Advice for Art Students

I was thinking about my post secondary education in ‘Fine Art’, and it struck me that there were so many expectations that came with enrollment that the students knew little or nothing about. So often, a student would make something that they were reeeeally happy with, only to have it bashed to pieces in a critique by a professor who found it to be cliché. It turns out that although a first-year student might be having his or her first blissful encounters with duct-tape, the professors have seen enough duct-tape. ENOUGH. Seriously.

I wanted to put some of the common ‘clichés’ here, so that any pending Fine Arts students can be forewarned.

Clichéd Materials
Duct Tape
Masking Tape
Green Painter’s Tape
Oil Pastels / Oil Sticks
Anything ‘Free’ at your campus (ie. wooden coffee stirrers, brown kraft paper… trust me, they know where you’re getting this stuff from)
Glitter
Splattered Paint

Clichéd Themes
Fruit
Your Pet(s)
Your Kid(s)
Cars
Naked Women Posing Moodily
Sunsets
Angsty Self-Portraits
Birds / Bird Nests

Please note—I don’t think you should take my lists as definitive; there are bound to be instructors out there who haven’t gotten their fill, or who have a particular vendetta against watercolour or what-have-you.

If you feel confident that you can do something really great with the clichéd materials and themes, go for it! I know plenty of artists who make their livings dealing in glitter and baby portraits and what-have you (but remember, Art School is nothing like real life…)

Just don’t under-do it… go full out! I think that the sin that art students most commonly commit is sloth. They get lazy, and think, “Oh, it’s done enough.” Trust me; it shouldn’t be ‘done’ until you’re out of time. If you are going to make a glitter and green painter’s tape sculpture of your cat, it had better be the biggest, best, glitteriest ever—or there should be forty little ones, all done in minute detail, each with a tiny glittering fish in its mouth. Let your piece live up to its full potential—don’t half-ass it!

Just don’t use duct tape. Ever.

desert ride

slowly
turn the radio dial
in the old
blue
car
and hear only
dry air and bones

greasy

eating sundried tomatoes in oil, straight out of the jar
while watching Oprah on the downstairs couch, the couch upon which last month I spilled
hot lemon-chicken soup (still smells zesty and greasy)
I am thinking about Chad, whose baby is a boy—congratulations, I think—and
the time I was working as a Christmas-time perfume pusher for Givenchy
and the East Indian ladies would come by every day
to spray the armpits of their dresses with Obsession by Calvin Klein

cracked

I took the time
to blog and rhyme
the feelings I'd misplaced

I went looking for
an open door
and found an open safe

Postmarked 1998

I ventured beyond the little walls
that we put up around that wonderland we built
when we were still letter-writing dreamers,
I saw you, make-upped and ageing on myspacedotcom
and
I don't know-- was I shocked? I felt a little
voyeuristic, a little
disheartened

I took your advice, I looked up
p-r-o-s-e-l-y-t-i-z-e
and I suppose I’ve done that to you, tried to convert you to
my ‘happy’ – I just…
I wanted to keep you the way you were
in the picture, the one where you
weren’t posing, Timmy just surprised you—

I’m not driving
I can’t drive you, can’t ‘fix’ this, there isn’t anything to be fixed,
there isn’t anything to repair, to keep, to save

I whispered my wishes into the wind…

we shifted stance so quietly
stepped apart so gently
wings winnowing out our names—this fairytale doesn’t work out, didn’t work out the way I—I’m not driving—you’re not Griffin, and I’m not Sabine—I wish—I want--

goodnight, goodnight, my dear

the real Laughter of Buddha-me

I was having this conversation with myself, with these
aspects of myself
in the car, on the way home yesterday.

The Buddha-me was talking to an old distant ghost of sad-me--
a former incarnation (and one who was very real, before
Core-Belief Engineering and Wellbutrin—she is just a shadow now;
thankfully she doesn’t live Here anymore, but
I remember her) and

Buddha-me was teaching her about Happiness
Buddha-me said that happiness is just a matter of practicing happiness
that to be happy, one must just
Be Happy

and the sad ghost was so bitter
and sarcastic, and laughed a brittle laugh, thinking Buddha me
must be stupid, must be simple
to be So Happy
but Buddha me just laughed more, laughed bigger, laughed real Laughter—and said—

poor little ghost
you ache with anger because you think I have it so easy
that it must be so very Easy for me to be this Stupidly Happy

Bullshit, sad little ghost!
to Be Happy is Work!
Hard Work!

a discipline takes Discipline, and you, weak and bitter
are weak and bitter because That is the Easiest Way to Be!
Do not laugh with your cutting sneering laugh at me
and believe that I am the foolish one
if you laugh
do not put poison in your laughter
do not laugh until your laughter
is Real