Some Thoughts on What it’s Like for Me These Days as an Artist
This business of being an artist is unique as a career. Creatives have to be self-directed and productive, because nobody tells you what and when and how. Well they do, but we don’t have to listen. In fact, sometimes it takes a bit of wherewithal to NOT listen. Thank goodness I only need my career to support my habit for paints, brushes, canvases and frames.
So far, it’s done that.
Always, I paint what I want to. Suggestions like, “You should try painting some non-objective abstracts, I bet you’d be good at it” are meaningless because other than maybe trying something different as an academic exercise, or just for fun, I have no interest in it. I paint for me, first and foremost. I don’t love commission work because by necessity, it’s a painting for someone else, and there is quite a lot of angst that takes place on my part on pleasing the client. I do take commissions on a fairly regular basis, though, and so far, it’s turned out okay each time. no plans to stop doing that! It just feels more like work than when I make my own choices.
If I decide I really don’t think a painting I made came out as well as I had wanted, I have absolutely no problem scraping it down and using it for the next idea. It’s easy enough when I paint on a rigid panel. Things on canvas tend to retain the image, so painting over them doesn’t work for me, and those go on a burn pile. Every spring, we have a yard waste fire and then I videorecord throwing the discarded paintings right on that.
I find it liberating. Some of my artist friends find that appalling, because I’m getting rid of my “art”. Some artists can’t part with anything they’ve done. I feel this is a mistake. These are not my children. I don’t want my worst work saved for posterity! Believe me, I still have a couple of hundred paintings stored all over the house and in the gallery. Too many. Probably time for another purge.
Then, there’s showing my work in public. As a member of a cooperative gallery, I get to choose what I want to show each month. There’s really no angst involved, just a decision-making process based on which wall I get. They vary in what color they are, where they are situated in the gallery spaces (of course), and a little bit in size. Once every two years it’s my turn to be the “Featured Artist”. This past June, I had my turn. I presented about 25 works in a show I called “Local Waters” all oil paintings of places I’ve visited in person, some many times. They were landscapes with a view of water including the Puget Sound, the Hood Canal, Fidalgo Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. I sold five paintings during that show, which was certainly an affirmation.
My featured image for this post was in that show- is an oil on board painting called “Tourists”. It depicts a view of Fidalgo Bay from a park in Anacortes, Washington, on a chilly gray day in March. Me, observing the observers…
While I do sell the occasional painting through the gallery throughout the year, most of my sales there each month come from note cards and the quirky ceramic pieces I’ve been producing. My painting sales come more often via social media.
I apply to many other shows each year. Some are local, some require mailing invited entries out of state, some are online only. I’ve come to have a better handle on what judges seem to look for, so I’m better at getting accepted. My acceptance rate has gone from 35% of shows a few years ago to about 60% this year. (I applied to 32 shows) I suppose that some of that may be because I’m a better painter now than I was a few years ago. I even win the occasional prize, which always shocks me.
On the other hand, it always pings a little when I don’t get into a show, but that’s not the worst thing, really. Every juror has their own idiosyncrasies and their decisions often seem arbitrary and capricious, especially when I view a show later and see what actually got in.
I can usually take those rejections with a grain of salt.
The worst thing is when I apply to other galleries, and they show a great deal of initial interest, and then decide my work won’t fit with their present needs. This has happened to me three times; once just before COVID, and twice in the last month. These are galleries that actively invited me to submit an application. I do the best I can, go to interviews prepared and relaxed, the interviews feel like they went well, and boom.
I suppose it’s all part and parcel of being a working artist. My audience does seem to find me. I enjoy what I do and I want to keep doing it. And so I will.
Oh. The two paintings shown below are now hanging in a show called “Light and Color” in a gallery in Stanwood, Washington. I’m sure you can see why they got in.
11/12/2022 @ 1:53 am
“… I really don’t think a painting I made came out as well as I had wanted…”
I don’t play as well as I’ want to, but better thank I think I can…
I can’t imagine Oscar Peterson or Erroll Garner feeling as I do, but my sense is that most creative artists tend toward a bit of self-deprecation and doubt.
It seems that we’re in a constant struggle to improve and do better.
Competing with one’s self is a strong motivator…
11/12/2022 @ 11:21 am
Hi Ron,
I have no allusions that I’m anything more than someone who likes to paint, works at it, wants to keep getting better, and sometimes does pretty well with it. You’re right about the idea of competing with one’s self.
11/12/2022 @ 10:19 am
I understand these sentiments.
Never wanting to be somebody’s dancing bear, my own inclinations eventually evolved into trying to please myself rather than others.
Being a savage critic of my own work has been tough enough,
11/12/2022 @ 11:28 am
Exactly! Only my commission work has to please someone else, and I can deal with that. If they know my style, then they pretty much understand what a finished piece will look like. If I get any resistance, I can always forego the commission. There have been a few requests for things way out of my bailiwick, and I just don’t accept those. Portraiture, for example. (I’ve done a couple of family members, and myself, but that’s it.)
