ARCHIVES: May 2010

keep ‘em begging for scraps
A memorial to affordable education

I received my BFA from SFAI 21 years ago, and these days I receive email announcements from the alumni listserv. Yesterday I saw a listing for a short film nearing completion called “Default: the Student Loan Documentary”. The link is here.

I touched upon this subject in an entry called “My very favorite graffiti ever” in the December archives. Like so many folks in this country, I am constantly searching for how to better my situation. And we think, as we’ve been told over and over again, that a higher degree will get us there. As I wrote in the entry below, I am in competition with so many who have graduate degrees.

Why don’t I have that MFA? Looking back 20 years, maybe I should have made graduate school a priority. Of course, with this gift of hindsight in advance, I never would have agreed to move to Philadelphia either. These two things get relegated to the very short list of regrets I have about my life. I applied to grad school twice. The first school, after receiving my application and then turning me down, let me know that their only reason was because I had not traveled the 2,000 miles to interview in person. They made it very clear to me they were keeping my application open for two years, no changes needed on my part. But in those few short months between application and rejection my life had changed sufficiently and I was involved in numerous art events and communities in San Francisco, this being 1990, and I had decided to stay in the area for the next few years at the very least. I applied to a Bay Area school soon afterwards, the one that made the most sense, and I was rejected again. However, this time it was for being overqualified. I had a great portfolio, sterling recommendations from two of their notable graduate alumni, a grade point average of 3.7 (which was well above what they needed for the art department in those days) and unusually high GRE scores. But then I began financially supporting an elderly parent. Economics got in the way. Interest in graduate school faded for the same reason I was rejected from the second school; I was molding myself, I was teaching myself how to be an artist, and I was doing very well until moving to PA in 2002.

And I think maybe it would have helped having the MFA when we moved here, and maybe it would help now, this very minute, but it is so out of the question. It used to be that life experience, professional experience, years of proven work was more than sufficient. Not so much anymore.

But then just try to advance yourself! If you are going to school for enrichment, take adult education classes and pay as you go. Spend a lot of time at the library or online. Take workshops. Apprentice. This is how you get a real education. If you need a degree, make sure it is actually worth something, that it leads to a well-paying job and not ballooning student loan debt.

I don’t have an MFA and I don’t have student loan debt. I guess I am even. The art schools and university art departments are turning out way more MFA graduates than there are jobs for even a fraction of those graduates. What happens now?

When I went to SFAI, and the community was wonderful, and the classes ranged from useless-and-annoying to very-well-worth-it-indeed, and I have no regrets going there (because I did actually learn how to draw later on in New Mexico), the one thing I didn’t understand was how unpoliticized artists can be. And I was doing mostly political work. Hell, they weren’t all that big on subject matter of any kind when I was there... I even wrote a paper on how the political affects all of us no matter how insulated we may try to be. I think this may be changing. I am hoping this is changing, because the student debt situation, as it stands now, is one more huge nail in the splintered coffin of the American Dream of a better tomorrow. Or even a slightly less worse tomorrow.

posted May 30, 2010

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if this, then that
Sometimes I paint what I see in my head

Not a minor chip on my shoulder. Not a beef. It’s bigger than that. It’s a big ol’ hairy mammoth standing on my foot and it won’t let me go without a fight. So why do these things bother me? I am so very particular. Words have meanings, and I want those meanings to mean something substantial.

It came at a crossroads. It came about during a conversation between artists concerning graduate school. It came about when that one dusty light bulb flickered on; and now, seemingly all of a sudden, graduate school attendance is proof that you are serious about your art, an MFA is a requirement for being taken seriously by the art world, for getting anywhere decent in your career, for being counted. Twenty years ago all an MFA was necessary for was having that piece of paper so you could teach on the college level; something I thought even then was part of a self-perpetuating system, and does not by itself produce the best possible teachers.

They changed the rules in the middle of the game. They changed the rules after the game was over. Not everybody is allowed to play the game anymore. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how skilled, how creative, how original, what you have to say, your one-of-a-kind way of saying it, how visionary you might be... Which led me to thinking about the current definition for visionary art. I wonder how that had changed, and why?

Wikipedia has it right in their various explanations. It’s what I suspected. That, being ahead of the curve and listening to your inner muse above all else. So when did Visionary Artist come to mean an unschooled artist? And what, then, becomes the value of the BFA? If having a BFA means you are not a visionary, but are trained to some middling extent, and yet are still not serious enough about your art to get an MFA, what does that say?

