When I first went to college, I was looking for something different in an art school. However, I ended up dropping out and returned years later to study art. My first semester was unproductive as I had a teacher who didn’t teach me anything. In my second class, a fantastic instructor from a community college came in, and I stayed there full-time for seven years.
My Journey
During this time, I realized I wanted to teach for a living. My professor, Dr. Richard Hillis, advised me to ask colleges to send catalogs showcasing student and professor work. After receiving catalogs from over 32 schools, I realized that none of the schools were better than where I was studying. The grass was not greener elsewhere.
I then started considering which school would provide me with a degree that could help my career. I was interested in teaching and had a strong realization that I was going to teach. I was accepted into Yale less than two weeks before leaving. I had already booked a U-Haul, but I changed my mind at the last minute and stayed another semester. This turned out to be a very powerful decision in my life.
On a whim, I decided to go to a school in Florence, Italy, which had close to 1000 applicants for six openings. I chose this school based on a recommendation, but I hadn’t seen the student or professors’ work in a catalog from the school. It turns out that a school back east in the United States would send their teachers to this school in Florence, and Florence would send its teachers to a contemporary art school in the eastern part of the U.S.
What I Learned?
Had I known that it was an abstract art school, which I had no interest in, I would have never gone there. So, I came to Florence, this highly acclaimed school, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t getting any help in the direction I wanted to go. Therefore, I spent the entire time on a train seeing Italy, which turned out to be a wonderful thing, but it was not why I went to Florence. The mistake was mine; I didn’t ask for the catalog exemplifying the show.
If a school doesn’t display the student work, whether it’s a local community school, a community college, or an art school, my real question is why. If the school doesn’t show me the professors’ work, my real question is why. If the school doesn’t list how they’re going to get you internships and jobs, my real question is why. Maybe they don’t have work that they’re proud of, or maybe they’re not proud of their professors’ work. Selling art is not the same as making art, and some of the major independent schools are all about selling art. They do a bait and switch, offer scholarships, and the next semester all the scholarships disappear because only a small number of people can get a scholarship. Now you’re stuck, and you took a year of classes that will not transfer.
So, you have to be very careful about which classes you take that first year so when you decide you’re leaving, all of that work will transfer. Some schools have been sued and lost in court only to do it again. I believe the economics term is bean counting, so they lose one suit here, but they’re going to make money off the other 20 who just eat it or continue at that school at some absorbing amount. The mere idea that an art school could cost as much as Harvard is beyond belief and not worth it.
Need Not Forget
Other things that start to come up for students is what kind of internship lends itself for artists in fields such as advertising, graphics, animation. Where are you getting a job when you graduate from that school? We’re here in Georgia, so around the corner is Pinewood Studios, one of the largest movie studios in the world. Artists going to schools in this area would hopefully get a job as an intern there and get a foot in the door. But what happens when your school is in some remote rural area? Are they going to hire an intern who doesn’t go on location and does it from a studio at their house 300 to 1000 miles away? I would ask those questions.