Good things shouldn't freak you out OR Things all art students should know what I finally know

Today was Commencement for our 2012 graduates. I know many of my own students are filled with the terror of "what's next" and "how will I earn a living". I remember the terror too. Trying to explain that you might have a job outside your field while you pursue your art is hard enough to accept, not to mention, explain to others. As art faculty, we have the same problem. The alumni surveys go out with that question, "Are you earning a living from your degree?" Usually the answer is no. No, I work in radio or real estate or dog grooming, but I ask, what job doesn't benefit from an education? And more so, is salary the only judge of academic success? What about happiness or cultural appreciation and contributions? What about the artist who make a small amount of money from art, but gains a lot of happiness and peace from it, while they have a "day job" as a seamstress?

During our recent job interviews, one question I wrote was, "please talk about a time you felt things were going right in the classroom," and I was amused by imagining my own answer. Of course, seeing a light bulb go on as a student finally connects content and technique, but I think my favorite moment in teaching is more subtle. When I see students suddenly achieving at their work, making work for themselves and not just for me, that is when (I know from experience) the anxiety sets in. "How will I ever find a place in a world that is so career and rank oriented? How can I be so selfish to think I'm good enough to be an artist?" That realization is such a trauma. While it reveals a low self esteem for the student artist, it also means they have reached a level of knowledge to know how much there still is to learn. The student who doesn't show this, in my experience, is the student who has not yet questioned their own assumptions about "talent" or how an education should challenge their preconceived ideas about themselves as artists.

It's the students with that traumatic realization that are both self aware and in a precarious place in their learning. Then I tell them this, and I tell them as many times as I need to, til they believe me.

Art students in many ways are more challenged in school than other students. Most degrees ask you to learn what is already known, to retrace the logic of an experiment or philosophy that you might be able to replicate it, then send you to graduate school to start creating new knowledge. Not so with students of the arts. Much earlier, these students are asked to create new, never before seen works from new ideas. It's hard work they will likely never be acknowledged for by other degrees ("oh, you got an art degree? That sounds fun, but what are you going to do with that?"). This is an area art majors are at the advantage over others in the job market: generating NEW ideas.

And as for being an artist? We are both at the advantage and disadvantage. We will never be "hired" as an artist (in terms of making personal work), while doctors and lawyers are hired. They never question if they are a TRUE doctor or lawyer, but artists always question it (or at least, cyclically). BUT we can also Never be fired... we can only quit.

I usually point dramatically at the room at this point.

No one can fire you; but you can quit.

And when I see really good students (it's usually the really good ones) still struggling, I take them aside and ask, "Do you love this? Is this something you feel like you need to do?" When they say yes, I say, that's because you ARE an artist. You need it. And you want someone to tell you it's true, so I am. Remember it. And I know they will because I still remember when the title was bestowed on me.

There is always terror about the next show or series. Life tries to tell me my time is better spent doing something else, but here I am, still trying to make it work. I'm happy to be moving to be with my sweetheart and also joining another excellent program as a faculty member; I'm happy to find myself in escrow so quickly. But I resent all the time these things have taken the last couple weeks. I have art work to do!

Sleeping Dragons

Background

If you are friends with me on Facebook or if you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed my recent postings revolving around a Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei, who was recently disappeared (semantically, you could say he was arrested, but he hasn't officially been arrested... his family doesn't know where he is and are even filing a missing person's report) for his activist activities (again, the cover is economic crimes... tax evasion?).

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here are some links:

• TEDTalk
• Artist as Political Hero
• New Yorker Profile
  
• Ai Weiwei is Not a Criminal

There are many many more. I realize I have spent one to two hours a day reading articles from all over the world with updates and opinions on Weiwei's detainment. Like many, I feel helpless in the face of global injustice. For whatever reason (probably because of Weiwei's obsession with Twittering) I have been inclined, in this case, to re-Tweet stories (which feed automatically into Facebook; however, as my account is private, only a few people can see that).

Teaching Moment

This story has been caught up in my mind, so last week, I decided I would talk with my students about it. My photography class had just finished a "landscape" project exploring environmental issues and how local land is used, so it seemed fitting to remind them about social issue art and current events. Since we just finished the project, however, I simply wanted to tell them about it without slides.

I began by telling them about the Top 100 Powerful Art World people, a list mostly composed of collectors and curators (i.e. people with money) but how, in recent years, artists have begun to appear on the list in earnest. "The most powerful artist on the list," I told them, "is probably a man you have never heard of." Then I started telling them about Weiwei's project in response to the Sichuan earthquake, when government officials would not release information about how many children were killed in collapsed and poorly constructed schools. Weiwei used his blog, Twitter, and the Internet to collect this list of names, and release them as they came in.

It is at this point in the class that I begin to cry. I have been moved in classes before, but usually catch myself before the class notices too much. But I was too far in to stop. I could see their puzzled faces, see them thinking "did she know any of them? What's the big deal?" and I knew they needed more to understand, that I couldn't stop the lecture because of this strange turn of events.

I told them Weiwei was snatched for these kinds of activities, for asking about the names of dead children, that he hadn't officially been arrested, that his family didn't know where he was, that he was probably being tortured at that moment. For asking the names of dead children be spoken and memorialized. They still looked puzzled, so I posed this question: If this is happening to the Most Powerful Artist in the World, what is happening to the regular people?

The class was silent. No one was fidgeting. No one was looking around. No one's mind was wandering. I could almost hear this day in this class being burned into their memories forever, and I was going to make it count.

"I wanted to tell you about this, because you are getting a college education, and it is now your responsibility to be informed. You no longer get to claim ignorance. And you are studying art to be artists, which means you have to notice things and see things, and you can't look away. We are lucky we live in a country where we can speak about what we see without threat of disappearing, so you should speak when you see wrong-doing."

Several students nodded. As class ended, I thought, I have either made a fool of myself by getting so worked up, or I have just had one of the more powerful teaching moments of my career.

Relearning

The next class, we went on a field trip to the Yellowstone River. We posed for a class picture, then dispersed. A group of them called me over. They pointed across the river at the city dump. "See, it drains right into the river, right into our water." They looked stoic. We walked toward Norman's Island, a rehabilitation area created by a former Biology Professor.

Several of them walked with me and said, "Did you see they are saying Weiwei committed economic crimes?" I said, yes, but even if he committed tax evasion, he should have access to his lawyer, his medications, and his family should know. But what I thought was, they remembered his name (it's hard to make them remember any artists' names). They looked him up. They had looked him up that morning, as that story had been released that day.

Being a teacher has become a thankless job, unappreciated in our society. But it's an important job. I am grateful I can teach my students about art and history, photography and technique, how we translate ideas into images, and how we get our images out there. But I also get to teach them to think for themselves, to see things others have stopped seeing, to question things others have taken as fact. I do this because I believe this is how I can make the world a better place.

We love the future. And our eyes are open and watching you.