From: Jonathan Bailey (quryhous@midcoast.com)
Date: 10/17/01-08:57:38 AM Z
Hi Shannon-
I have some feelings about this. I'll offer them to you as food for
thought - but they might be a minority opinion.
For the record, I am a self-taught artist with nearly 30 years working
experience. That being said I frequently find myself in the world of
academia....
I would reply to you with same answer I give my workshop participants when
ask me these questions: Unless you are planning on a career in teaching, an
MFA is irrelevant.
As an artist, you are going to have to climb some walls and confront certain
issues sooner or later.... going for the MFA will not necessarily facilitate
that process - in other words, those issues will still be waiting for you
when you graduate. Why not just get on with it??
If there is specific information and guidance you feel you need, then take a
workshop. These intense, quick hits may be all you need to prime the pump
and head out in a new direction. The longer immersion times of an MFA
program may hold certain (genuine) benefits - but they are also very much
about club-joining and group-think. It seems to me very likely that going
through an MFA program simply adds one more wall for you to climb later
on....
Taking a class - any class - essentially does two things: it offers basic
tools to get something started, and it is a permission slip to proceed.
I love teaching - and I derive huge benefits from doing it! But I could not
survive personally or artistically teaching on a daily basis. It would eat
me alive. In order for me to be good at, I cannot constantly make myself
available to it.
I also believe that what we do, we become.... So I try to remain conscious
about what I give my time to and what it's doing for me. You might ask
yourself - Do my gifts lie in teaching or in producing art? The two are
absolutely *not* mutually exclusive, however, it's fairly rare to meet
someone for whom the one is integral with the other. It's difficult....
Christina Anderson raises a point about the importance of art history. I
agree completely about the importance of a solid grounding in the history,
the tradition, and the roots of our concerns - but beyond a repertoire of
facts! History, yes - to come by a personal sense of what's gone before -
history as a personal lexicon of image first, and fact secondarily. And,
here again, I question the efficacy of art history courses as all too often
delivered at University in this regard.
While it may be hard to look around right now and conceive of art disengaged
from political and sociological references, my understanding of art is
perhaps somewhat different. If your appreciation of art is connected to
those issues, then perhaps joining an MFA program makes (more) sense.
But if your relationship to art has something to do with a more soulful
connection to what you see around you, then I wonder if your time might be
better spent otherwise....
Best wishes -
Jon
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