Clara Lieu's Blog, page 33

Ask the Art Professor: How Can I Make the Transition to Teaching Art at the College Level?

“Ask the Art Professor” is an advice column for visual artists, now featured in the Huffington Post.  This is your chance to ask a professional artist/educator your questions about being an artist, the creative process, career advice, etc. Submit your question by emailing me at clara(at)claralieu.com, or by commenting here on this blog. All questions will be posted anonymously, and you’ll receive notification when your question is online.  Read an archive of past articles here.

“I have taught art in public schools at the high school level for 27 years (I am 52) and at this point I am eligible for early retirement and would like to teach drawing and/or painting in college. I really love to teach, and would like a change from high school. I feel the longer classes in college would allow me to teach in more depth and at a slower pace than high school. I did, however get an interview for a position at a prestigious private high school, as well as a job offer which would have led to overseeing their entire art program in a few years. However, I turned it down since I currently work in a great public school with other full-time art teachers, and it would have involved a complicated relocation. I would, however, be willing to relocate for a college job. How can I make the transition to teaching art at the college level?”

One would think that with your 27 years of teaching experience that it would be easy for you to get a teaching position anywhere. I hate to say this, but the truth is that a substantial background teaching art at the high school level is actually a hindrance when applying for college-level teaching positions. The academic art world can be very snotty, and unfortunately teaching at the high school level is frequently seen as low on the food chain. As unfair as it may seem, most college art programs are more likely to hire someone who is just out of graduate school, and who has just a few years of teaching adjunct (part-time) at the college level.

You will have to start completely from scratch and accept that you will have to be an adjunct for a while, (usually years) before you are even in the running for a full-time position. It’s nearly impossible to be hired full-time without any adjunct teaching experience. On top of that, many schools are cutting their budgets, so full-time positions are becoming extremely scarce. In a single year, it is not unusual for there to only be 15 national positions in your specialized field. Full-time teaching positions generally attract 200-400 applicants for one job. Today, saying you want to be a full-time art professor is basically like saying you want to be an A-list movie star.

Adjunct teaching positions are very unpredictable. There is never any guarantee that your contract will be renewed from semester to semester, since the majority of adjunct positions are temporary positions to replace full-time faculty who are on sabbatical. There have been countless times where I have been offered a class literally two weeks before the first day of class. On the flip side, I’ve also had courses cancelled the week before classes began. It is also becoming common for colleges to limit how long you are allowed to be an adjunct at their school. I’ve been in situations where my contract as an adjunct was only renewable up to 3-4 years, regardless of my performance.

Most adjuncts live in a constant state of anxiety, struggle financially, and have little time for their own artwork. For years, I taught as an adjunct at 2-3 schools each semester. I was shuttling back and forth between schools and lived in a state of distraction. Based on how unreliable the life of an adjunct is, I wouldn’t recommend relocating in order to take an adjunct position. Another issue is that while being an adjunct can provide valuable experience, it can also work against you if you are adjunct for “too long.” I know many people who have been adjunct for over 25 years and who have told me that their ship has sailed. At that point, you are branded as an adjunct, and become much less attractive to schools who are hiring for full-time positions.

If you do decide to go down this path, it’s important to know that while some colleges do advertise adjunct teaching positions, many do not. When I was at the beginning of my teaching career, I cast a wide net by writing letters of inquiry every year to a number of department heads at the local colleges. I was surprised that several department heads responded and kept my information on file for the future. In numerous cases, I was offered an adjunct position a few years later, and that’s initially how I launched my teaching career. Additionally, network and milk your personal connections. I got my first teaching position because I met a department head at a printmaking conference when I was still a graduate student. He asked me to send him my materials, and within one year I had my first adjunct teaching position.

Compared to full-time positions which require search committees and multiple interviews over several months, the interview process for adjuncts is relatively easy. Generally speaking, all it involves is an interview with the department head, and a review of your supporting materials. These materials usually include a resume, an artist statement, a teaching philosophy statement, 20 images of your professional artwork, and 20 images of your students’ artwork.

This transition is possible, but you will need to be prepared for the long haul it will likely be. Even with your 27 years of teaching high school, you’ll have to see this process as beginning a new career.