11/12/2022 @ 11:45 am
Sometimes, when it’s late afternoon, and I’ve been touching paper with a pencil since breakfast, I feel like the luckiest person alive. It breaks through the head noise: the inner critique, the anxiety over that area that’s turning out kinda weird, the uncertainty about the next project. Lines spin away from fingers with no sense of how, or what I did. It feels like I know nothing about drawing, yet when I leave the studio table, a drawing rests there that looks like someone knew what they were doing.
Talking about being an artist is difficult, but I’m guessing you know what I mean. Congratulations on the exhibits; you’re really sailing 🙂
11/12/2022 @ 12:08 pm
Thank you for this, Suzanne.
I DO know what you mean. That immersion melts away the rest of the world, and it’s vital to the process. It’s certainly not mechanical, is it? It seems more that the non-verbal part of the mind has been let loose to make it happen. I love that feeling of looking at something after a session land not being able to quite grasp how it happened.
Some – but not all- paintings go through an ‘I hate it’ phase, which is debilitating. Usually I just stop when I’m feeling that, and put it aside until the next day. It stays on my mind, though. Often, I will dream of the work and see something else that can happen to it. Weird, right?
11/12/2022 @ 12:34 pm
The I Hate It Phase is part of the process, no way to avoid. Important to resist grabbing the eraser or palette knife, keep head down, work through until all that is hated is beneath a layer of new stuff. Leaving it in the flat file for a week also seems to make whatever look much better than you remember. I’ve got two drawings on the table now, so I can work back and forth. Mine clock in at around 150 hours, so boredom can arise.
I dream I’m drawing nearly every night. Sometimes, problems get resolved. Sometimes I mentally noodle away at reflected light on a feather. Sometimes things get bizarre, like when I was trying to make an almond butter sandwich and draw at the same time, not get almond butter on the drawing. Anxiety!
When driving I’m often struck by how much drawing is like that–a blend of muscle memory, experience, recognition, and intuition, arriving at a destination with no particular memory of the trip.
Fun talking with you outside of IG!
11/12/2022 @ 1:30 pm
Suzanne, It’s SO nice to be able to talk about these things. I am enjoying the conversation very much. Instagram is okay for the barest of connections. This is better by far.
11/12/2022 @ 1:26 pm
Some of this has analogues in music, which you of all people will get. When I play I’m sometimes not happy with what I played, thinking I could have made better choices. But in those cases I’m always comparing myself to myself, not to other musicians, so I might think it’s crap but if I compare it to other output I’ve heard it isn’t crap. Are my listeners comparing me with me? Most don’t know my playing well enough to do that, so not likely. I hear the faults. That doesn’t mean an audience does, particularly when they’re faults of choice as opposed to faults of execution.
11/12/2022 @ 1:45 pm
Yes, Kosh, I get this completely. The BLP and I are playing out again, now that things have opened up again for live music. We performed about a half dozen times this summer and fall. I admit to being a bit rusty because I’d rather paint than practice, but most of what we do these days is well ensconced in muscle memory. I play it safe and don’t worry about it too much at all. It comes out fine. He, on the other hand, is working with another musician playing Irish and Celtic music at pubs and breweries, and they’ve done over 50 gigs so far this year, with about another dozen to go, so they are really poised and polished.
I don’t know that any of the audiences could actually recognize any part of the decision-making process, or even the very occasional error in execution. Those things go by so fast, and unless they are absolute clunkers (extremely rare) they really are not noticeable.
I’m glad he’s more involved in another musical project, because I’d be just as happy not to play out any more. I’ll do it as long as he wants, though.
11/12/2022 @ 2:01 pm
Musicians get to experience the joy of playing with other musicians, of connecting through their instruments. Visual artists get the joy of the eraser/palette knife/backyard bonfire and being able to make corrections without witnesses. We work alone though. Solitude feels soulful, most of the time. Other times, it just feels lonely.
I often wonder what it would feel like to co-paint or draw. Lynda Barry and her hub do this. I’m pretty sure I’d end up erasing things that another person did though. Maybe no alterations would have to be one of the rules.
11/12/2022 @ 4:53 pm
Suzanne, I would be a horrible candidate for working with others on art. I would hate it if my part got changed. I do enough of that on my own, I guess.
BUT. There is a collaborative exercise I do with students when I teach Drawing 1 that is really fun. Usually do it late in the quarter, when everyone has a bit of confidence in their ability to render something that they are looking at. I set up a fairly complex still life on a small table in the center of the room, and set up all the easels around it 360°. Each student gets to pick the colored oil pastel of their choice. To start, they write their names on an upper corner, and then set up the basic composition of the drawing. After about 7 or 8 minutes, I have everyone move 2 (or 3) spaces clockwise, depending on how many are in the group, and spend the next 7 minutes adding to the drawing now in front of them. Their name goes below the initial artist’s name.
