Clara Lieu's Blog, page 34

Ask the Art Professor: How do I become a teaching assistant?

“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 an undergraduate student in art school, and I’m interested in being a teaching assistant. How do I become a TA and what is involved?”

Many students are often times confused about how to get a TA position, since every professor has their own process for selecting their TAs. My recommendation is to always take the initiative to contact the professor at least one semester in advance to express your desire for a position. I keep a list in my head of potential TAs, but I always give first priority to students who have directly communicated their interest to me. When I was a student, it never even occurred to me to ask for a position, which I now regret. Don’t wait to be chosen. Instead, take matters into your own hands and inquire early.

From the point of view of a professor, choosing your TAs is actually not as easy as it might seem. Over the years, I’ve gotten much better at anticipating which students will be a good fit. At the beginning of my teaching career, I mistakenly made the assumption that the top students would automatically be good TAs. I once had a TA who was an extraordinary student, but who later became a big headache for me. He was uncomfortable with his new role as an authority figure which caused him to freeze up during group critiques. He set a bad example for the students by coming to class late. After all, if the TA doesn’t come to class on time, why should the students? His presence became detrimental to the class, and I found myself having to manage his issues on top of everything else.

Since that experience, I’ve learned to be very picky about which students I choose to work with. I think carefully about how they conducted themselves as a student in my class. Most students don’t think about this at the time, but being a student in my class is basically the audition to be a TA. I look for these attributes when considering potential TAs: 1) genuine care and concern for other students, 2) lively social skills, 3) active participation in group critiques, 4) reliability and consistency, 5) a sense of humor, and 6) a willingness to go beyond the minimum requirements.

This selection process has resulted in the opportunity to work with many incredible TAs over the course of my teaching career. When I start becoming the absentminded professor, my TAs remind me of critical details and keep me on track. I see them as indispensable to the course, and I can’t imagine teaching without them. My best TAs had these qualities:

1) Has infectious enthusiasm. Make your energy contagious amongst the students. You have a responsibility to be the official cheerleader for the class.

2) Is outgoing and socializes with the students. When there is a break, go get yourself a cup of coffee, but then return to the classroom and engage in casual conversation with the students. Check in with them and ask how things are going. Students are usually very eager to dish to the TA in a way that they are not with the professor.

3) Reads the professor’s mind. I’m only half-joking here. I’m astounded by the way my TAs are able to anticipate what’s coming up next, and how they take concrete actions to help prepare.

4) Makes him/herself available. Several of my TAs have been extremely generous, going well beyond the call of duty. They give their contact information to the class, and encourage the students to get in touch outside of class time with any concerns. Occasionally, my TAs have even come into the studio the night before an assignment is due to provide in-person critiques. Several students came to rely on this additional support system during the semester, and to this day I still get comments from former students about how important these meetings were to them.

5) Alerts the professor to student concerns. Especially at the beginning of the semester, many students are more comfortable expressing their concerns to the TA. Last semester, a student came to the TA because he was feeling really discouraged. The student felt like the other students were ganging up on him during group critiques. This was an important issue that I might not have observed on my own, and knowing this enabled me to help remedy the situation more quickly.

Working as a TA can be a highly enriching and rewarding experience. By collaborating with the professor and students, you learn to cultivate vital relationships and gain essential perspective. Down the road, these are fundamental skills which can then be applied to a career in any field.

Related articles:

“How do I become an undergraduate art professor?“
“What should I be working on now if I would like to be an art professor?”

“What makes a student artist stand out from their peers?”

“How did you become an art professor?”

RISD Pre-College Summer Program, 1993

Returning to teach for the RISD Pre-College program this summer has me reminiscing about my own experience as a pre-college student, way back in the summer of 1993. Despite the many years I’ve worked as a professional artist and professor, I still look back on those 6 weeks as the most pivotal moment in my career as an artist.

High school was a dreadful, humiliating experience for me. I was intensely angry and depressed, with no outlet in sight.  I was told by many adults that high school would be the “time of my life,” which was more salt to the wound.  If the “time of my life” meant having a hideously low self-esteem, being emotionally manipulated by my friends, and overwhelming feelings of isolation, what could I possibly have to look forward to? Today, whenever I teach high school students, the one message I always make sure to leave my students with is “it gets better.”