Back in the studio

I had my first day in the studio today after being away from 2 months. I have had a lot of anxiety about getting back into my artwork after being on hiatus for so long. I think it’s similar to not exercising for a long period of time; you know that first day back at the gym is inevitably going to be really painful. When I sat down to work on some thumbnail sketches this afternoon, I initially felt disoriented and had trouble concentrating.  I spent a lot of time just looking at my reference photos, just to remind myself of the kinds of images I had to work with.  It felt weird at first, but once I started sketching, everything immediately felt better.

Once I had the thumbnail sketches done, I starting sketching with vine charcoal on top of a figure drawing that I had started two months again. This was also an awkward start, as I don’t usually take two month breaks in the middle of a piece. Vine charcoal is extremely forgiving though, and once I started making a mess I loosened up and began to develop a sense of focus. My plan is to start two more new drawings over the next two days.  That way, all three drawings that I have to finish this summer will be started and it will much easier for me to gain momentum. I have found that working on multiple pieces together feels more productive than creating one piece at a time.

The other recent development is my course load for this summer just doubled.  I am now teaching 4 courses in the RISD Pre-College program, which is going to really cut into my time in the studio. I had planned on getting the bulk of the work for my solo shows done this summer, but that is no longer an option.  I am pushing most of the work to September and October, since two of the three shows open in November. It’s a little tight, but I looked over the schedule carefully the other day and know that it is definitely manageable.

Ask the Art Professor: Is the Internet Necessary to be a Successful Artist?

“Ask the Art Professor” is an advice column for visual artists, now featured in the Huffington Post.  This is your chance to ask a professional artist/educator your questions about being an artist, the creative process, career advice, etc. Submit your question by emailing me at clara(at)claralieu.com, or by commenting here on this blog. All questions will be posted anonymously, and you’ll receive notification when your question is online.  Read an archive of past articles here.

“I’ve been working in a small gallery that’s all about social media and using it to promote their gallery and artists. I, on the other hand, choose to have a very minimal online presence. I only recently got a Linkedin account, but I don’t have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. I dislike the idea that anyone can have access into my work and my life. As an artist living in the 21st century, is my reluctance towards using technology and social media hurting my art career? Has the Internet become a necessary tool in becoming successful?”

Think about it this way: if you don’t use the Internet to promote your art, what would you use? Print media? Print media is so achingly slow and expensive. On top of that, I don’t have any evidence that print media is any more effective than emailing an announcement. If anything, I’m convinced that people are much more likely to hang onto your information if they receive it digitally. I don’t even bother with hard copy postcard mailings anymore because of the high cost of postage and printing. The only time I use print media now is when I make an exhibition catalog, which only happens every two or three years because printing is so expensive. I snail-mail hard copies of the exhibition catalog to select curators and art dealers whom I want to show my artwork. Compared to print media, the Internet is so much faster, convenient, and mostly free. When you’re at the very beginning of your career and you don’t have significant financial resources, these factors are huge.

I can understand your reluctance to put yourself online. Many artists worry that by promoting themselves online, their artwork will be cheapened in the process. This can be true, and I’ve seen artists promote themselves online in a manner that is embarrassing and even detrimental to their career. I once visited a website that had gigantic icons for all of the artist’s many social networks on every single webpage. I was so distracted by the “share” icons that I couldn’t see their artwork clearly. Just last week I saw an artist website that was visually crammed. Nearly every page had cheesy quotes of praise, links to three different ways to buy their artwork, links telling people to be on their email list, as well as one of the tackiest biographies I’ve read in a while. Their artwork seemed like an afterthought in the context of all the clutter on the website.

At the very least, you absolutely must have a website for your artwork. If you can afford it, it’s worth it to hire a professional to design your website to be sure that the presentation is both tasteful and user-friendly. If you can’t, there are many low cost or free options you can find online for building a website. Your website can be very simple, but you must have the core basics: curriculum vitae, biography, contact information, and your artwork. To ensure a professional look, write a narrative biography that is purely factual without any superfluous embellishments. If you accompany your artwork with text, make sure that the text is visually understated. What you choose not to share is just as important for maintaining a clean, professional presentation. On my blog, I have rules that I set for myself: I don’t whine, I never post anything about my family, and I only post photographs of myself in professional contexts.