After about an hour and at least 5 or 6 moves, they end up back at their own drawing.
Because there is no possibility of erasing, all marks are recorded and the attempts to obscure are obvious.
Then we take a look at the finished drawings as a group.
The results are never as chaotic as you might expect.
A couple of things become apparent.
Some artists try very hard to maintain the initial design and it’s hard to distinguish that other artists were involved, except for the change in color. This is possibly the less creative solution, but the more conforming.
Other artists try very hard to add their own unique touch and try to radically change the image from where it began, making their part stand out.
The discussions are so interesting- their impressions of what it was like to collaborate this way, to talk about how they attempted to insert themselves into each drawing they come to. Some were frustrated by the errors they saw in previous contributors- wrong sense of perspective, for instance, or shape…
Others were fine ignoring previous entries and just contributing their own marks.
I think it is a valuable exercise because it really forces them to step outside of their comfort zone and view art from a lot of new perspectives, not just their own. And it facilitates a lot of great communication about what they are doing.
Each artist gets to keep the one they started with.
Not surprisingly, the non-conforming artists and those who are simply better at drawing like this exercise less than others.
11/12/2022 @ 8:28 pm
What a fun drawing project! It’s kind of like exquisite corpse, except each artist gets to look at the established drawing in progress. Also, they reveal their ways of drawing, enabling you to have conversations about their work through that lens. There’s probably one or two whose process is also yours? The corrector, the perfectionist, the careful under drawer, the messy wild galloper, etc? I can instantly peg the slow drawer (me) in the first five minutes, the one who twenty minutes later will have nearly nothing down when it’s time to stop.
Lynda Barry, the artist who co-draws with her hub, teaches at UW-Madison, her focus is comics and graphic novels. She’s written/drawn several books, one is a course syllabus, fully illustrated. I’ve stolen several of her bits. My favorite: she hands out index cards at the first class meeting, and asks everyone to draw a ten minute self portrait and re-name themselves. They post their drawings, and learn their names, things like Skeletor and Tiny Reptile. LB re-names herself as well, she was Prof. CATS (the musical) last semester. It makes it super easy to learn everyone’s names that same day, rather than in three weeks–Tiny Reptile being much easier to remember than Jennifer DeNardo, William Francis, etc. and they use those names the rest of the semester.
When you set up your still life project, it could be fun to hide some unorthodox still life thingie in it, like a plate of Oreos or a rubber rat, and see if anybody draws that. The covid year I taught over zoom, I’d give an optional extra credit drawing each week, something strange, like the inside of a car trunk or yourself as an 18c French peasant or the devil’s dinner. Once I took a photo of this rotting fence near my house, covered in moss, and dripping wet from rain. It was the only time every student in the class opted to do the extra credit and the drawings were WONDERFUL. I think the impossibility of drawing the thing realistically set them free, strong and weaker drawers both.
11/13/2022 @ 12:49 pm
What a great conversation! I love hearing about what you and other instructors do- it’s so creative and inspiring. Makes me remember why I do this teaching thing myself.
I am having a VERY difficult quarter with a group of students who can barely put a sentence together, have no interest in doing anything that requires any effort, and expect – expect!!!- great marks on less than mediocre work. I am ALL about the effort when it comes to art students, so this is killing me.
11/13/2022 @ 4:13 pm
Those slacker students are in every class. Some register with the idea that art courses are gut classes where they’ll pass the time drawing bleeding eyeballs and gaming characters, and pick up an easy 3 credits. You are teaching college students? I think you mentioned you were.
Do you have a syllabus? Mine spell out in detail what is required for each letter final semester grade. If an A expecter gets upset with their C- you can invite them to sit with you and go over that part of the syllabus again. I also make individual project rubrics, a project goal check box form handed out at the beginning of each project, and back with the boxes filled in (or not) when it is completed. The loafers sometimes want to use these to negotiate, e.g. “you said six sketches, but my two took as long as six”, etc. but you can just give them the Yoda smile.
Forgive me if you already recognized this, but strong students are often reluctant to tell faculty that they too resent the loafers, especially the time you spend with them. A student stayed after class once to tell me how pissed they and other students were at one particular loafer, and how they felt the time I spent helping the loafer cut into their time with me. They were right–loafers are a giant energy suck. Anyway, that was the end of it for me. When someone posts a solution to a two week project that they threw together fifteen minutes before class, I skip over it. They seldom say anything because they know. On the few occasions someone does try to get a full class critique on a ten minute cafeteria effort, I say, finish your project, bring it in next week, we can all discuss it then.
