Photos of new Fine Arts Building by Merry Le

San Jose City College is a famous college with a long history. It is located in the center of  San Jose City in a valley called “Valley of Yellow Flowers.”

The fine arts building has been rebuilt to meet the necessity of modernizing the college.

I have a nostalgic feeling for this ancient and lovely building in the Fine Arts Department that my life was attached to for a very, very hard and long time in order to get my two degrees, Associates of Art and Associates of Science.

On the first day of construction, watching the bulldozer pushing down the classrooms of the old fine arts building where I frequented every day  to study together with my friends from everywhere in the world, my tears flushed out automatically.

I suddenly cried like a child  because I felt a big loss in my life.

I silently looked at the workers working hard for a new building with a modern design.

However, after the totally new and modern fine arts building was done, my tears flushed out once again, not for the loss, but for a great happiness coming to my mind. I felt proud to be a student of  the Fine Arts Department of SJCC.

Some of the trees planted in the campus from the beginning of the College were cut down.

Instead of throwing them away, the SJCC staff decided to have them sawed into boards and installed as a fence on the balcony of the new building with the purpose of showing the preservation of the old things which the predecessors founded and left for us as our precious heritage.

For the opinions of the former students of the Fine Arts Department, many teachers and employees of SJCC, the decoration with wood fence on the balcony in the front of the building absolutely has a great historic value, but it doesn’t have harmony or match the modern building.

Therefore, we have a humble suggestion for the staff that these historic boards of wood be used to build a bridge designed in a rainbow form in front of fine arts building.

This design would have great meaning to us and show our gratefulness to our predecessors, the preservation of the old and the increase of the luxury and beauty for Fine Arts Department.

We think that The Bridge of Art of such a design would keep the good tradition between the old ones and the new ones, the predecessors and us, and also give our descendants a lesson that the improvement of the art building doesn’t mean we forget and leave the old ones in the past.

The Bridge of Art, used to link our predecessors to us and to our descendants, is so important and necessary because history and art should join together to create the tradition of art.

History shows the truth and ethics of a country, and art performs the harmony and the diversity of beauty.

As a former student of Fine Arts Department, I always love and show my gratefulness to where I studied and graduated from; and I also hope that my Fine Arts Department would  provide more graduate students with significant abilities for art, not only America, but worldwide.