Back when I was a senior in college, the Art Department would occasionally grant a Masters student one of the galleries for their work. While I don’t remember all of the installations from my last year, I do remember one. Looking now at the curricula, it would fall under the heading “Public Art”.

The artist had been given the use of the larger of the galleries, and he used the entire space to create a “Bayou Vignette”.

When you walked into the gallery, the first thing you noticed was the air: it was humid and aromatic. There was the smell of raw earth, growing plants, and plants that given up and made way for new ones. The lighting was crafted to suggest twilight, and hanging from the ceiling were small LEDs that looked like fireflies [or so I’m told – ed.].

On the floor, the artist had rendered a water effect that caught the lighting in isolated reflecting pools. The ambient sound was of rain and ostensibly, the sounds of the bayou. Cutting across the gallery, there was a meandering bridge made of aged and sporadically warped wood that creaked as you walked on it. At the end of the bridge, was a tin-roofed shack with a wrap-around porch.

Once inside, it was as if you were peering into a life interrupted. A radio playing country music rested on a desk, a book folded open on a mattress, a percolator brewing away on a hot plate. And still, you heard the rain and the ambient sounds from outside.

It was magic. Persuasive enough that ever since, I’ve wanted to see similar areas, in real-life, for myself.

A few of my classmates were incredibly talented. While most of the Graphic Design majors (myself included) started our careers in some corporate backwater, those talented classmates went to Disney, Warner Bros., or some of the other studios. There were a few of my classmates who were incredibly talented. While most of the Graphic Design majors (myself included) started our careers in some corporate backwater, those talented Fine Arts majors went to Disney, Warner Bros., or some of the other studios. One classmate in particular, duplicated, down to the brushstroke, this Rubens painting. Googling his name, I just discovered he was Visual Effects Art Director on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And that, is just too cool.