Without a website, I can guarantee that you will miss out on crucial professional opportunities. Essentially every professional interaction I’ve had in my career has, at some point, involved someone looking at my website. I was once interviewing someone to teach a workshop, so I asked to see their artwork. The artist told me they didn’t have a website, and asked if they could just email me images. This was not only inconvenient to me, because my inbox was then flooded with images, but also did not make a positive first impression. When I was a gallery director, I was frequently looking up artists online. If I discovered that an artist didn’t have a website, my professional opinion of them immediately dropped.

For me, of all of the social media outlets, Facebook has been the most effective so far. While I am also on Twitter and other sites, I have many more followers on my Facebook page. I know a lot of people hate Facebook, but it’s hard to ignore how effective it is in terms of reaching a lot of people very quickly. Many of my colleagues now use Facebook instead of a traditional email list for announcements. With Facebook, there’s no hassle of updating everyone’s email address all the time, and many people are more likely to see the information on Facebook first. You can choose to limit your Facebook interactions to being purely professional, and not post anything remotely personal. Another option is to set your privacy settings so that any personal content you post is only viewable by your personal friends.

Ultimately, you are in control of creating an online presence for yourself. You can strictly regulate what kind of information you put online, keep your presentation professional, and only share what you’re comfortable with. In this way you can stay current but also maintain your artistic integrity.

Related articles:

“How do you know when your artwork is good enough to show to the world?”

“How do you get people to notice your artwork online?”

“When is it too early to start promoting your work on the Internet?”

“How do you retain the integrity of your artwork while promoting it?”

“How do you get to the top of the art world?”

“How can I get into art exhibitions?”

Treadmill

This morning I was reading the New York Times and I came across an article, “With ‘Stay Lit,’ Writers Persevere in a Hostile World.” One of the writers mentioned in the article is Russell Rowland, who recently wrote an essay about continuing to write, despite difficult circumstances, disappointments, and failures. Both of these articles are about professional writers, but I found the content to be just as relevant to my experience as a visual artist.  One of my favorite excerpts from Rowland’s essay is below:

“But the desire to write, it seems, is a sickness for which there is no cure. Except writing.”

I feel the same way about making visual art. As time goes on, I find that I am asking myself more and more why I do this to myself. Lately it seems like being creative has become a compulsion that I resent a lot of the time. I can’t help but think that I would be a happier, healthier person if I didn’t have this drive to create.

You would think that with more years of experience that working as an artist gets easier, but in my experience it just seems to be getting harder. I was talking to one of my former students the other day, and we were discussing the difference between working in art school and working professionally. When I was an art student, I worked hellish hours, with much more intensity than I ever do today. I did marathon work sessions that lasted 8-10 hours into the morning hours. Today I rarely get to work more than 3 hours at a time because of constraints in my schedule. Yet somehow, those hellish hours were easier. Art school was like running a 2 minute sprint where you run as fast as you possibly can, can’t even pause to think, but then you finish and get to take a solid break before starting up again. Now, I feel like I’m on a treadmill that won’t turn off. The treadmill is not going very fast, and I finally have time to think, but there are no breaks and pacing myself is critical to survival.

Ask the Art Professor: What can a painting student do to be relevant in a digital world?

“Ask the Art Professor” is an advice column for visual artists, now featured in the Huffington Post.  This is your chance to ask a professional artist/educator your questions about being an artist, the creative process, career advice, etc. Submit your question by emailing me at clara(at)claralieu.com, or by commenting here on this blog. All questions will be posted anonymously, and you’ll receive notification when your question is online.  Read an archive of past articles here.

“My daughter is a freshman at art school this year. She has chosen painting as her major. How does an artist in a classical medium like painting choose electives that will make them relevant in a digital world? What types of courses should she choose to make herself more marketable? What types of internships help guide a successful career for a painter in a high tech world?”