The public high school I went to worshiped students who excelled in athletics and academics. If you didn’t fit into these two categories, you basically didn’t matter.  The art classes at my high school were pathetic.  Most of the students who enrolled in the art classes were just looking for easy course credit. On top of that, the head of the art department was extremely adversarial towards me. My senior year,  I volunteered to organize a major student art exhibition, (which had never been done before) only to have it killed by the head of the art department.  The following year, after I had graduated, guess who organized a student art exhibition? I was livid when I found out.

Then, the summer of my junior year my parents let me attend the RISD Pre-College program. Suddenly, I was plunged into this extraordinary artistic community and environment.  I was in complete disbelief that a place like RISD could exist in the world. I saw my own passion for art in the other students, and fostered friendships, many which remain today.  I treasured every minute of my classes, and worked on my homework assignments with feverish enthusiasm.  The teachers I had took me seriously and treated me with respect and understanding.  I remember the first thing my design teacher said to me was “You work with such conviction!” For the first time in my life, I wasn’t a freak anymore.

That’s not to say that the program was a cake walk.  I hated my painting teacher for the first 4 weeks of the program because he didn’t automatically shower me with praise. (we eventually bonded in the last 2 weeks) There were many late nights working in the studio. I will admit to being jealous of other students’ abilities and having to confront the cold, hard fact that I was no longer “the best.” Despite all of these challenges, the bottom line was that the program had fundamentally changed my life forever.

When the program ended, I was devastated. My friends and I spent the last night crying. I couldn’t accept that I had to return to high school. When I came back to high school, I was still angry and frustrated, but I was also different. RISD Pre-College had given me a glimpse of what my life could be like. I held onto that glimpse, and it gave me the strength to get through that final year of high school. I stopped caring about what other people thought, kept in close contact with my pre-college friends, and went full speed ahead with my artwork. In January of 1994, I was accepted into the RISD undergraduate program, and the rest is history.

Did you attend the RISD Pre-College program?  I would love to hear about how the program impacted your life.

Summer Plans

My summer schedule is starting to take shape. I’ll be teaching a Design course in the RISD Pre-College program which runs for 6 weeks. The last time I taught in this program was in 2008.  A lot has changed since then, so I decided to scrap my old course materials and write an entirely new course.   It’s very nerdy, but I actually enjoy writing course materials, inventing new projects, and creating slideshows.

On top of teaching, I will prepare for three solo exhibitions in the fall.  The shows will be at the Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University, the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College, and the Mazmanian Gallery at Framingham State University. The shows will feature sculpture, photographs, mezzotints, and drawings.

I had a meeting with the gallery director at the Trustman Gallery last week which was extremely helpful.  We walked through the gallery space together, discussed in detail how the show might be hung, and worked out an estimate for how many works to bring. By the end of the summer, I need to finish 15 mezzotints, and two 7′ x 4′ drawings. The Trustman Gallery is fairly large, so I was initially very worried that the quantity would be too much for me.  Now that I have these numbers, I know that I can do it.

Trustman Gallery at Simmons College, Liz Shepherd’s 2013 solo exhibition

Artist Masterclass: Intersections

Artist Masterclass is a series of conversations between myself and visual artist Sara Bloem.

SB:  I really liked the article you posted the other day, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot too lately! Recently I actually redesigned my blog to have less information on it. I was culling some old posts, including a few from our independent study days at RISD where I wrote more freely about my process. I almost hid the old posts, because I thought how direct I was being made me sound like a simpleton. But then I thought, maybe someone will find them useful, and I left them up.  I thought it was funny that I even had that thought, that explaining my process was an unsophisticated move on my part.   I think your post addressed something really important.

CL: If you look at the artists at the top of the art world who have websites, like Sarah Sze and Shahzia Sikander, their websites are designed to be very sparse, which I’m sure is no accident.  I think somehow that minimalism makes the work look more “elevated.” Then there are some artists, like Kara Walker and John Currin, who are so established that they don’t even bother having a website.

SB: It’s like their websites are mimicking the white cube.

CL: By comparison I sometimes feel like my website makes me look like a social media circus.