All that said, lack of motivation can be the result of depression. You probably have noticed this. Since covid, the percent of depressed students seemed to double. A good indicator can be their sketchbook. It’s really helpful to see what’s going on there anyway. Sitting together, turning the pages, and asking about things can give you an inside look. Artists are pre-occupied by weird things. One student did totally uninspired old school academy solutions to advanced drawing projects, yet her sketchbook was filled with doodles of meat. We looked at Soutine and Sue Coe. We designed a project about meat. Then…wow! She’s now freelancing for a card and gift company and her most popular design? Illustrated meat gift wrap! It’s fabulous! I’ll send you her IG account.
tl;dnr Teaching disinterested loafers is a piece of the cross we bear. Teaching the good ones is our heavenly reward 🙂
11/13/2022 @ 5:00 pm
Yes, the course I’m complaining about this quarter is a 5 credit college course. It’s called “Art for Teachers”. The course has 4 “legs”. Art History and Art Education theory- both with a very broad view, completed as text readings and online quizzes using questions in a variety of formats (multiple choice, matching, fill the blank, true/false) – all open book with multiple attempts allowed for the best possible grade.
The 3rd leg is actual art making. They get a list of materials to have and assignments that include simple exercises and experiences in drawing, watercolor painting, sculpting with air-dry clay, printmaking, and a few more- mostly things they could do with children. Most have NO art experience so it generally works out pretty well.
The 4rd leg- Writing Lesson Plans- is the most difficult, because it involves reading a lot of material on process v product art, and understanding how to apply those to usable art lessons. This is where things get dicey.
To backtrack a little- since COVID it’s been asynchronous online only. Yes, there’s a very detailed syllabus, and I have the students complete an assignment saying they have read and understand it.
Inside the syllabus, near my grading practices (also very detailed) is sentence that is really a test of whether or not they have actually read the document. a line that this quarter reads:
For extra credit, send me a picture of a quokka via email before the end of the first week of class.
Most quarters, I get about 5 or 6 students (out of 20 or so) who see it and send me the pic. This quarter I got 2 out of 23.
That was a red flag and things have gone downhill since.
Because it is a course most students take in preparation for certification in Early Education (pre-K – grade 3) I always get many students with a lot of love for small children and not a lot of academic ability.
In lesson plan writing, they have a whole bunch of assignments geared toward presenting all the information they need to proceed. Then, 3 practice assignments geared to understanding the academic, physical and social goals inside of a measurable lesson plan. Most of these required several edits and submissions.
They do a DRAFT of a lesson plan. Half the class didn’t bother to turn one in.
They complete an actual lesson plan. It’s due today, and I have 11 completed correctly, 6 completed incorrectly and still need work, and 6 not turned in at all.
Keep in mind that 12 years ago, they were required to turn in 6 viable lesson plans- not 1- and everyone did it.
Knowing that asynchronous online is not an ideal learning situation, I schedule phone/zoom/facetime conversations with any student who wants one- even though I’m not required to.
This bunch doesn’t bother. They don’t meet deadlines, don’t ask for help, don’t answer emails telling them I’m available for conference, don’t read the very detailed notes I give on their assignments that were obviously turned in with thoughtless abandon.
Yes- I understand about students and depression. That’s why I go all out to make contact and form relationships despite the lack of in-person meetings.
Many, many instructors at my college are complaining about exactly the same kinds of things- doesn’t matter if their classes are online or in person. They see, like I do, a lack of preparedness for college-level course, an attitude of entitlement (everyone deserves an A just for showing up most of the time) and an inability to communicate. This is a terrible sign.
In other news, the only students who submitted art to the annual Student Art Show (we have a really nice gallery and a full-time gallery manager) were students whose professors kept aside work and submitted it FOR them. It was pitiful. It’s not restricted to art students only- any student at the school could have their work in the show. There was no jury process- all comers are welcome.
And I’m seeing that kind of lack of participation in my own gallery We will be holding the 16th annual Washington State CVG Juried Show in January, and currently have 150 submissions where as by now we should have over 300. It’s a record low- we did far better even during COVID. There’s only a week left in the submission period. If we end up with 250 I’ll be shocked; last year there were close to 700 pieces entered.
11/13/2022 @ 4:49 pm
Not being a visual artist at all I haven’t thought about the fact that it’s generally done alone and is rarely interactive. I find this discussion of teaching interesting. My wife’s a professor so I get an earful about a lot. Also, I’m about to do some substitute teaching, something I haven’t done in about a quarter of a century. I need a flexibly-timed source of income, a musician I play with substitute teaches and suggested it to me. I’m getting fingerprinted tomorrow.
Music can of course be alone or collaborative. I don’t much like playing solo. I’ve never played anything orchestral or sung in a large choir so I don’t know that feeling of being part of a musical army. I’m a chamber player, by which I mean I play with a few musicians at a time. Mostly these days it’s rock or related but the mindset is similar even though it’s way more improvisatory than classical. Though I’ve played plenty of classical in my time it’s so much easier to be shown the changes and be told “this is what it has to sound like” and I can do things like figuring out what textures or parts are missing.