To be relevant as an artist today, your daughter will first need to achieve an awareness and comprehension of the contemporary art world. If she can take art history courses that focus on contemporary art, this will be highly influential to her development as an artist. In art school, I didn’t take the initiative to study contemporary art. At the time, I dismissed all contemporary art based on just a few pieces I disliked. I was very ignorant, and I didn’t take the time to thoughtfully study and seek out contemporary art I liked. The consequence was that it took me many years after graduation to develop a sense of the contemporary art world. When I started working professionally, I quickly realized how important it was to not work in a vacuum. To create a context for my artwork, I had to acknowledge and understand the art being produced today, regardless of whether I liked it or not.

The digital world we live in has created a common misconception that incorporating digital media into your artwork is imperative to be relevant as an artist today. Actually, there are many contemporary artists out there working in traditional, hands-on processes who are very successful. Taking courses that teach specific software is only important if these techniques are integral to the making of the artwork. The one exception might be Photoshop, which is necessary for producing high quality images of artwork. One of my colleagues used to say that as artists, “we live and die by our photographs.” The majority of the time, one’s artwork is not seen in person and the importance of having strong photographic documentation of the artwork is absolutely essential.

The area where digital media is crucial is in the marketing of the artwork. In my opinion, these are skills that can be primarily addressed after art school is over. Most art schools don’t offer courses on marketing, and even if they did, each artist’s path is so artist-specific that a marketing plan really has to be custom tailored to their needs. While she is still in art school, it would be best for your daughter to choose courses that she has a genuine interest in, and that will contribute to her studio practice. Some students invest too much energy worrying about the future, to the point that they compromise their art school experience by enrolling in electives that they dislike, but that they think will help them professionally. For example, a lot of students think that it’s necessary to take a web design course in order to prepare for the professional world. On the contrary, there are numerous options today for making a website that don’t require any previous expertise. For an artist who simply wants to have their own website, learning how to build a website from scratch is just not mandatory anymore.

In the fine arts, the options for internships would be to work at a gallery or museum, or to work as an assistant for a professional artist. Being in a gallery or museum context would provide a glimpse into how these venues function, as well as an understanding of the details in the process that are frequently not discussed at art school. One of my students who interned at a museum said she couldn’t believe how much work went into simply framing and handling the artwork, as well as the complexities of the relationships between the artist and the museum staff. By experiencing this first hand, the student became fully aware of what is required of an artist in terms of preparing the artwork for a professional exhibition. Research the galleries and museums that you are considering, find out what kind of programming they offer, and what types of artists they have shown in the past. Depending on the mission of the organization, the experience at the internship will vary tremendously. A mainstream commercial gallery operates very differently than a small regional museum.

Getting a position working with a professional artist is much more elusive. These positions usually are not advertised and are found through personal connections. Additionally, the professional artist has to produce a high enough volume of work that they need assistants and also have the financial resources to support an internship. I actually don’t recommend this route; many of my former students and peers have worked as assistants for professional artists and the majority of them ended up doing mindless labor for very little money. One of my peers from graduate school worked at Jeff Koons’ studio after graduating and he found the experience demoralizing and extremely dull. I once visited him at the studio, and it was literally room after room of art school graduates toiling away at tedious tasks that had been assigned to them.

While taking these combined initiatives will contribute to your daughter’s preparation for the professional world, these concerns should largely stay on the back-burner until graduation.  The principal responsibility she should have in art school is to savor this opportunity to concentrate solely on the creation of her art within the context of a vibrant artistic community.

Related articles:

“How do you achieve a luminous effect in a painting through color and value?”

“Does painting what you see limit your artistic possibilities?”

“What is the practical meaning of color theory?”

“How do you compose a striking painting with color?”

“Is hard work and experimenting continuously such a bad thing?”

Student excerpts

At the end of every semester, I ask my freshman drawing students at RISD to fill out a final self-critique form.  The form asks questions about their progress this semester, and is an opportunity for students to take the time to reflect upon their experience in the class. Below are some excerpts from the self-critique forms.

“In order to get anything out of my work, I have to put everything into it.”

“A successful idea might be the result of numerous unsuccessful ideas.”

“I learned that something goes wrong every time no matter how hard you plan it.”

“I’ve realized how little I know about just about everything.”

“The process of failing never stops.”

“I realized its okay to not have everything work out the way it was meant to.”

