Taylor Maguire’s Semester Abroad
When I flew to London last winter, I packed up my life in three suitcases leaving behind my cozy dorm room in Mal Brown, my circle of friends, and my ceramic studio at Providence. I felt ready. I had my new passport, and a swanky film camera at my disposal, and nothing felt impossible. What I didn’t expect to be waiting for me after I passed border control and set up my new room for the next few months, was to be met by this foreign creature known as homesickness. He would appear when I would be staring up at Big Ben, or when I returned home from the pub after a night out with friends. He nestled up close to me while I was sleeping and would recite memories from my life back at school like a broken record.
However, when I went to the Tate Modern for the first time with my new friend Natalie it was as if the little creature of homesickness was unable to be granted admission into the gates of the art world. Something kept it at bay. Natalie and I took turns gawking at giant sculptures and funny video clips, but in between our silly bits of conversation the familiarity within the museum walls made me feel at home. I felt in my heart the feeling I had been craving since my arrival. I felt a comforting pair of hands wrap me up in a hug as I looked at pieces I had seen in my Art History Survey class from years before. As I continued to stroll I was exposed to new artists from different backgrounds, new mediums to express ideas, and new ways to express stories.
The same feeling of comfort stowed away in my backpack as I hopped from country to country visiting museums. Visiting the Dior Museum in Paris, each floor was lined with dresses a different color of the rainbow and shoes that you only imagine movie stars from the 1950s would wear. When I went to Stockholm I trotted around various museums in the city. The first was free admission and it was a Medieval Play museum designed for children, but my friends and I still played around like giant toddlers with no supervision. I clambered into models of village homes you would only find on the Swedish streets in the year 1350. I gazed up at fake models of ships that looked like they belonged on the set of The Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I read about daunting plagues and the dense price of a loaf of bread. After that, we hit the Abba Museum and the Paradox Museum, where I was transported to different worlds full of music that I came to worship thanks to movies like Mamma Mia!; and saw illusions that made me feel like I was trapped in a lucid dream.
I saw art in every crevice of the city streets. Back in London, Notting Hill had stands full of trinkets that shimmered like gems found at the bottom of the ocean. The walls of pubs were peppered with paintings of dog heads on human bodies dressed for a game of golf. Giant graphic design posters clung to the walls of the Tube stations. Abbey Road’s gift shop has signatures of dead singers whose angelic voices had only kissed my eardrums from the radio. Soon the creature of homesickness grew smaller and smaller as the feeling of home began to manifest in the little things that I have loved.
