My days in Art School at IFAC in Miami

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I was 16 and heading to Downtown Miami to start Art School College. High school had no real place for me and I couldn’t really be there any more. After going through my sister’s mail one day, I found some packets with information about IFAC, International Fine Arts College, now known as the Miami Institute of Art. The school was amazing; small, quaint and rustling of warm creative youth. The year was 1988. Everyone there looks and plays the part like they are all on center stage. In this school there are no clicks. You have to be the click. You are the click or nothing; you absolve the click in order to not be part of the click but instead be the ‘one’. The one person that everyone want to know -and then there’s all the other cool people who like comics. Hundreds of them. And there are artists, pencilers, inkers, colorist, painters, sculptures, fashion designer, seamstresses, and other art-like people. You can tell all these art-like people because they lick themselves like cats, remember that and they are persnickety.

Everyone has an accent since no one really is from Miami in 1988. Everyone, everyone, everyone is happy, unless they owed money. You could tell when they owed money from the line outside Financial Aid. Then you met with this nice spanish black madame -Maria possibly, though I fail to remember her name. And she still works there I believe. She was awesome, always taking care making sure I had money to stay in school. Actually she made sure everyone had money. She was completely on top of it and she was always busy. Actually, I never remembered her not working. God bless her soul.

As soon as you walk into the original IFAC building of 1988, to your immediate right is the doorway to Dean Daniel M. Stack, a lovely person whom isn’t here today. He was old, smooth, faint white hair, some wrinkles and just like style. I mean styyyle. He was one of the ‘originals of design’. He embodied it. Actually back then, all the staff were originals. It actually felt like being in a Harry Potter book because you get transported into this niche world. IFAC students itched to be part of the originals. Do something. Each of us had these superfluous goals. Agency, travel, design, office, car, work, movie, cartoon, and more, so much more.

The atmosphere is as if it had been sprinkled with magic dust. That’s the visual, glossy and fuzzy with crisp sharpness in gausian areas. It’s odd, like you know you are in art school. You know that that guys likes to draw, duh. That person’s definitely someone in fashion or something…sometimes it’s hard to tell but you know they all have something, that’s why they were there. The made me take a test to see what I did regarding art. Was I a painter, an airbrush artist, illustrator, font man, inker, illustrator, fashion designer, interior designer, yea, I know I said that twice we’re in mid sentence fragment horrow, (yes with a ‘w’ that’s the sound effect) or maybe you were like a computer genius, you just liked fashion and wanted to do whatever you were good at or, graffitti artist. It was like walking with giants. IFAC was fun, unlike any other fun since the school was so small every class felt like family.

There were maybe 500 of us in the entire school you see but the schedules were tight. You never stopped working. From 8-1 am were their Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes and from 2-5 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays ranging from 6 to 8 classes per semester at International Fine Arts College.

Anyways classes were longer with 2 sessions per year…I remember Brian, Giovanni, seeing this girl with red hair, black hair here and scattered over there, surrounded by trees and I try and make my way to wherever it was I was supposed to be going to. It’s an the auditorium for our info to know. I come by myself from Miami Beach taking the C bus in South Beach to Downtown Miami, actually I’ve done pretty much all of this by myself I think, the entire school journey. I would take the buses which was easy enough since it only cost 35 cents for the ride. The auditorium sounds big when I enterened. Yet it’s not. It’s quaint. And by quaint I mean it’s small so you can work a crowd and not feel like they can’t see their eyes but it’s got volumes and echo filled richly colored walls. There’s soul in this school and that soul has funk. It riches inside each room and fills it with energy you can feel from out in the street. The building just calls you in. Then you get in and you just want to go into every single room and find the secret doorways. Yes, there are secret doorways in International Fine Arts College.

I remember some nice elderly ladies would have meetings every so often. I always thought whenever I saw them that these were fashion idols, controllers and the true players, or they could just be a bunch of gals. Probably. There’s a lot of women in this school and each girl -has a boyfriend. I remember Dale Baron, he’s doing well for himself in advertising busting his ass, and Giovanni is the starship commander of some design agency down in the Miami Design District. It’s nice to be able to fire with full ad agency ammunition and he gets the respect he deserves.

Yapur. Mr Yapur. He introduced me to typography and masking, and how hard it would be to be contractual. I also had art classes… More to come…Check back soon.

— Zeus ::)
Nov 15, 2007