“Good things can come from failures.”

“I learned that becoming a better artist does not only depend on the technical skills.”

“Projects never quite turn out as you plan.”

“It is critical to embrace who I am and not let other people steer me away from that.”

“I really learned that if I know what a work will look like in the end, then I’m not pushing myself enough.”

“If I work really hard, I will get results I’m proud of.”

“I’ve learned the importance of stepping outside your work.”

Video: RISD Lecture

Watch this lecture I gave on April 9, 2014 for RISD’s graduate program in Teaching + Learning in Art + Design.  The video was shot and edited by Paul Falcone.

Clara Lieu: Search and Conquer

I did an interview with Michael Corbin, over at ArtBookGuy.com

Clara Lieu is a brilliant artist who is also a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design.  Her work is amazing, prolific and she has conquered many genres.  I wanted to find out what makes her tick.  Here’s our cool chat …

MICHAEL: Clara! Are you kidding me? Your work is SICK! I love it. Where do I begin? Okay, the sculptural works. I get the feeling that you want to make sculpture as human as possible through facial movement and expression and also, your figures aren’t just standing there, they are involved in activity. What are you expressing through your sculptural works?

CLARA: Hi Michael, Thank you for your response!  My sculptural works are a physical representation of my personal experience with depression. I want the sculptures to achieve raw emotion by exploring the physical and expressionistic extremes of the human face.  The feelings I associate with depression are brutal and savage, so I aim to create sculptural forms in the human face that can communicate these emotions.

MICHAEL: I hope that your experience with depression is in the past.  I look at those works and actually feel uplifted and inspired by your talent.  What does creating these works do for you?

CLARA: I think that the worst of the depression is over.  However, I have had to accept that this is a lifelong condition that I will always have to deal with. Things still fluctuate for me from time to time.  The difference is that I now have a concrete support system in place that I know I can rely on when things get difficult.

Creating these works has been important to me because the process has allowed me to separate myself from that experience. At the height of my depression, I felt buried by the disease and was unable to work with it as a subject for my artwork. Since I’ve been treated, the depression has become very distant, like a memory that belonged to someone else. Only through that separation was I able to get gain enough objectivity on the experience to be able to explore it visually. In many ways, creating these works has been a way for me to keep the depression into the past.

MICHAEL: So you’re a conqueror.  I’m glad to hear that.  Also, I think the “Waiting” and “Digging” sculptural works on your site are incredible.  There’s so much movement and activity.  They’re animated without the actual animation.  What was your inspiration for them?  They’re SO human.

CLARA: Digging began when I was brainstorming the idea for my MFA thesis project. For months, I couldn’t come up with anything for the project. I was under a lot of pressure because I would have to sustain my interest in the idea for an entire year. Every idea that I thought of seemed forced and artificial. In the eleventh hour, I realized that instead of trying so hard to find something, I should make art about the process I had just gone through over the past few months; searching endlessly for something, not knowing what it was, having no clue about where to even look, but knowing that I was so desperately trying to find it. I knew that I wanted to work with groups of human figures in the images so I tried to think of a gesture in the human figure that could represent this experience. After considering a number of actions, I came up with digging, which was an effective metaphor for a search.

Digging naturally led me to my next project, Waiting. In my visual research for Digging, I noticed that in almost every image I found of people digging, there were always bystanders in the scene. Toward the end of Digging, I started to lose interest in the diggers and instead became fascinated by these still figures who watched and waited. The final monotype I created in Digging depicted an empty pit in the lower half of the composition, with a line of waiting figures standing above the pit. The diggers had disappeared, and the focus was redirected towards the waiting figures. At that point, I realized that the waiting figures needed to be explored in much greater depth, warranting their own project.

MICHAEL: Wow. You know, you just said something interesting about your search for an idea. Why is it that we’re always searching outside of ourselves for something? It seems that the search always leads back within US. What do you think?

CLARA: There’s a common misconception that for an idea to be effective, we have to conceptually travel to some exotic destination. In my experience, I have found that the ideas that are the most poignant are often times the ideas that are sitting there right in front of us. In the case of Digging, I felt obligated to search far and wide for my idea because somehow that made the process seem more sophisticated to me. In the end, all of that searching eventually circled back to me. It’s amazing what you can find at home.