When I lived in NC, which was six years ago and probably again in another four, I often played at Temple for services. They had a professional pianist for the main stuff and I did fill-in, smaller services, Sunday school stuff, stuff they didn’t want to hire someone for. My approach was complete different than his. He’s a better player but he approached it like a pianist and I approach it more like an arranger. No, I’m not going to play melody and chords and stay there – there’s a rabbi or cantor or congregation or choir singing (or all of the above) and typically a rabbi is playing guitar. Melody’s already there. Chords are already there. What’s not? Bass line, so I play a loud left hand. Counter-melodies, so sometimes I add them, or harmony lines. Fills. Some melody doubling. A lot of rhythm because I’m trying to get the whole thing to move or be infectious in some way. The point is that what matters is not my playing but the sound of the whole thing combined. In rock because I’m often not trying to duplicate a recording exactly I get the freedom to do what I want with texture. Sometimes this means laying down a fast pattern, nothing out front, just texture. Most of the time no one notices but if someone’s paying close attention I’ll suddenly notice they’re really watching me and smiling. I find I think I’m better at fills than at solos. I usually find them more interesting.
11/13/2022 @ 5:15 pm
So interesting to read about your musical process. I don’t do any solo work, either, but Tom does and he’s really good at it. My part in the band when we do the trio thing is mostly to provide bass and rhythm, since we don’t play with a bass player any more. I’ve always paid attention to the bass lines in music and it’s really fun to do those, especially on our Blues numbers. For those I usually I set my keyboard so the lower half is on a bass guitar sound and the upper half is an organ- I like the Leslie (sp?) sound a lot. I can pound out a bass riff and have pads going as well.
If I sing- and I do more of that now than I ever have- I keep the piano sound and just keep a rhythm bounce going.
Tom is so good on the guitar. Lots of great texture, melodic structure, and his leads are beautifully constructed, as are his fills- just gorgeous. Everything he does is melodic and interesting. There are so many guitar players who use leads as a chance to show off. Musical masturbation, to be not so elegant about it.
I’m okay at fills, and I do take the occasional lead myself, but I’m terrible at improvising so I stick with simple and short. One lead I love playing is the organ part in Runaway- I have it note for note, and people love it. That’s just fun. Not “mine”, but that’s okay.
11/13/2022 @ 5:49 pm
Rose, arrrrggggh, ack, yikes, and GAH, that sounds horrible!!!
I wonder if the lumps support one another in their mutual slacking enterprise? Classes have a chemistry. Many times I’ve taught two sections of the same class, and they’ve been completely different vibes. I’d love going to one class, yet dread going into the other.
Zoom classes are extraordinarily challenging. It wasn’t the technology for me, I got that just fine. It was not being together, being unable to pick up a brush and do some simple thing for them, or as mentioned earlier, ask for a sketchbook tour in a comfy casual setting. Zoom course planning was three times the work, and I’d spend many extra hours beyond required office hrs meeting with students after class. There were two medical emergencies, a student passing out and unresponsive, another who cut herself severely. There was a student’s drunken mother who broke into his bedroom at 11:00 a.m. to shriek nonsense at him (I let him keep his camera off after that one). There was the student who’d come to class in bed next to his girlfriend (she worked a night shift). But I never had six students not even bother to turn in a project….FAIL them!
Also: love your sneaky syllabus reading clue!
I hope this is all a temporary one off semester and that next semester, you get a better group.
FWIW, some of my more infamous slubs were art ed majors!
11/13/2022 @ 5:54 pm
after kinda bragging about my zoom ability I see that I’ve left my comments in spots not connected to the comment I’m commenting on….apologies.
xo,
Blog Peasant
11/14/2022 @ 5:20 pm
Haha! A couple of times I wasn’t even sure where my replies were going to end up.
11/13/2022 @ 6:04 pm
Yeah, the lumps only see each other as names on a list and via the required group discussions on a variety of topics throughout the course. So they can’t actually rise up as a group because there’s no group chemistry per se. They don’t actually know who is turning stuff in and who isn’t. Only I see that.
It’s just a chemistry that comes from bad luck.
I hope.
I did teach this course via zoom for two quarters and it was worse in some ways. Much more prep for me, as you have noted yourself, and lots of distractions, even though we only met once a week on Monday evenings. I actually split the class in half and met with them as two different groups; gave everyone a better chance to talk.
I still didn’t like it. There was not enough student cooperation to warrant the insane amount of effort on my part.
After that, I went to asynchronous- no actual class meetings online, and students can do the work on their own time. With as much support from me as they ask for.
The next two quarters went fine, even though lesson plan writing was still awful. It always has been the hardest part, for the last 12 years.
This quarter is just special.
There are only a few weeks left- it’s all over on Dec 5- and I’m sure I’ll survive it.
As far as passing, many of them won’t.
