From: shannon stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 10/18/01-05:50:45 AM Z
>Now here is my question, what does one intend to get out of a MFA or BFA
>program? I personally believe one doesn't go to school to learn technique
>especially at the graduate level. That can be done in workshops and in fact
>you will learn way more about a certain technique in a workshop then you
>could ever do in a university setting.
I think it's ok for some techniques to be taught at whatever level,
if people want to learn a technique that somebody in the program can
teach them. People in my classes still want to know things like how
to use the zone system, how to use a view camera, how to process 4x5
film. They have been asking about this stuff for a long time, and
since our teacher has been stalling on teaching that stuff, they ask
me to show them how to do these things. (These are students who are
Juniors at the undergrad level, more or less).
>I have yet to take a non-photo
>class that focuses on technique except for maybe intro to glassblowing. In
>intro to drawing for example, the instructor doesn't sit there showing you
>how to hold your pencil at different angles to achieve a desired look.
In one of the best drawing classes I ever took, the most helpful
things I learned were some "technique" things. The teacher could
teach these things because he was a working artist. He didn't go on
and on about theory; he taught us how he worked. That was very
helpful.
Not to say that theory is never helpful; it just seems as if lately
it has become a substitute for anything else substantive, because in
a way it's easier to talk about books and words than it is to get
down to making something.
Somewhere Christopher said that you should be able to support your
position on why you did something or why it's better to take pictures
of flowers or not take pictures of flowers for example. My problem
with the teachers at my school is that they don't support their
theories with any good reasons. They just beat people up with them.
They have been doing this, unchallenged, for so long that they have
forgotten, if they ever knew, why they believe the things they
believe. I think they accepted them as dogma at some point in their
careers and have never really examined the validity of these ideas,
or their practicality, or their effect on students, especially young,
hesitant students. I am an old, stubborn student, so I mostly blow
it off. But I end up defending younger, less confident people a lot.
--shannon
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