Some of the most powerful pieces I’ve seen my students create have been projects that were based on their own personal experiences. One assignment I give in my freshman drawing class at the Rhode Island School of Design asks students to make a piece that visually depicts six levels of pain. One student created a three-dimensional paper model of her childhood home, with black ink stains throughout the home to represent the past presence of her brother, who died when he was 13. Another student created six clay faces, which showed the various stages of strenuous face massages that she used to get when she lived in Korea. For many of my students, their narratives seemed ordinary to them at first. When told to an outside audience from their unique perspective, these stories became incredibly moving.

MICHAEL: Absolutely. What is it like being an art professor now in a world where art continues to be misunderstood, disrespected, underfunded and undervalued?  Of course, this isn’t always the case, but it’s certainly a reality. I guess art students and teachers have to be warriors, No?

CLARA: I’m very fortunate that I currently teach at one of the top art schools in the nation. I’m immersed in an incredible community of artists who are highly devoted to their creative pursuits. In my day-to-day life, I don’t worry at all about art being undervalued or misunderstood.

The period of my life where the disrespect for art was the most searing was in high school. The high school I attended was all about academics and sports, and if you didn’t excel in those areas, you essentially didn’t matter. I knew I had this incredible drive to create art, but I couldn’t find anyone who felt the same way to connect with. I developed intense feelings of isolation and a hideously low self-esteem. In my case, the complete lack of support for visual arts during those years was hugely painful.

MICHAEL: And so, how did you go from that pain to teaching at a top art school and being this great artist?

CLARA: Basically, the RISD Pre-College program saved me. It was a six-program that I attended the summer of my junior year in high school. Despite how brief the program was, that experience changed everything. Nothing could have prepared me for the dramatic impact those six weeks would have.  Even now, over 20 years later, I still consider the RISD Pre-College program to be one of the most important turning points in my life.

During the program, I found myself deeply immersed in an extraordinary community of artists. I savored every minute of my classes and worked on my artwork outside of class with feverish enthusiasm. For the first time, I had teachers who took me seriously. They treated me with the utmost respect and made me feel important. In the other students, I saw my own passion and drive. We fostered mutual support and pushed each other to stimulate artistic growth. I wasn’t seen as a freak anymore and I actually felt like I belonged.

Although having to go back to high school was truly horrible, I was different when I came back. That summer had given me a small taste of what my life could be like. Knowing that I could eventually return to that world gave me the strength I needed to survive that final year in high school. That year, I was accepted into the undergraduate program at RISD and the rest is history.

MICHAEL: You know, what’s the deal with society and the way it views artists? Creative people should not be seen as freaks, but rather as those who are seeking answers and might actually lead the way.  Anyway, how do you think the world or America, at least, views contemporary art?  What needs to be addressed? Many people are suspicious of contemporary art and sit in judgment.

CLARA: The prevailing issue I see is that contemporary art has made itself highly inaccessible to the average person. I’m an artist with education and training in the visual arts and I feel shut out of the contemporary art world most of the time. If someone with my background feels disconnected, then it must be even worse for the layman. The contemporary art world is extremely exclusive. Everywhere I go, it seems like I see the same ten artists in all of the major museums and galleries. On top of that, the presentation of contemporary art is often times very cold which makes it tough for audiences to connect. For this to change, contemporary art has to take the initiative and foster stronger connections with their audience.

MICHAEL: Totally. You works on paper are amazing. They’re dark, dramatic and the depth of field and perspective is great.  Again, your figures are active and moving. What’s the inspiration behind them?

CLARA: In the works on paper, visual contrast plays a major role in articulating the images. Limiting myself to black and white is one strategy I use to create this contrast. I gave up color about ten years ago, and it was one of the best decisions that I’ve made in my career. For many years, I was convinced that I was a figurative oil painter. In retrospect, color had been a burden for me and when I removed it from my process, I felt a huge sense of liberation and relief. I had been using color out of obligation, not because it was truly critical to the work. Black and white dramatically simplified my process and allowed me to focus on the issues that I was interested in.