After that Tom and I have a short getaway to Victoria B.C. planned. 3 days. It will be wonderful. We were there a few years ago and can’t wait to go back!
11/13/2022 @ 6:54 pm
I’m sure the lesson plan is the hardest part. That’s the thing that took me the longest to learn. I was given teaching assistants for certain labor intensive courses. They were required to be students who’d successfully completed the class and with me as prof, so we knew one another well. They were always surprised when they saw how much work was put into planning. Their luxury, when they were a student in the class, was not to know. It’s like standup comedy–looks to the audience like the comedian just gets on stage and starts free-associating hilarity, when really, it took months or years to hone their act.
I’m unfamiliar with the quarter system– so it’s over faster? Our classes run 14 weeks, two semesters spring and fall.
I’d be tempted to offer the lumps some terrible optional project as a reprieve from failing, something like five thousand word paper on George W Bush’s painting trajectory 2008-22, or The Portraiture of Donald J. Trump. Serve em right. Suffer mightily if they want to pass the class.
I hope you have an amazing post class trip. Damn, you deserve it!
11/14/2022 @ 12:06 pm
The quarter system compresses things a bit. The summer session is about 7 weeks long. I taught summer ONCE and never again. The other three quarters are around 11 weeks long, including finals week, with about 3 weeks off between quarters. I never give a final. I believe they are counter-productive.
I usually teach fall and spring, and sometimes winter, if I feel like it. I have enough seniority to pick and choose.
Not sure when I will give it up. I wrote the Art for Teachers course, I’m the only instructor who teaches it, and it will be hard to replace me. The other Art instructors don’t want to because it’s not about making “fine art”, and the current Ed instructors don’t have the background.
I did tell the departments that they should start looking. But until I give notice- 2 quarters ahead- they won’t bother to do a search.
11/14/2022 @ 3:27 pm
The quarter system sounds better than a two semester system in some respects. I’d love an 11 week class. Does full time mean teaching all of the quarters though? Do you still have adminny work between quarters? During the breaks between semesters, our committees don’t meet or report or even email, and I love that.
Making good new art educators is important work. My fifth grade art teacher recommended me for free Saturday painting classes at the Carnegie Museum, then when I was a miserable high school student, smoking weed in the parking lot and skipping classes, my art teacher invited me to hang out in the art room and draw. My GPA was 1.09, and art was my only A. Those two teachers were why I grew into being an artist. You probably also had a special art teacher. Although we’ve been focused on unmotivated students, some students will become like our teachers, and make a difference in a creative child’s life. If that’s what it costs to work with a few lumps, then bring it.
Am wondering if you decide to retire if your school lets you teach one course, a common practice many places. It sounds like they’d give anything to have you teach your art ed class– you could swoop in, teach, then romp away to your studio. Could be nice!
11/14/2022 @ 4:03 pm
I like the quarter system quite a lot myself.
I’ve always been just an adjunct instructor, so no one has ever minded if I accept one, two, three or no courses each term. As long as I teach the Art for Teachers every time it’s offered. It used to be once a year, then twice. Some years it’s 3 times. I don’t usually take another course too.
Three courses (or 15 credits) is considered full time for a quarter. I did that once and it almost killed me.
Yep, I had a very wonderful HS art teacher. I was in an “alternative school program” (it was 1971 haha) affectionately called The Free School by the students and teachers who were involved in it. We had to attend class meetings for all the subjects we were signed up for, but times and days rotated so it was a bit chaotic and very fun. I spent every free moment in the art room. Often when I was supposed to be in other classes. I relied on my abilities in independent study to get me through, and it worked just fine, except for math. (I taught that to myself years later when I needed it for teaching certification)
Anyway in art she taught me how to work with clay. And how drive a stick on her own VW Beetle. We sometimes met in NYC to visit the Met and the Modern and the Frick, etc etc…I was 16…none of this would be acceptable behavior these days, but it really gave me a way forward.
11/14/2022 @ 5:05 pm
Your teacher sounds wonderful! You’re right about how teachers and students did things outside of school back then, and it wasn’t considered inappropriate. That kind of mentoring could be a game changer.
My high school teacher was a highly skilled draftsman and drew the figure as well as Leonardo–I thought so anyway. He’d let me in the art room after classes, as long as I drew. Which I did, and he’d sit up at his drafting table and draw too. When I was about thirty, I went back to see him. He pulled an old drawing of mine out of his file cabinet to show me, and I was stunned that he’d saved it. He said he knew I’d end up in art. After our visit, I sent him a better drawing. He died young, age 47, a few years after I visited him, and I was devastated.
Would you want to teach a course based on your visual interests? That’s a role many adjuncts play in my department. I could see you teaching a landscape course , or nature, or serial imagery. For many years, I taught a course in nature illustration and loved it. The students were interested in the same quirky things as I was, young nature nerds. The conversations were animated, and they’d go all in on projects. One guy would go outside in the freezing winter to paint this tree he loved in the quad, and I’d have to bundle up and slog out there to talk with him. That was some great painting though! Several of those students are working natural history illustrators now, and are much better than I am. I love that, when the student surpasses the teacher, and you both know it.