SB: I think your website has more in common with other fine art websites than it has with non-art websites. In other words, I think your website looks professional, but I see what you’re talking about.

CL:  I think what I’m coming to realize is that I will likely never belong to that elite art world. As a reaction to that, I’ve had to take the initiative to make my own world.

SB:  You know, that sounds great.  In my opinion, the greatest things happen at the intersections of disciplines. That’s where I see your practice, it’s drawing from a lot of different fields of knowledge.

CL: I’m sort of a weird hybrid in that I am in academia, but I have made myself accessible through my blog and social media in a way that most artists in academia do not. I worry all the time that my colleagues will think that I’ve totally sold out. I haven’t found anyone else online doing quite what I’m doing.  In that sense I’ve been able to create a unique niche for myself.

By the way, I was thinking of you today.  I’ve been working on a blog post for my “Ask the Art Professor” column titled  “How to be a great art school teaching assistant (TA).” The article will discuss various qualities that make a strong TA.  Naturally, I thought of you, especially since you were my TA for several semesters. There is also the opposite end of the spectrum: when I was a student, I definitely saw my share of TAs in my classes whose helpfulness was about equivalent to that of a paper weight. So now I’m curious, how do you think being a TA influenced your experience as a student? Did being a TA change your point of view on teaching?

SB: Being a TA made me more thoughtful about how I phrased critiques. I think as a student, you can say pretty much whatever you want without a filter.  But as a TA, I realized that being extremely blunt was sometimes counterproductive, and that there were more subtle ways to guide a student into trying new things.

CL: Yes, the risk with being too harsh is that students can completely shut down, and then you’ve lost them for good.

SB: I also noticed you have to make an effort to divide your time equally.  Some students are very outgoing and will naturally establish a rapport with you, but the quiet ones need time too.  I feel like it’s challenging to establish a genuine relationship with all 20 members of the class, but as a teacher, that’s what you have to do.  I mean, how often do you normally get thrown into a room with 20 strangers you’re supposed to make a difference with?

CL:  You have to invest so much effort and time into developing a relationship with every single student.  As hard as it can be, I really enjoy it. It sounds very corny, but I’ve learned so much about people by getting to know my students. One thing that I’ve learned is that everyone struggles.  We all have something difficult in our lives that we have to deal with, whether it’s our own personal issue, a family member, a traumatic experience, etc.   In fact, the students who appear the most together and successful on the outside are frequently the ones who are on the verge of falling apart on the inside.  I know this because I’ve had many students break down in front of me when no one else was around.

SB: That’s really special, to be able to be there for your students at that time.  I think a lot of the really high-achieving students are very sensitive.  It’s kind of the source of their talent and also a challenge.

CL: I also think teaching at the freshman level is especially delicate. When you teach first year students, you have an enormous responsibility. The other day I asked my husband, who teaches an elective for upperclass students in the RISD film/animation/video department, whether people emotionally melt down in his class. He said that it almost never happens.  For me, it’s like every week at least one student cries.

SB: You definitely ask people to probe deep.

CL: My classes can get pretty dramatic, especially during group critiques. One of my TAs once told me “Clara, it’s not your class if no one cries.”  Then this week one of my former students told me that being in my class is like having Stockholm syndrome. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while!

Online Visibility

Lately, I’ve been researching popular visual artist blogs online, in an effort to increase traffic to my blog.  I have realized that I am one of the very few visual artists in academia who blogs and is highly active in social media.  You would think being unique in this way would be an automatic advantage. However, I still get the feeling that most of the academic art world looks down on social media and blogs. Although I have no intention of stopping,  I’ll admit that I am sometimes embarrassed by my active web presence for this reason.

On the other hand, I have to remember that accessibility is really important to me, and being active online is a big part of that. The problem is, that accessibility can sometimes be seen by experts in the field as dumbing down the content. At the same time, if I sacrifice that accessibility, I risk shrinking my audience to the few who are educated in my field. I’m constantly working to maintain a delicate balance so that I can present sophisticated content that is also understandable to the layman.

“Ask the Art Professor” Article Archive

It’s now been one year since I started “Ask the Art Professor”, my advice column for visual artists. Below is an archive of articles I’ve written in the past year.

