A Brief Preamble-
I am not sure why I have become so compelled to make artwork or what I really hope to achieve. I have just been following my curiosity and doing what feels right. After existing for roughly 21 orbits of the earth around the sun, my curiosity led me to start making visual art. Now I hope to do so for my remaining orbits. The following anecdote is the best explanation of why:
A summer ago I was visiting Pittsburgh with a former Professor, Howard Smith, and a close friend, his wife Marilyn. While in Pittsburgh we took a walk with my parents through Schenley park. It was on the day of the Grand Prix Antique car race. Torpedo like cars that rode inches from the ground were speeding around the curved roads of the park. We stopped to watch the cars skid around a particularly treacherous curve. Someone in the group commented, “I don’t understand. Why does anyone do this?” Howard responded, “It needs no explanation.” Then paused, and concluded, “Why does anyone do anything else?” While I don’t think art is any significant way the same as antique car racing, the point is that most things don’t really have an explanation.
Marking my work:
In some ways I feel lucky that I didn’t start making work until I was 21. While I didn’t know much at 21, and might even know less now at 23, I was at least aware of my ignorance when I started working. The same could not be said if I produced work beforehand. The body of work I completed shifted dramatically as I made it. I kept the pieces cohesive by using similar materials and formal strategies. So while two works like Sequence and Stairway Wedge and Beams are conceptually very different, and formally divergent, there is enough of a connection in the materials and color that they make sense in the same portfolio. The main reason that I think I got accepted to schools was because my projects were ambitious. When I look at a lot of the pieces now, I think about how they aren’t really that good. However their scale, demonstration of technical ability, and physical complexity makes my portfolio compelling.
Why I decided to apply to school:
I wanted to figure out a way to keep making art and I have no formal qualifications. There is little on my resume to distinguish me from some person who made a bunch of seemingly random objects in a garage in central PA(That might actually be the best way to describe me). Graduate school seemed like the best avenue to continue making work. I would have time, professors and students to learn from, and at the end I would gain a professional qualification. Also, I am a fairly academically minded person and have always enjoyed learning. Finally, if you work as shop tech, project assistant, or teaching assistant as a graduate student, you can potentially have ample funding throughout graduate school. While I admire students who studied art from the beginning, I also felt less nervous about future job options because I knew I would be able to find work with my math degree.
Finding Schools:
The CAA apparently publishes a book that lists anything you need to know about MFA programs; I have never seen it. I had a catalogue that they published in 2006 and on their website they said they were publishing a 2011 version. It came out too late to be of any use to for me. Instead I scanned the section out of Peterson’s that has a comprehensive list of graduate schools for art students and I asked friends about schools that they went to or knew about. In the end I applied mainly school that I heard about from people that attended them. I was looking for programs at research universities because I wanted to be able to interact with all sorts of other students and professors. I also wanted to move away from Pennsylvania. In my search I prioritized looking at the current student work and mfa exhibitions. I figured my peers would be the most important part and would also indicate how the professors were guiding them. After looking at the student work I would check out the faculty’s work. For the most part the relative quality of these would coincide. However I found a couple schools that had amazing student work with so so faculty work. Plenty of other school had excellent faculty work with incredibly boring student work.
In the end I applied to ten schools. Only one of which I had visited. I figured I would visit after I got in. Ten is a lot of school and in retrospect I should have narrowed my list a little more. Because I didn’t have a related degree I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t get in at all. In the end there were a couple of safety like schools that called to tell me I got in and I pretty quickly informed them that I would have to decline. This wasted my time and theirs. Six or seven would have probably been better for me.
Filing out Applications/ preparing documents:
Most of my work is documented with both still image and video. Sliderooom allows you to submit video and images and most programs that have their own submission system also allow this. One school asked me to send a cd but all the other portfolios were submitted electronically. These various formats require different file types, sizes, ect. Some of my slides contain several images so depending on the background of the site I would change the border color between the slides. I also had to severely decrease the size of some of the video files. The main point of all this is just to leave some time to complete this part of the application.
I don’t find writing an artist statement to be much fun. I am much better a talking about specific pieces or issues. So while my statement is a little weak I wrote paragraph accompaniments to each piece in my portfolio. Some of the paragraphs were explanations, some said what the work was about, and others were as enigmatic as the work itself. Slideroom and most other sites allow you to include notes or details with each work, I entered my writing into these boxes and on my slide script. When I visited schools several people remembered my portfolio as the one that had paragraphs with each work. The writing probably turned some people off so I wouldn’t recommended it for everyone, but it went along well with my work.
Letters of intent are pretty straight forward. I benefited greatly from showing mine to one of the Stadler Center Poetry fellows and from taking it to the writing center. The Poetry Fellow that I showed it to is a very sweet and soft-spoken women – her advice and statements were anything but. She got me to write clearly and forcefully. If you haven’t noticed I can occasionally be self-deprecating and am not always the best at selling my work. Seeing such a soft-spoken person really sell themselves convinced me to reword a lot of my letters. The writing center is really helpful because the staff is paid to assist you in writing; they were more patient and spent more time with me than anyone else probably would have.
Hearing Back.
In my mind I would send out applications, and then just wait and see. I wouldn’t have to do anything else except make up my mind. However because of fellowships, assistantships, visits, ect, I was deceived. Some of the schools would call me in order to schedule an interview, then once on the phone they would talk to me about the merits of their school for about 10 minutes, ask a couple questions, and then tell me I was accepted. I think they just wanted to talk with people to make sure they were not crazy before they let them in. Other school like Hunter and VCU actually conducted meaningful interviews and said they would get back to you at a later date. The schools would ask me where else I applied and there is some bargaining that goes on with assistantships and fellowships.
Visiting schools has really been the most informative part. I was pretty quickly able to figure out if I would fit in with the students and really got to see the quality of work. Professors at different school weren’t always as excited to meet a perspective student or willing to take the time.
My final Decision:
To be completed in a week of two.