LOL you and math. At least you taught yourself. I had to repeat Algebra and still got a D the second time. x and y something something…
11/14/2022 @ 5:31 pm
Suzanne, your teacher sounds pretty awesome, too. I didn’t actually get to study drawing as a set of skills that could be learned until I went to college myself at age 30. (18 to 29 was me not doing anything good or productive or smart. I put that all behind me as being a “late bloomer”)
I don’t have any desire to expand my teaching at the college. I just wanna paint and make things out of clay.
I have agreed to offer some art workshops through the gallery I belong to.
I have to sit down and decide what I want to offer and to whom. Not nuts about the idea of teaching kids any more.
11/14/2022 @ 5:44 pm
Hear you about the youngs. I love them, but we also have what is called ‘non-traditional students’, mostly vets, moms whose kids have recently flown the nest, and retirees. It is so good to see a gray head in a seat on the first day of class. They can be annoying in their dedication to squeezing every bit of info they can from you, staying after class for a ‘quick question’ that ends up being an hour, doing extra work, emailing photos mid-week to ask what you think, but in the end, you adore them and so do the other students. You’d be great teaching classes of students like that.
We both were late bloomers. I didn’t hit art school til I was 27. Too much important pot smoking, tipi living, and boyfriend hair braiding to do first.
11/14/2022 @ 6:08 pm
Yep! For me it more about leaving home, living poor with a musician boyfriend (drummer- they are the WORST), riding on the back of his stupid motorcycle, and biding my time until my self-worth kicked in enough to make me want to do something better with my life.
I have always gotten a lot of non-trad students in all my art classes at the college. and you’re right- they have usually been worth every bit of the time and attention.
And! By far one of my favorite things to do for my Drawing 1 and Design 1 classes was to bring in the school security guard (my favorite campus up in the boonies is tiny) for him to give a lecture and demo on drawing comics. He is an artist and writer – specializes in strong female characters and interesting stories, draws fabulous buildings in gorgeous perspective from every possible viewpoint, uses composition and color that would blow your mind, and is a wonderful teacher as well.
The students get a real education on what it means to be a working artist. Also, don’t quit your day job. But make the art anyway.
I’m actually trying to get him to come to Bindle but so far no.
11/14/2022 @ 6:59 pm
Re: biker boyfriend…where is he now, do you know? Tipi boyfriend is a carpenter, living on a chunk of land left to him by his grandfather, growing organic veggies, married for the second or third time. The tipi was his big idea, a kit you sewed together, purchased from The Whole Earth Catalog. Guess who he got to pay for it, to sew it halfway up until overwhelmed, then paid for someone else to finish it? Extraordinarily handsome and charismatic guy though.
So many security guards are artists! Yours sounds very cool. How’d you meet him? My friend R works for Delta–when you see the guy wearing the florescent vest holding up the two signal lights down on the runway, that might be him. He has filled hundreds and hundreds of sketchbooks, and you can’t sit in his living room because it’s stacked wall to wall paintings. He’s one of the most prolific and interesting artists I know.
11/15/2022 @ 12:02 pm
Oh, well. Biker-drummer is still living at the same address we shared 45+ years ago. We were renting the detached unheated garage with the little 2-room apartment over it. I would bet he bought the property at some point because he was friends with the owner’s family. The house itself was small but better than the garage.
I ran into one of his sisters a long while back; he had given up the bike and the drums and had found Jesus, was painting houses for a living and doing just fine. I think he must be retired by now. His housepainter boss certainly is.
I met the security guard at the campus I used to teach at. He would unlock the classroom for me (I always got there about an hour early) and stay and talk until it was time for class. Really a lovely man.
Sometimes he would come into the classroom and chat with the students a bit, too. He loved to look at their work and ask them about it. They adored him.
11/15/2022 @ 3:55 pm
I’m guessing biker drummer sees you as the one who got away 🙂
My high school boyfriend was a drug dealer, four years older. He definitely influenced my class skipping D earning ways. He died of a heart attack at age 54, living with his aunt, never married. He got off drugs at some point and found Jesus through his recovery program. He wrote a long letter to me around then, a page making amends, followed by three pages of trying to sell Jesus as my savior. I wish he’d had a better life.
You security guard guest artist sounds like a gem!
11/13/2022 @ 6:03 pm
Kosher, you don’t think about how other creative disciplines make the sausage unless you’ve made sausage in multiple creative disciplines. I designed theater sets for a couple summer reps, also played guitar semi-demi-mediocrely, just enough to learn how lovely it is to create something collaboratively.
Also, you will be a great sub! Just remember to give them some breaks. This is coming from another long talker 🙂
11/14/2022 @ 5:02 pm
This is an amazing thread. I think it should be turned into an article. I would be happy to do that, with your collective permissions.
