I just drove to EMU on my “night off” for a meeting in the gallery. The gallery director gave us a packet of forms and information — wall dimensions, checklists, available displays and pedestals, lighting info, everything we’ll need to set up our MFA shows.

Yikes.

I’m kind of excited, now. It was bewildering to me how fast two years has gone by, and now we are talking in terms of months. Now I am sketching pots perched on pedestals, hung on the walls, really tall pots in groupings on the floor…

I have a few decisions to make. I can choose the Ford gallery, a nice big gallery with white walls in kind of a nondescript campus building where the art department lives… for the first week in June, when everybody’s gone for the summer…

Or I can choose the student gallery, a smaller but modern studio with one glass wall, in the new mall-ish student center (as student union, food court, meeting rooms, etc.) in late May. (Everybody’s still gone except maybe the profs.)

If I choose the student center, there’s a freight elevator and a ramp, and it’s more accessible if my 93 year old grandma comes… but I will have to use the Union’s caterers ($130 for 36 cookies, water and juice.) On the other hand, if I choose Ford hall, I have to carry pots (and maybe grandma) up a flight of stairs, but it’s a larger space, and we can bring in our own food. (My hubby makes a lovely california roll sushi.)

Here’s the biggie: If I want to walk in the graduation ceremony when classes end in April, I have to finish my show and defense by the end of May. That means it has to be the student gallery slot, if I want to walk in graduation. I guess I have to decide how much I really care about the whole cap and gown thing.

I skipped it for my BA at Ohio State (too darn many people in line, and I was fed up with school and off on some adventure.) I did it for my MA at U of Oregon, and my parents flew out to watch. Now, though.. I dunno. Jeff and the kids would like me to do it, but the truth is, I’d just throw my hat in the air and get right back to work for another month and a half until I was REALLY done.

As much as I’d like my kids to watch me graduate, after all they have contributed during this two years of craziness, I’m tempted to dispense with the ritual and just focus on the show. If my friends and relatives are going to make the long drive north for something, I’d rather it be my opening/reception than the stadium full of cap-and-gownies.

Anyway I’m getting kind of freaked and excited at the same time. The upcoming spring break in Florida with my folks is a cross between an almost physical craving for sunshine, color and the smell of green grass — and a total panic about being unable to throw, glaze or fire for a WHOLE WEEK.

Especially since I plan to fire the salt and Patrick and I plan to fire the wood once I get back to town.