On college portfolio preparation:

“What are common mistakes in college portfolio submissions?”

“What should you include in an art portfolio for art school or college?”

On art school and degrees:

“What is the purpose of a degree in fine art?”

“How do you preserve your artistic integrity within the strict time limitations in an academic setting?”

“Is art education really so popular in western countries?”

“Should art students study abroad even if it distracts from job preparation?”

“Who should you make art for, yourself or your professor?“

“7 tips for surviving art school.”

“How can I prepare myself for the reality of the future?”

“To what extent do grades define an academic career in visual art?”

“Should I drop out of art school?”

On graduate school:

“Is graduate school worth it?”

“How are European MFA degrees viewed in the United States?”

“How do I choose a field for graduate school?”

On life after school:

“What do you do after you’ve finished formalized training?”

“When you have a fine arts degree, what do you do for the rest of your life?”

“What is your advice to young students who have just graduated from their undergraduate degree?”

“How do you stay motivated after school?”

On technique and skills:

“How can I tell if I’m skilled enough?”

“How do you find your own individual style?”

“How do artists manage to get their soul out into images?”

“How do you develop an idea from a sketch to a finished work?”

“How do you make an art piece more rich with details that will catch the eye?”

“How do you learn the basics?”

“Is it bad to start another piece of art before finishing another one?”

“How do you work in a series?”

“When and how should you use photo references to draw?”

“How do you know when to stop working?”

On abstraction:

“How can I approach creating abstract art?”

“Does an abstract artist need to be proficient in traditional techniques?”

On painting & color:

“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?”

On drawing:

“What is a gesture drawing?”

“Is drawing considered an innate talent or a craft, which can be learned by anyone?”

“How can I learn to shade objects in my drawings?”

“How can I draw what I see in my head?”

“What is the best way to practice my drawing skills?”

“How do you get yourself to practice drawing?”

“What is the most important mindset a student needs to have in order to create a successful drawing?”

On drawing the human figure:

“How would I go about studying the human figure?”

“How do you draw the human face?”

“How can I learn to draw noses?”

“What is the best way to simplify the human figure?”

“How can you learn to draw hair?”

On careers:

“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?”

On Promotion:

“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?”

On illustration:

“How do I become a children’s book illustrator?”

“Can I make a respectable income on freelance illustration?”

“Where is a good place to start with graphic novels?”

“What does it take to get a job at an animation studio?”

On galleries & museums:

“How do I leave my gallery?”

“How do you sell your art?”

“How do I approach a gallery?”

“How do museums select artists to exhibit? What is museum quality work?”

“How do I know I’m ready to start selling and approaching galleries?”

On doubt:

“Am I actually an artist?”

“How can one regain lost satisfaction with their work?”

“How do you gain confidence in your artwork?”

“Do professional artists doubt their abilities?”

On learning:

“Where do I start?”

“How do you keep pushing yourself to get to that next level?”

“Would you improve more if you took art classes than just studying on your own?”

“How do you learn the basics?”

“How do you break out of your comfort zone?”

“How do you get out of thinking you can’t get any better?”

“How do you develop patience for learning curves?”

“When do you let go of an idea?”

“How do I help my daughter reach her potential in art?”

On teaching:

“How do I become an undergraduate art professor?“

“What should I be working on now if I would like to be an art professor?”

“What makes a student artist stand out from their peers?”

“How did you become an art professor?”

On life:

“How much of your emotional life do you allow to infiltrate your work?”

“How do you face artistic burnout?”

“How do you come up with ideas?”

On practical matters:

“What do you do for art storage?”

“How can an artist balance their life?”

“How can an artist overcome their financial issues?”

“How can an artist create an artistic group outside of school?”

“How do you balance a full-time job, kids and your own art?”

“How do you socialize in the art world?”

Other:

“What is the most important thing you can do as an artist?“

“Does being an artist require much more thinking than in other academic fields?”

“What is the difference between fine arts and visual arts?”

“Will negative stereotypes about artists ever go away?”

“Is photography art?”

“What would you be looking for if you were judging for an art scholarship?”

“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.