As a poet, my perspective is somewhat different on the isolation-collaboration issue.
Poets collaborate all the time. Much poetry is actually written as replies to other poets poems. There’s even a whole school of poetry – called Erasure Poems – that consists of taking a famous poem and deleting words, lines, or even entire sections to create a completely different poem. (I learned about this one on a Facebook thread.)
Poets also collaborate across long periods of time, often with dead collaborators. I am in close collaborations with Walt Whitman, Rumi, Kashi, and whoever it was who wrote Shakespeare (probably Shakespeare) as well as that other Allen (Ginsberg), Dylan (bob not Thomas although he does pop up from time to time) Billy Joel, Simon, three of the four Beatles, and so on and so forth.
However, I don’t write poetry for poets. I write poetry for people who don’t think they like poetry…and I am enormously pleased whenever someone says that he-she-they-whatever don’t read poetry, but they read mine.
Rose, I think you are the saving grace for this experiment. I have been hanging out on Mastodon lately….and it is pretty good….but it limits posts and comments to 500 characters which would have made this conversation well nigh impossible.
The long form is very important when people are working out their thoughts together in a collaborative manner.
Now, I just wish I could figure out how to get that point across to the people who really need to hear it.
Great thread. Makes me proud to have built this thing.
11/14/2022 @ 5:14 pm
Hi Alan, just now saw this!
Cool that this thread makes you happy. You’ve kept this space afloat for a long time, with us dropping in then disappearing for months, even years.
Re: poetry and collaboration. One of the most waitlisted courses at my school is called Poetry and Painting, two instructors, one a painter, the other a poet, and students work to do both and to respond to one another, verbally, visually. Sadly, the poet just passed away two weeks ago. People are despondent. Don’t know if they’ll continue w/o her.
11/14/2022 @ 5:26 pm
I’m fine with you making an article out of this, Alan. It’s been a wonderful experience for me, especially getting to communicate with Suzanne at this level. We see each other on Instagram and I really LOVE seeing her drawings there, but this format is WAYYYYYY better.
Not as good as RL would be – I would just adore an afternoon with her, sitting around and talking Art and Life and Everything Else.
11/14/2022 @ 5:34 pm
Rose, me too!!
11/14/2022 @ 5:48 pm
Maybe someday!!!!
11/14/2022 @ 5:33 pm
Alan, me again. I realized I forgot to address the publishing thread as article part.
I’d be okay with that as long as my name isn’t used, and also maybe edit out the parts where Rose and I refer to slacker students as lumps and schlubs, and I’m guessing my institution wouldn’t appreciate my suggestion to Rose that she assign a punitive project about the portraiture of Donald Trump. Not sure about Rose’s school, but we have been warned about what we say on social media.
11/14/2022 @ 5:48 pm
Arghhhh! Suzanne is right..it would be a good idea to leave off the comments about students etc as she suggests. I don’t know how far my school goes in monitoring social media posts, but I follow a few of my fellow instructors and department heads, and they follow me as well. I’m okay with my name being used.
11/14/2022 @ 6:43 pm
Rose, it’s not colleagues who google your name, it’s students–especially the A expectors, who also tend to go to the administration if they find something. Also, if I was the parent of a college student, I wouldn’t want to read profs calling students lumps. Of course students say worse about us when among themselves, same as faculty do at weekly meetings. We’re both are aware of that, but reading it is another thing.
So yes, Alan, if you you decide to do something with the discussion outside of this space, would you use that reality as an editing tool?
11/14/2022 @ 6:57 pm
Oh that makes sense. I’ve not had an issue with any of these before, re social media, but there could always be a first time.
Care here is definitely warranted.
11/19/2022 @ 7:54 am
I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1930’s.Both my parents were artists and making a living then was, to put it mildly, damned near impossible. Nevertheless my father managed it as a commercial artist and my parents would spend their weekends painting watercolor landscapes but never tried to exhibit. I grew up playing with the art materials in the house and never discovered what it was all about although it was fun and I graduated from two schools and got an art degree, still puzzled. Some of my attempts can be seen at https://siivola.org/jan/ Picasso remarked that he spent much of his life learning to paint as a child. At the age of almost 97, I never learned how to grow up so whatever I attempt as an artist comes quite naturally to me. I have no idea what it means to be an artist, but I do have fun playing with art materials.
11/19/2022 @ 10:47 am
I just looked. There’s some very cool things there including Billy the Squid.
02/04/2023 @ 2:31 pm
https://siivola.org/jan/
Jan, your Clockwatch is way pristene. I seemed to hear Burl Ives then rather lapsed into a humid afternoon: ’57 robin’s egg blue Chevy convertible —radio loudly Mabelline — motivating over the hill. Sugar cone custard drip-drop at the intersection, a blowin’ in the wind.