Rotten Eggs & Mermaids

My Favourite Class Exercise from Year One in Sheridan College's Illustration Program

In my procrastination-induced panic to apply for post secondary schools a few years ago, I managed to get accepted into the Illustration program at Sheridan College, Oakville. That said, I was more or less chucked into an intense, art-focused program right out of high school and couldn't possibly prepare for the strange new world I was about to enter.

For example:

In first year, one of my professors briefed the class on the most ridiculous project I'd ever had. We had been focusing on art movements/periods from history for a couple weeks and currently taking a look at the Dada* movement. My professor wanted us to take inspiration from Dadaism and come up with an unexpected interactive work of art to perform at our regroup the following week. This homework was obviously tantalizing.

When the next class finally rolled around, I showed up prepared with two palm-sized cardboard boxes. From the outside, they were plain-looking –nothing but ordinary brown cardboard. On my turn, I explained how I'd created a game based on the Western movie trope of high noon showdowns. So I had my professor and another classmate stand back to back, each with their own mystery box. I then gave them the instructions to walk 5 paces apart and open the box on my cue. Written inside the lid of the box was the next set of instructions, “throw as hard as you can at opponent" (but the instructions weren't referring to the box). The final performance was glorious as it was quick. 5 paces, "open your box!", and then rotten eggs exploding all around us. They understood the rules of the game perfectly; as soon as the participants opened their box to all those eggs, they turned around and launched fistfuls of scrambled eggs, soft-boiled too, all warm and smelly, across the classroom at one another.

Then after a short break (and some egg-cleanup) the rest of my classmates continued presenting their projects. My favourite by far, was when one of the other students asked our professor to leave the room as he set up. He proceeded to put a large storage bucket on the floor at the front of the class. Silently, he shimmied into a tight mermaid tail covered in sequins, stripped off his shirt to reveal the coconut bra he'd been wearing underneath, and then dragged himself into the big plastic tub before calling our prof back in. When the door slowly opened, everyone in the room went silent. This guy sensually wagged his mermaid tail up and down while greeting our professor, barely fitting in his empty bucket –or the costume for that matter. 😭

I wish I could remember the commentary behind either of those performances, but they exist in my memory only as the fever dream that they were. Regardless, they remain one of my favourite memories from my bizarre first year in post-secondary. After that day, it became easier to relax and laugh with my classmates –it was such a silly exercise for all of us. More than that, it taught me the importance of embracing the weirdness of this world and the human experience.

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*The Dada Movement: An anti-art, anti-war, and anti-bourgeois art and literary movement that emerged (in Switzerland during World War I), where artists of all kinds embraced irrationality, chance, and satire, aiming to shock and challenge conventional artistic and societal norms.

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Have any fever dream art experiences of your own?

Share your weird memory as a comment on this post for the chance to inspire a piece of art based on your story!