Knocking on Doors

Some of you have probably noticed that my posts have been relatively sparse for this month. The main reason is because at the beginning of April, I caught a nasty cold, lost my voice, and was completely out of commission for a good week and a half. I spent the following week recovering, and this week I am just now starting to catch up. Since getting sick basically forced me to go on hiatus from the studio, I decided to use this time to work on some promotional tasks. These tasks can be done mostly online, so I’ve been able to just work on my laptop while also physically resting these past few weeks. Spending time on publicity makes me feel a little less guilty about not being in the studio.

Since giving a lecture based on my book for the RISD graduate program in Teaching + Learning in Art + Design a few weeks ago, I’ve been inspired to try and bring the lecture to other places. (I did have that lecture videotaped, so that video will be coming soon)

I strongly believe in taking the initiative to knock on doors. In the past, I’ve had success securing exhibitions and teaching positions simply by contacting people and telling them that I was available and interested.  So I have concrete proof that knocking on doors does work. The tough part is that you have to put in an immense amount of labor and time to actually get results.

I sent out over 80 emails to specific people at schools, museums, and artist associations throughout New England. Out of those 80+ emails, I heard back from 23 people who expressed interest. Whether those responses will turn into actual invitations remains to be seen, but it’s a good start.

Artist Masterclass: Control

Artist Masterclass is a series of conversations between myself and visual artist Sara Bloem.

CL: So you look like you’ve been very busy, it’s been several weeks since we last spoke.

SB: Progress is happening steadily. It’s not as fast as I would like, but it’s never as fast as what I’d like.

CL: Those photo references from the botanical gardens look great.  How was that experience, was it useful to shoot your own reference on location?

SB: That was such a good suggestion Clara, I had so much fun. I took about 240 photos.  Yes, it was absolutely essential. With my own reference, I can layer a lot more purposefully than I did before.  I just love all the shapes of the tropical plants.

CL: I think it’s all about retaining absolute creative control. The new digital collages look really terrific, they seem like they have much more depth to them.  The botanical garden reference photos are a big part of that.  I really like where this project is going, your references are ten times more sophisticated than what you were doing as a student.

SB: Because I had actually good reference photos, I was able to cut parts out and layer in more interesting ways than before.  I have four more compositions to set up (for a total of 12) and then I guess the planning stage is done. I just feel so embarrassed because of how slow I am.  I feel like every time we chat, I feel so guilty.

CL:  You have “artist guilt”?

SB: Oh, just like, I have nothing to show.

CL: At the lecture I gave at RISD last week, one person came up to me after the lecture and asked me what I thought the most important thing you can do as an artist is. A big question, but I told him the most important thing for me is the fact that I’ve been able to consistently sustain my studio practice for basically my entire adult life. I went to art school with a lot of people who stopped making their art and just never picked it up again.

SB:  I was thinking this week about how different it is making work without a structure.  I feel incredibly motivated by checking in with you every so often.  I wondered, is that cheating? I guess that’s more like a “being buoyed by exchanging ideas with your mentors/peers.”

CL: It’s not cheating at all, take advantage of every opportunity you get!

SB:  I tend to overthink things.

CL: We are similar in that way, I drive myself crazy with my thoughts. Like today,  I’ve been working on sending out tons of emails to art schools/colleges/universities trying to get them present my lecture based on my book. You’re walking the plank every time you put yourself out there. The day of the lecture at RISD I felt like I was going to barf all day, I was so nervous.  I had all of these negative thoughts racing in my head, like that I have nothing new or original to offer, the audience will think my artwork is shallow, etc. Self doubt is such a big part of this process.  It’s weird, because it’s this strange feeling of simultaneously being totally confident in your work, and also doubting it so much.

SB:   It almost feels like self-doubt is a byproduct of the creative impulse.  Just as I (theoretically) can come up with lots of creative ideas, I can also come up with lots of self-criticism.

CL:  You’ve been out of school almost a year!  I was talking to some of my students the other day about how I thought two of the most transformative years of your life are freshman year in college and the year after you graduate.

SB: This year in particular has been a doozy. It’s been a huge thing that nearly bowled me over, like a year-long hangover.

CL:  A hangover from being in art school?

