CSSSA



My home for 3 summers...





Located on the Cal Arts campus in stuffy, smoggy Valencia, the California State Summer School for the Arts runs an annual, invigorating arts program for students enrolled in high school grades 9-12. In order to apply, potential students turn in a portfolio of their work, or in other cases, a recording of their own performance. These portfolios then go through a rigorous (that's what we're told) screening process, and after eliminations are made, the remaining students are invited to attend. The program consists of several departments: Animation, Creative Writing, Dance, Film/Video, Music, Theater, and Visual Arts. Within each department there are frequently sub-divisions that narrow down the art form.

The students change from summer to summer, but these are some of the things about CSSSA one can mostly depend on as constants:

Rob Jaffe, CSSSA director







Ragging on the food from the Cal Arts Cafe is perhaps one of the driving forces of the CSSSA experience. The nifty attendants rarely get their due praise.









Our humble abode, the dorm rooms of the Great Ant Colony.




Without snazzy Cal Arts theaters like the Mod and the Rod (the Roy O. Disney hall) ... CSSSA wouldn't have so many crazy performances to send all the little bohemian hearts aflutter.






Vacant phones are like rare minerals. And when you think you've found a nice, hidden payphone, by the time you need to use it, there's a sweet little blond girl yapping away to someone for many hours...






There's always an abundance of dogs wandering around.
A few get familiar, but the rest... well, one has to wonder just where Cal Arts does get all that meat, and students are bound to speculate...






Tattoo--
The projection room mistress Naomi's dog who is unlikely to
end up as taco meat anytime soon.








Always watching, a (hopefully) stuffed bird awaits judgement day
atop a building across from the cafeteria.









College students always need more money. At Cal Arts, they exploit the summer youth who have little else to spend their funds on than used clothes...










Evening snacks, dancing, and pool were aspects of the on-campus pseudo-bar Mom's cafe, run by Johnny "Mom" Ray.














Finally, every student is issued their very own CSSSA dogtag which never really seems to have any use whatsoever... but... hey...

Go Home

The crickets are chirping,
The faucet's leaking...
Come visit soon, it's getting lonely.

Plagued with the screaming abdabs

Keep Hope Alive.