An Introduction

I always find introductions to be the hardest thing to do, and do well. So here goes nothing. My name is Kara, I am an Art Major at a little place called Covenant College. The school sits on top of what we locals like to call a “mountain,” but Colorado relatives have dubbed it a hill. Despite this debate, Covenant sits up high enough to overlook Chattanooga, and be a visual landmark to all the city people. It is a refuge, that can be something of an isolated island, even if you live off-campus and are only there when attending class. So when the administration decided to allow the sculpture professor, Kayb, to take some students to Florence Italy for the month of may, ten other students and myself jumped at the chance.

Some people might be wondering why on earth we would decide to subject ourselves to an entire extra month of classes. The thing is how could we not? Florence is considered the birth place of the Renaissance, without which, art and the value we place on the individual, would not exist (just two examples of the many.) Most of us, as art majors or art history buffs, have spent the past few years studying, discussing, “dissecting,” drawing, sculpting, and painting, many of the artworks that are here. How could we not come and see them in real life? True, we can see many excellent pictures of them online whenever we want. But there is a certain aura, or presence that the real work has that cannot be reproduced, an immediate sense that we are in the presence of something great, of maybe just a microcosm of truth. Given the chance to experience this, to feel it, and to sketch them in person, there really was no choice. Besides, it’s freaking Italy.