What it’s like living with a Fine Art student

Ahh Fine Art, the subject that is always at the brunt of everyone’s jokes, whether they’re expressing their rawest emotions through the medium of splashing paint on the floor or trying to convince an engineering student that their degree is just as important.

Having lived with a Fine Art student for all three years, I can tell you that it’s no picnic.

Her, left, looking particularly eccentric (Photo by Flirt Revolution)

Before the Art community raises it’s angry head in the comments section to object to the stereotyping, this is all based of my experience living with a Fine Art student, I know not all Art students will be the same.

One of her masterpieces

However, when your house-mate melts a plastic mixing bowl in the oven and then proceeds to leave it in the lounge for a month in the name of ‘art’, it is certainly confusing. Not only did the kitchen smell of burning plastic for days but it also incited intense annoyance as she attempted to explain the context behind the mess.

When asked about it now, she said: “I was an idiot back then, I have no idea what I did it for.” We lost a mixing bowl and a baking tray for nothing.

Art?

The majority of our cupboards are filled with obscure art equipment,  with one being completely stuffed with cardboard boxes. Whenever someone goes to fetch the hoover or mop they have to fight my way though old art projects: twisted scraps of plastic, balls of plaster and endless sheets of A2 paper.

This was in our cupboard for months

I fully appreciate just how time consuming Fine Art is and all the context and research that goes into a piece, but it doesn’t stop my heart sinking when I’m powering through a essay on the Neurobiology and Psychophysics of visual attention and she comes in and her work today consisted of drawing a square on the floor in flour.

The actual flour square in question

The art student I live with has a very perfectionist nature when it comes to any form of house decoration. When we decided to decorate the lounge for Christmas she had a small meltdown because the tinsel wasn’t the right shape and the decorations didn’t fully match. She also got up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning to rearrange the fairy lights on the Christmas tree, waking us all up in the process.

She is handy when it comes to DIYs and fancy dress though as she always has a huge toolbox filled with paint, masking tape and enough paper to make a thousand sets of home-made mouse ears. She’s also very practical when anything rips or breaks and is very creative when it comes to problem solving.

At least her exhibitions tend to include free alcohol – it makes it easier to try and bullshit knowing anything about art.