MICHAEL: Yes. They really have a cinematic, documentary kind of vibe. I would love to see them almost turned into animation. Your work doesn’t move and yet it does. When you are involved in the actual process of creating art, what’s going through your mind? Is the process more intellectual, emotional or spiritual?

CLARA: The preliminary stages of my projects is extremely rigorous. I spend many months preparing to make the final work, solidifying my concepts and exploring potential techniques and materials. I iron out all of the potential issues so that executing the final works is generally very straightforward. Naturally, spontaneous issues do emerge in the process of creating the final work, but they are generally small. I usually don’t have to make fundamental sweeping changes to my plans at that stage. Since the conceptual elements of the work have been determined, I’m able to focus exclusively on the technical making of the work. I don’t engage emotionally or intellectually at all. For me, this would be a huge distraction and make it hard for me to concentrate on the physical process of creating the work.

MICHAEL: How do people usually respond to you when you tell them that you’re an artist and art professor? So many people still think that art has no real purpose.

CLARA: In my day-to-day life, I am always surrounded by other artists, so it’s usually not perceived as unusual and I don’t have problems with it. Growing up, when my mother socialized with other Chinese parents, they didn’t know how to react. Most of the Chinese parents took great pride sending their children to law school or medical school. So there was my mother, telling the other parents that I was going to art school. That usually shut down the conversation pretty quickly.

MICHAEL: What do you think it’ll take to get more people involved with contemporary art? So many people are suspicious of it and the art world isn’t necessarily the friendliest to outsiders.

CLARA: Art education is a powerful way to make contemporary art more accessible to the general public. I’ve always thought that it is very sad that visual art is frequently encouraged in young children, but that once people reach adolescence visual art is suddenly seen as a dispensable subject. The more the average person can interact with visual art as part of their general education, the more likely they are to engage with and appreciate contemporary art. Technology and media also has the potential to transform the way contemporary art is received. The PBS Series Art21, which features documentaries with contemporary artists, is an example of that. Through these video interviews, one is able to get to know the artist as a living person.

MICHAEL: When people see your work, what do you want them to take away from it?  Would you say there’s a theme that runs through it?

CLARA: In my mind, if someone experiences my work and they look at the world a little differently afterward, I’ve succeeded.

Ask the Art Professor: Should I pursue a career in fine art?

“Ask the Art Professor” is an advice column for visual artists, now featured in the Huffington Post.  This is your chance to ask a professional artist/educator your questions about being an artist, the creative process, career advice, etc. Submit your question by emailing me at clara(at)claralieu.com, or by commenting here on this blog. All questions will be posted anonymously, and you’ll receive notification when your question is online.  Read an archive of past articles here.

“I am a lifelong self-taught artist who has been accepted into a number of fine arts programs, including a BFA program at a local university. I’m really happy about this, but I feel torn. I have done many mundane jobs in my life and always promised myself that I would leave it behind and seek something more creative as a means of living. Now that I have that chance, I feel hesitant. Part of me thinks I should do something more ‘practical’ and have something that will enable me to grow professionally no matter what happens to the economy, my geographical circumstances, etc. Another part of me says that I’m 35 now and I may as well seize the opportunity to do something creative and really invest in myself, and take this time to explore through my artistic practice what it is that interests me. What do I do?”

The prevailing piece of advice that I give to my students when they worry (which is all the time) about a career in fine arts is this: no matter what happens, don’t live your life with a sense of regret.

One of my friends from art school did not pursue a career in fine arts, and instead chose early on to switch to an unrelated field. Over the many years since we graduated from art school, he has always had a full-time job with benefits and has not had to worry about the future. He goes on international vacations, his kids go to private school, and he eats out frequently at expensive restaurants. In our past and present conversations, I am the one talking about the constant state of anxiety I live in. I never know whether I will have a job next year, I struggle to pay for childcare month to month, and vacations are just wishful thinking.

Last year, he had a crushing realization: sixteen years had passed since art school, and in all of those years, he hadn’t made any art. Those years were gone, and the sense of regret he felt was devastating.