SB:  I’ve just realized that art school is so free of distractions, and now I have all these adult things to think about, like finances and jobs.

I need your questions!

Submit a question to my “Ask the Art Professor” column on the Huffington Post! Ask me about the creative process, navigating the professional art world, how to survive art school, and any other topic that you’re thinking about! I’ll write a comprehensive article in response to your question. Email me at clara(at)claralieu.com or comment here.   All questions are posted anonymously. 

You can read past columns here.

 

Ask the Art Professor: Should I drop out of art school?

“I have a background in art, as growing up I benefited from practice, private instruction and a pretty decent art program in grade school and high school. Going into college, I am much further along technically than most of the other students here, and I know much of what is covered in the fundamental art courses. However, I am now at a point where I don’t feel the teachers are teaching me anything. It would be one thing if I simply felt I wasn’t learning anything because I already know it all and could therefore look forward to learning in the advanced classes, but I don’t feel the teachers are actually teaching. In one class we have spent an entire quarter going over something I could have Googled in about five minutes. In another, a drawing class, my teacher gave us nothing but videos to watch. One teacher critiques our work, but only tells us what is wrong with it and refuses to tell us how we could fix it. Many of the teachers here seem to have a complete lack of understanding of the material they are supposed to know themselves. These teachers are supposed to guide us through college and into a career afterwards, yet they don’t seem to know anything about the industries we will be going into. I am worried I am wasting my time and money going to this school. I don’t think I should be paying thousands of dollars for something I could look up on YouTube. However, I am worried that other art schools will be no different. If I transfer somewhere else, can I expect that teachers will actually have something to teach? That I won’t just be shown YouTube videos? Should I just drop out and educate myself through the Internet?”

You are right to feel concerned about the education you are receiving, as it is the teachers who define an art school experience. When I think back about my experience as an undergraduate student, it wasn’t the facilities, resources or the campus that were important. What I cherished were the relationships that I formed with my teachers. Before I went to art school, I had never met a true, professional, working artist in person. You can find out all you want about being an artist through books, articles, and videos, but nothing will substitute having the opportunity to form a personal relationship with an artist who maintains a vibrant, contemporary practice. Getting to know my teachers as people, and working with them during class sessions made the idea of being a visual artist in today’s world real.

I learned vitally important information about art through my art history courses, but there was always a significant distance between myself and the artists we were studying. All of the artists I studied seemed so inaccessible. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible to go from being an art student to fabricating a massive piece of public art that stood 20-feet tall in bronze.

It was when my teachers shared their own artwork in class, that I began to understand how a transition from student to professional could be made. These moments were truly transformative and provided concrete examples that made sense to me as a student. My senior year, one of my painting teachers gave a slide lecture at the end of the semester about his work, demonstrating the range of art that he had completed over the past few decades. His talk was intensely personal. He referenced the traumatic death of his mother, talked about the personalities of people he had painted portraits of, and discussed the complex emotions that inspired his work.

One of my drawing teachers brought in his prints, which were immaculately executed engravings depicting narrative scenes. In addition to his professional work, he also showed us drawings and prints that he had completed as an undergraduate student. This gave me some much needed perspective in terms of how I myself was doing as an art student. I knew my teachers as people, so I was comfortable asking them questions about their work. This information would never have been revealed in an art history textbook.

These relationships that I built over time with my teachers, and the countless lessons and depth of ideas that I gained from them would simply never happen on the Internet. While the Internet offers many resources for visual artists, it’s not even remotely comparable to an education experienced in person. What I learned from my teachers is deeply a part of me. To this day, I hear their voices in my head as I work on my art. I still keep in touch with many of my former teachers, and make a point of getting together with them from time to time in person. I look to my former teachers for continual guidance and advice, and those relationships have enriched my artistic life beyond measure.

If you can find a way to transfer to an art school that more appropriately matches your needs, I believe that you, too, can have a similar experience. When researching schools, look up the faculty who are teaching there, and make sure that they are actively working in their field. Visit their professional websites, see what kind of artwork they’re making, and find out where they are exhibiting and publishing their work. In this way, you’ll able to develop a better sense of the school.

Ask the Art Professor is an advice column for visual artists. Submit your questions to clara(at)claralieu.com