San Francisco on the Cheap

San Francisco on the Cheap

Each year art professor Chris Terry shepherds a busload of Utah State students on an art tour to San Francisco. What started years ago as a vanful of students driven by the painting and drawing prof is now an every-seat-full chartered bus. The best part about the trip is its price: $170. Even starving art students can afford it (as well as cash-strapped students from every discipline on campus).

"These visits to major cultural centers are a vital part of our program at Utah State, primarily because of the firsthand exposure to original works of art, but also because the shared suffering of the bus trip forges a community out of a group of individual students," said Terry.

Trips are organized by the Student Art Guild. Special thanks goes to this year's organizers Aubrie Mema and Steve Stradley. Mema graduated this year with a BFA in painting and drawing. Next year she and her husband will live in Bologna, Italy, where she plans to pursue art full-time. Stradley is a senior, studying art education with an emphasis in painting. Other art profs and escorts on the trip included sculpture teachers JinMan Jo and Eileen Doktorski, and retired art professor Adrian Van Suchtelen.

The following piece was written by graduate painting student Namon Bills.