My friend and I are polar opposites, which raises the question about whether choosing a career in fine art really is that black and white. I really wish I could tell you that you can have it both ways and still be successful as a professional artist, but I can’t. This profession is tough, insecure, and extremely unpredictable. All of the professional fine artists I know are so devoted to their studio practice that to reduce their commitment in any way would be a setback in their career. Professional artists breathe art daily. Their drive to create art is unstoppable. They have to have an iron-clad resilience and a fierce survival instinct. If hearing that sounds scary, and painting on Sunday afternoons for three hours can satisfy you creatively, then it’s likely that a career in fine arts isn’t the right fit for you. If this sounds exciting and inspiring, then seize this opportunity and don’t look back.

I will admit that I can’t help but be jealous all of the comforts my friend enjoys. I fantasize about having a full-time job with benefits, and I have fleeting moments where I question why I do this to myself. At the same time, I know that I will never look back and regret my decision to live life as an artist. For me, the impulse to create art is so great that if I didn’t follow my aspirations, I would be signing on to live my life with a relentless itch. I know that it would be torture for me to take a job unrelated to art. I would be preoccupied with what my life could have been like as a professional artist. I would rather take the plunge and fall flat on my face, than live with that itch. When I think about it that way, all of the luxuries I envy in my friend become insignificant.

Related articles:

“How do I change careers to pursue my passion for art?”

“What are the career opportunities in fine art?”

“How long did it take you to jump start your career after graduation?  What was your first job?”

 

Yes, I really do read my student course evaluations

Between grading and final critiques, the end of the semester is always a very stressful time for everyone. Students are usually at their peak of exhaustion, and faculty are generally scrambling to complete grading and final critiques. In the midst of this avalanche of work, the ritual of student course evaluations reliably emerges on the last day of class.

As a student, when I filled out course evaluations, I never thought twice about what I had written. I didn’t think that what I wrote would ever have any kind of impact. Many students don’t invest the time to write in depth course evaluations, largely because they simply don’t believe that their professors will take the time to actually read and consider what they wrote.   I’m here today to tell you that on the contrary, what you write matters.

Reading my course evaluations means voluntarily getting on the world’s most dramatic, emotional roller coaster ride. To prepare myself, I always make sure that I read my course evaluations at least 3-4 weeks after I have submitted grades. This ensures that I have some distance from the semester.  I set aside a good chunk of uninterrupted time so that I can sit and read through the course evaluations slowly and carefully. Then, I take a big, deep breath, and start reading.

The range of comments I’ve received over the course of my teaching career is extraordinarily vast. Students have written beautiful, moving comments that have made me all verklempt. I have literally laughed out loud: a student once wrote that she found herself thinking about her projects for my class all the time, even when she was out partying. Back when course evaluations were handwritten on paper, I had one student hand write “10″ next to the rating scale which was set at 1-5.

I know that I will never be every student’s cup of tea, so it’s basically guaranteed that there will be criticism. I’ve gotten harsh comments that I have to try really hard not to take personally. Despite my reputation as a slave driver at RISD, the reality is that I am just as sensitive as everyone else.  I will admit that some of the comments can be hard to swallow. One of my colleagues told me that when he first started teaching, he was startled at how self-conscious teaching made him feel. Reading your course evaluations is essentially the equivalent of multiplying that self-consciousness by a million. And if I wasn’t already self-conscious enough, there is also the occasional remark about my haircut and appearance.  When I was pregnant, this was frequently noted in my course evaluations. One student wrote: “she’s pregnant and she’s more on top of it than my other teachers.”

Once in a while, I’ve had comments that were just outright false: someone once accused me of grading on a curve, a practice that I have never implemented in my teaching, and never intend to. The most common complaint in my course evaluations?  That I don’t allow students to listen to their music with headphones during my class. (Sorry, that’s one policy that is never going away.)

As tough as it can sometimes be to read my course evaluations, I still find them important in my teaching process. I take time at the end of every semester to think about what changes I can make to the course, and the course evaluations are a good starting point for that inner dialogue. The evaluations provide me with a sense of perspective on the course that I wouldn’t be able to gain on my own, and in the past have stimulated concrete changes in my course materials.  I still feel like I’m going to hyperventilate when I anticipate reading my course evaluations, but it’s a process that I am willing to go through for the sake of the positive changes that can happen as a result.