I Turned in My Sketchbook—Then Got Sent to Counseling
A George Condo painting on exhibit in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Back in the spring of 2017, I was taking ART 233 Drawing I—it was a required class for the Art & Tech major. One of our big assignments was to fill an entire sketchbook by the end of the term. Around that time, I was super into George Condo, the artist behind Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy cover. His work often explores themes of dehumanization, and I tried to mimic that style throughout my sketchbook.
Apparently, my teacher wasn’t familiar with Condo’s work and didn’t quite get what I was going for.
To top it off, I came down with the flu right at the end of the term. On the final day of class, I dropped off my sketchbook, told my professor I wasn’t feeling well, and headed home. I crashed hard—took a nap for about an hour—and when I woke up, I saw a missed call. I checked my voicemail and... yeah, it was a very concerned message.
“Hi Aaron this is Lori at the office of the dean of students. I’m calling because we have faculty that are concerned about you. If you could please give me a call back immediately... If I don’t receive a call back from you immediately um we will still be concerned and um we’ll need to check in with UOPD. So if you can give me a call back in the next five minutes so you got this and we can chat that would be great!”
I ended up calling Lori back to clear things up, but she still made me attend a mandatory counseling session. I explained to the counselor that it was just a big misunderstanding—I wasn’t depressed or suicidal, just sick and into some pretty intense art at the time.
I never did get that sketchbook back.