I didnt want it to hurt, but it did...
Well my god.
I heard that all of NSU's credit hours for a MA in Art (what i gots) could possibley transfer to Tech for an MFA so i gather up some images and go see the director of the Art Dept in Ruston.
Fuckme.
He looked at my art and proceeded to tell me i was unskilled and that he saw no need for 'romantic ideas' in the arts. He told me he did not care at all about "process" and then showed me his "true art" - a digital photo on the wall. It was the SIDE OF A HOUSE made of vinyl siding. Wow. In addition to that the director and the other egomaniac, i forget what he was, were terrible rude and condesceding.At one point asked me if i knew what gesture drawing was. Everyone learns that their FRESHMEN year in their FIRST drawing class. I wish i had a video of when i told them i dealt with feminist themes in my art.i never saw two old WASPy yuppie patriarchal assholes stiffen up so...
They bragged alot about thier "facilities" and money like all good old rich egocentric white men. Yeah the facilites were nice and new but i would rather make art in a garbage dump that in a cold clinical factory that only produces replicas of reality and calls it art wihout adding any bit of creativiy or idividualism or other romantic ideas, uh, such as emotion.
It was alot like going to a hospital.
God it was so much like going to a hospital with a sick soul reflecting a sick world and having a cold white man devoid of any sympathy pick yu apart and tell yu how yu arethe one fucked up.
Something i did not want to be reminded of.
And that shit he siad about process?...? I become something else when i paint - I am shamaness healing myself...healing the world by feeding it back the truth as i see it now and as i saw it as a child.
and that may sound like an inflated sense of myself but.... my art is the only thing in my life that i ever been sure of ....the only direction that ever felt even 'real' More so than even who i WAS. And used to, i never cared who saw it, or if anyone did. or if it got destryoed after it was made, it was the PROCESS that mattered...those intense moments of creative explosion then it was over forever..like sex and like LIFE & DEATH.
And if that it not what art is for another person, that is fine. I can also appreciate art on a formal level. i dont particulary care for photrealism but i woul never say it was not art. Bc the art world - the whole discussion of art for hundreds of years -includes a hell of alot more than photo fucking realism. So how can the director an art program at a gradschool exclude the 10000s of ideas about making art that have been generated over 100s yeas of human history and just say - realism and technical ability are all that matter. Its one thing to hold yrself to a belief such as this but to hold others...when you are in a power positoin at university..!!.. that decision is NOT for you to make. It is made and remade in journals and universities and studios and galleries and minds all over the world every day. From Outsider art to Impressionism..the best an educater can do is provide as MUCH info and training as possible. NOT disregard as much as possible!!
Anyway...I wll not lie - i was stunned and a little wounded by their cold superiority and obvious distaste for my artwork and beliefs about art (which is a rather popular and often written about idea of art esp in cultural studies- i didnt just make it up!!) I didnt want to be hurt by it, i really didnt. But i was. I was not so much hurt that they did not like my art ( ive had lotsa insults since i started showing work thats okay) I was hurt that those people EXIST in power positions to judge and rule and decide who is worth what. These are the men who build walls of steel and barbed wireto keep dark skinned people either OUT or IN these are the same men who sign treaties and make decisons about women and womens bodies and about people who dont speak english, the chosen language, ore wear funny hats and have lotsa oil. These men are the ENEMY of individualism and cultural difference. They are the ones who make a nice clean WHITE STERILE box for each person to fit in. a nice narrow box of conformity and they just cut off what every doesn fit.
I, and many of friends, see this return to "realism as the only good form of art" as a byproduct of the conservative administration running the government. It is happening in more and more schools that i explore. It is like a pulse beating and radiating out. No radical ideas. Only safe, safe with in our big protected regulated borders. The establishment hated the impressionists and the expressionists and all non traditional forms of art. (even though the poor impressionists have been reduced to address book covers in waspy womens purses - who woulda thought they were once the punks)
And that is what stung the most. I insulate myself with people who would rather celebrate differences, in artistic style or culture, than eradicate them. People who question the establishment.I forget how to deal iwth powerful people who are the polar opposite of that. So now i appreciate the individuals who make and/or love art a little bit more. I appreciate the people at NSU who encouraged me to express myself freely with paint and to paint like my life depended on it. And i encourage all of you to do the same. Express yourself freely however yu do it as if yr life depended on it. Bc the way this rock is rolling, is probaly does.
*and yes i know that i prolly take my life, my art, and the world around me way
way
too seriously.
andimfinewththat
