the last session of art metal (probably forever, for me) and being the third-last person to go see him with my pieces, i gradually accumulated this sense of despair at not having the class anymore. forever.

i love this class.
it was so frustrating, so trying, so time-consuming, so filled with grief at having melted a piece, crammed with life experiences i never would have thought possible in my educational lifetime.
of course, i'm not discounting the fact that another class may surpass this, but as far as i see it, that's not very likely to happen.

fred fenster is a wonderful and brilliant professor.
i'll try my best to describe him, but it's not going to be anywhere even sufficient to fully explain the entirety of his passion.
he personifies metal.
he treats it as an equal, not as a subservient piece of art work.
his attitude and work ethic have impressed me to no end, and his frankness is refreshing.
he is one professor who is such a perfectionist, and his so hard on his students but harder on himself.
he was a self-taught metalworker and then went to grad school for a professional degree.

i have learnt patience, most of all.
to control this fiery impetuous nature of mine, which seemed beyond me.
i have learnt that in art, and in many other things, there IS no undo button, no "backspace", no "refresh".
it yields instantaneous results, which could mean immediate gratification or immediate failure.
so many times, especially with the computers, there's always backup, there's always system restore, there's always some painless way to go back.
this makes so many of us (me esp) complacent about our work, which bears severe repercussions on whatever else we might do.
this prevailing attitude of "undo" cannot enter the realm of relationships, cannot be allowed to undermine the quality of the first draft.

ahwell.
being pensive, once more.
:]
take it easy folks.
i should try to type without backspacing or deleting in my next blog.
attitude of perfection.
til then. :]