pearspears

At our university you can teach after 30 credits of coursework completed. I am still in my third year, but have the option of teaching a freshman class at my public state university. I also have the option of waiting (that would be a lot on top of working on my thesis show) and teaching a class at a community college in another state due to a connection I have. What would be better on a resume for clout and future employers?

Is this insane? For an MFA? On this plan you pay back at max 15% of your discretionary income (what's leftover after what they consider essentials) for 25 years and then the rest is forgiven. I know people do this, but is real life hell afterward? Or is it manageable? If I do this it would be due to mistakes I've made so I DON'T NEED A LECTURE. I got accepted into an almost free program and could finish there but would need to max out what I still can to scrape by because not everything is free in it. I've crunched numbers and I don't think I can avoid doing this.

Be prepared for lotsssss of letterpress though at UoA. That was like her whole first semester.

I heard UC Santa Barbara was not so great, honestly. I knew someone who visited who realized it's a huge party school. She ended up at University of the Arts and was really happy.

I'm wondering if this will be worth it?...

Anyone familiar with this program and their usual offers?

Is this real life, lol.

You would grow to resent him and probably divorce him and be middle aged and no longer young and able to follow your dreams the way you can now. So no. Don't do it.

I am wrestling with this as well and so I thought back on the last ten years of college and after, and thought through the most stressful times....and while I have a few people I am still friends with, without a doubt the most stressful times all involved living with people. Their drama spilling into what should have been school. My aversion to living with people is in fact so extreme that I would rather live at home, buy a car, and commute an hour and a half one way to avoid it. So, I guess it depends on what you are willing to put up with. Since I will have a fellowship I decided roomates aren't worth it.

Would this be unbearable? I'd have a 20 hour assistantship, and possibly a cousin's couch to crash on if the roads are bad (Western PA). Do you think that this would affect my transition into school? It would be really hard for me to find housing ahead of time and I dont want to do the sight unseen thing and sign a lease... Is it hard to find housing after the school year starts or easier you think? Would prices go up because there's less or down because they are desperate to get someone? What has been your experience?

Wheeerreeee can I find housing? I'm 28 and don't want to live with a bunch of 18 year olds on campus, but off campus housing consists of stuff that is almost $1000 a month. Where are normal-priced studios? Would commuting an hour and a half one way be worth it the first semester??

"...being plain ignorant" . I hate when discussions devolve into this. Ignorant of what, exactly? The secret formula to what constitutes "good art"? Please...enlighten us. I don't mean this as snark btw....I just feel it's like a brick wall.

Here's the thing. Why would Albert Durer need to go to grad school? That sort of work has already been done extensively in the history of art and grad school is expressly for contemporary art (ie forms like new media, social practice and ways of looking at traditional media in a new way). If you are already happy with your practice then why still go to school? Why not keep making as you have been, as it's obviously been working for you? One professor told me that they want students who are interested in challenging themselves and pushing into new territory because otherwise it's just a funded residency, not an education. If you really want to keep making the work you're making, then perhaps residencies are the answer. I think they are more designed to provide space for artists to do what they want, and don't involve as much of a push to experiment." Well, I was using the example of someone LIKE Albrecht Durer....obviously if it were actually him he wouldn't have been copying his own artwork from previous centuries. I suppose my take on it is that just because a medium has been done extensively in the past doesn't mean it's DONE. All through undergraduate school I heard that figure painting was DONE. That painting in general was done. It had been taken as far as white paint on white gesso on a canvas and there was nowhere else to take it. That was ten years ago and people are still painting....figures too! The argument that EVERYTHING has to be contemporary reeks of blind assimilation, of appeal to authority, of everything art is supposed to not be about. I'm not sure I know who Firenze is, but I could guess, and I could also guess he's going to a classical school there that is more of an atelier. And I honestly can get what he's saying. Much of the criticism I can get in critique is political, not really even addressing the work at hand outright, but dismissing it it as "already done". What, exactly, has not already been addressed? Every human emotion under the sun has been addressed in the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, any mythic tradition of any ancient culture really. Every emotion under the sun has been felt before. We're just using different mediums at this point. Why is one to be rejected outright because it's old? I just really don't understand this at all. Surely there is another school of thinking as far as this is concerned?

"The art that I have made with gay themes in it has been met with blank stares, misunderstanding, outright criticism and ignorance inflected with homophobia." MLK where are you going to school? That's really unfortunate. Sorry you had to deal with that. Even in my bodunk town the universities where a little more accepting.

I don't think 'just the act of putting the work up' is really addressing what I meant by closed loop, as far as concept. I'm saying work itself CAN be a closed loop, if there's an unwillingness to communicate, or to put in more cliche terms, block off the viewer from entering or engaging. That feels reductive, like saying Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince only plagiarized. There's a deeper meaning behind their work, and it's something that is/can/has been teased out, along with other artists who utilize appropriation. That said, I would feel nothing seeing someone try to pull off this sort of gesture in school. Along that line I don't know if Durer Jr. would elicit a response greater than 'it's exquisitely crafted.' if it's not going to address the past but simply sink into it. I find the example a little far fetched to begin with, considering image saturation today. So you're saying you prefer the work of Duchamp to the work of Durer because Duchamp was trying to say something relevant to the current art climate that could be understood by other people, while Durer's was in many ways very personal ( as personal as his own depression, e.g. Melancolia....which could still be argued to be universal by defacto, because it's about sadness). ?