Too much, way too much these days gets way too easily labeled and unfairly categorized. If it’s this, then it must be that. Forget looking around, doing a little research, considering something else that might be the case or that there may be some exceptions to the rule. Or that the rule itself may be nothing more than a flimsy assumption. Forget fairness. Forget merit.

Is it sheer laziness on the part of the person doing the labeling, the deciding, the judging? Or has a whole ‘nother generation gone by being taught what to think, instead of how to think. Standardization. It’s just so much easier.

posted May 23, 2010

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we owe nature everything
Oleaginous spring

I’m upset. I’ve been out of sorts. There’s too much going on, and it’s not the good stuff. Restlessness brought a much needed road trip this last weekend, a fun and wonderful weekend visiting family in southeastern North Carolina. There’s been a lot on my mind lately. My brain and I... We took a few days off, sort of.

We all went to visit the ocean one day; a hot and windy adventure in being sandblasted while combing for pieces of shell as smooth as beach glass. My city feet loved walking in the wet sand. The water was gorgeous and loud. It was the perfect shade of medium sea green, with wave after wave rolling in with a sweet ferocity. The water was beautiful. And clean.

Over the course of the weekend we visited rivers and bays and inlets and creeks and lakes and ponds. And swamps. They start naming the swamps as you drive south. All these waterways, all relatively clean. Maybe not drinking clean, but clean enough nonetheless. These places are home for birds and animals and bugs and fish and crustaceans. They are for us too; for recreation, for transportation, for beauty and respite.

I heard somewhere the earth is bleeding. There is a cut deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. This wound cannot be licked. It is bleeding red and orange and black, colors that belong elsewhere, but not the sea.

You look into the waterways and watersheds and you see how complex they are, even on the surface, even from a distance. It’s not like you can wipe off a smooth counter top with a wet paper towel when the oil starts oozing in, when the oil decides to become permeated and saturated and is setting up shop for the long run. The fluid lace of Spanish moss becomes a million funereal veils, dripping from every tree.

You want stupidity and ignorance? Read here about how the booms are set all wrong for containing the oil, but are just right for appeasing the media and certain politicians. You want something you can do? You want to know more? Click here.

One of my teachers at SFAI told us something way back when — That if you ever need inspiration, refer only to nature. And looking back, while all the other students were searching in the school library for books about famous artists, I was in the science aisle, looking up whatever nature I couldn’t already find outside in San Francisco.

A few days ago in North Carolina I was pondering reeds and egrets. A few days ago and elsewhere they were on the verge of a prolonged and brutal suffering. This disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is only just beginning, and I fear for much. I have been painting swamps from my trip to Florida last fall. These paintings are going to take a turn for the dark. I have no choice. I have a lot on my mind.

posted May 12, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
The element of line

This monthly feature on developing unlimited creativity is best referenced from the two original creative fun from almost nothing entries from the archives; September and October 2009. Read those two entries, and the entry below will be all yours. Use a simple and basic element of visual art to get your creative motor humming along.

Feeling linear, moving forward...

Line is wonderful stuff, and can be quite beautiful on its own. Line is visual poetry. Line is musical. You will find both actual and implied line in such things as edges, borders, creases, twigs, string, paneling, corduroy, stripes, kitty whiskers, leaf veins, markings on shells and cracks in the wall.

Sitting just where you are, write down a list of twenty or more different lines that you see around you. Write short descriptions of each of these lines. Be either poetic or pragmatic about it. Or poetically pragmatic if you choose.

Make an abstract or semi-abstract piece, either in two or three dimensions, using a minimum of four of the line qualities from your list of twenty types of lines and not much else. Drawing or painting lines can be easily done. For sculptural works, you can use wire, sticks, yarn, cord, glass rods, coils or any other linear material. You can also cut paper, fabric and many other things into lines that you can use for your linear piece.

Think about the direction of a straight line. Choose a scene or set up a still-life with 80 to 90% of the lines going in one direction, and the remainder all going in another. Or do an abstraction as such based on directional lines that you have observed.

Create another piece; pictorial, abstract or anything in-between, using only fluid, curved, curly, zig-zag types of lines. If you need to, limit yourself to no more than three main colors for the piece. First, make up a fun title such as; “The Zig-Zag Epoch of the Firefly Days” or “Boomerang Bustier”. Then you can make the piece fit the title, which would be more of an interesting challenge.

Excerpted and paraphrased from the book;
Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted May 5, 2010

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin