brianmc

That's a nice a video! What a service to humanity it would be if every MFA program had the common decency to produce such a video so potential applicants didn't have to quit their jobs in order to have time to research potential programs. If anyone else knows of any such videos, whether it's a program you are interested in or not, it might help others. Throw up a link. That would be very cool!!! P.S. Congrats to everyone getting acceptances and making decisions. I hope you have a prosperous grad experience.

Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of these programs...attended or at least visited, or have a friend that has? Just trying to find out more about schools within my radius. Thanks.

Does anyone know of any? It's sometimes easy to learn from other's questions. For the most part I just want to tour facilities, see studios with student work and get a general sense of the energy in a program. I don't really need to schedule an individual visit, but this scenario seems to only exist for undergrads. I know VCU does group tours on certain days, but does anyone else?

I'd love to get some feedback on the work I'm doing from people who don't know me and have no reason to be nice. My current work is a narrative series filled with a sort of broad symbolism called "The Triumph of the Big Machine." It was born out of an early interest in Futurism, but not necessarily an embrace of those ideals. I'd like to study printmaking and eventually see this work maybe becoming three dimensional in some form of toys that could be organized into images or maybe something 3D and computer based as well as some 2D vector graphics. Right now I'm sort of just developing my vocabulary through painting. I see this series going for a long time across a broad spectrum of media and eventually being organized into a more sequential epic, that could be a ballet or film, although it isn't really being created in order as of right now. Anyway, I'd love some thoughts on the work, whether technical, or conceptual...and I'd love to know whether or not anyone thinks I have any business applying to grad school. www.flickr.com/brianmcart

Hey everyone, Everyone hear knows how exhausting it is to research schools and try to find somewhere that you might fit in and even thrive. I thought maybe we could share information to help one another possibly find the programs where we should apply, where there are faculty that might think and/or work like us. I'll start. I'm an image maker. I work from my imagination, not life. I am interested in formal concerns as well as narrative and social commentary. I am interested in studying printmaking in grad school, but I am also a painter. The medium isn't as important to me as the images I am making. I could work by drawing with a stick in the dirt if I had to. My biggest influences/favorite work are the late figurative work of Philip Guston, later figurative work of Carrol Dunham (I know he teaches at Yale or somewhere I can't afford to go), Max Beckman's triptychs. I also enjoy Lari Pittman's work more for the narrative than the way of working (love it, but I'm a little more loosie goosie), I like Goya's social commentative works, and things like Daumier's Third Class Carriage are always creeping out of my sub-conscious. From all of the digging I've done I've found a guy named Michael Miller at SAIC whose work I like and feel I would like to study with, but I'm sort of on a state school budget. I'll apply there just incase, but does anyone have any ideas? Have you come across anyone in your travels, visits, research, or know of any schools where my work might fit. Thanks in advance. Oh yeah. My work looks like this... http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianmcart/ Brian Mc

Could I bother you again for the University of Delaware?

What are the facilities like? Do you have 24 hour access to the printshop and studios? Do grad printmakers get a small private studio where they can keep all of their stuff? What would you say the average age of the grad students is? I'll be turning 36 if I get into a program for fall 2012, will I feel really old there? Even though every school says they encourage a diversity of styles and approaches, many (not all) are lying, do you have any thoughts on this as far as UT Knoxville goes? How do you pronounce Beauvais?

UT Knoxville has some great video and photos on the web if you dig around a little. Looks like there is a lot of camaraderie among students and faculty there and they really seem to get involved in the greater printmaking community as a whole. They have done some collaborations with other University printmaking departments and they have a printmaking club that raises money for students to attend the annual Southern Graphics Council meetings. Looks like a really awesome place to spend a few years. UW Madison looks like it would be pretty awesome too. Especially if given the opportunity to work with their Tandem Press. I think those are my two front-runners right now. I'm also sort of interested in Indiana, Iowa, Georgia, USF, Tyler, Rutgers, maybe a few others. I'd really like an opportunity to study abroad for at least one semester or maybe a couple of summers. I wish I had the time and money to visit every program before spending the money to apply, but I'll probably just have to wait and try to visit the ones I am lucky enough to get accepted to...if any. I'm close enough to visit Tyler and Rutgers, but the rest are pretty far away.

I'm just gathering information. I'm not applying until next year. Have you visited any of the schools? Are they listed in your order of preference? I wish some of these schools would shoot some short documentaries with student and faculty interviews and walkthroughs of the facilities and throw them up on youtube. It would be a good way for people to start to get an idea of what they are all about and what spending a couple of years there making art might be like.

Does anyone have any new printmaking news? Is anyone applying for printmaking?

Where did your friend go on Fulbright?

If you can make it work...do it. I'm 34 and I'm planning on enrolling in a three-year MFA for printmaking (BFA in painting) if I can get accepted somewhere. I'm not applying until next year to begin in the Fall of 2012. I'll turn 36 a few weeks into the first semester. I'm applying to state schools only. I don't think expensive private schools are worth the debt if I have to return to my career as a bartender. I don't think you are ever to old to return. You have to do it to get the teaching credential, and it is very hard to get any constructive criticism unless you live in a strong artistic community.

A majority of schools don't separate anymore. I'd really like to attend a program with a group of printmakers, so I can have some technical assistance. My undergrad work was in painting, but I'd like to teach printmaking, so I really want to be able to learn the processes and become familiar enough with all of the materials involved that I would be able to order things that were needed and oversee a printshop someday. I've never done litho, so I would need to take an elective in that at the very least, and my memory of intaglio is slipping because it was so long ago, although now I think something called "solar plate" that doesn't use acid is taking over, so I'd like to be somewhere that I can learn that too.

Delaware has made a lot of moves to revamp their program in the last 5 or 6 years and I've heard they offer funding to about 70% of their students in the MFA program, if that helps you decide. I think at worst, if you get in, they knock the out-of-state tuition off of the bill.

Thank you very much. It's good to see so many public Universities on this list.

Does anyone have the printmaking/print media rankings from U.S News and World Reports beyond the ones that are published for free online?...and would you mind sharing? Also does anyone know of any good programs that maybe aren't ranked as those rankings aren't everything?...AND lastly does anyone know what printmaking programs are good for painters/printmakers? P.S. I have a painting portfolio and want to go to grad school for printmaking. I have had undergrad printmaking classes in relief, intaglio, screen, mono, as well as done some collograph, but my work has changed and developed tremendously as that was over 11 years ago. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would also like to attend a program that will allow me some time to learn litho, which I have never done, because I would like to teach printmaking someday either to undergrads, or maybe even to high school students in day camp setting. Thanks.

Thanks for being courageous and being the first to share. I hope others will follow. Great job on your statement. Your projects sound very interesting. I remember seeing some of your work through the links thread, but now it really is in perspective after reading your statement. Cool stuff. Thanks again.

Would anyone who was successful and beginning a program next year like to share their statements of purpose with those of us who will be re-writing them next year, so that maybe we can draw some conclusions as to which perspective we should approach them from?

Go to Yale. Build a network, then move to NYC. The network that Yale can offer is why they are #1. The rankings are voted on by a community of peers. Each program gets to submit two surveys. Yale is #1 because they have more people working at other schools who are high enough in the ranks to get one of the two votes. I went to MICA for undergrad. 90% of the faculty in the painting department had gone to Yale. The painting chair had gone to Yale. All of the students wanted to go to Yale. I'm pretty sure Carroll Dunham left Columbia to go teach at Yale, leading me to believe that Yale's network can even help established artists living in NYC and that is why they are able to get such a good faculty. I moved to NYC once without a network and it was brutal. I had the romantic idea that it was going to be like late 19th/early 20th Century Paris or even 1940s/50s NYC. It wasn't. It was more like the world's most overly competitive, highly commercialized outdoor shopping mall. I love the stimulation of city life, but New York is not like other cities. It is not as livable and everyone sees you as competition. No one wants to help you. I'd go to apply for a bartending job and wait in line behind 70-100 other people. I finally got a job with help from a friend who had moved up there that I had forgotten about. I wish I had realized earlier that I had a network of one, but it was too late by that time. I had already fallen too far behind. I'm sure Parsons is fine, but you got into Yale. If I were on the Yale waitlist I'd be telling you to go to Parsons. But I'm not and I generally like to see good things happen for people. So I'm voting that you go to Yale. I would.

It says how many schools are on each list. 29 for painting and drawing and 22 for printmaking. $14.95 for online access. If anyone coughs up the dough, please post it.

I fully support your decision. I know it had to be tough. I think you'll have a wonderful grad experience. UCSD has been on the rise for a decade now. You should be stoked to be going there for free.

I put an offer on a small apt. building (3 apts.) on the 1700 block of Guilford Avenue last week and they accepted it. I have no idea what is up with the current tenants or how long their leases are, but I'll probably try to rent to MICA students when the apartments open up. I'm so excited that I'm going to be moving back to the city hopefully this summer. Now I'm just praying that all of the inspections and what not go ok.

These links go to the most recent that I know of from 2008. They'll probably publish a new one this year. Nothing really seems to change more than a spot up or down here and there. The programs that are really on the rise are talked about all over this forum and most of them are rising because they are pretty interdisciplinary and offer a lot of financial aid. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/painting-drawing http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/printmaking You might have to copy and paste the links. Hope this helps.

Wow, I was not familiar with Jose Bedia. I really like his work. Thanks for pointing him out. I really need to come up with a limited palette that works for my new work and go back and rework a lot of the pieces. Limiting color will allow me to focus more on value and make the work a lot more dramatic. And I feel quite strongly that I need to find some way to reintroduce the importance of line, but my experiments are coming up short. I'm using a squeeze bottle to superimpose line back over the surface, and it looks great in areas, but becomes too superficial in others, so I think I'm going to need to find the right combo of line making techniques. I do love the speed of the fluid line it creates. I was criticized for combining styles by some faculty at MICA, which is what led some of them to tell me to look at David Salle, who has never really been one of my influences. If you look at my work at MICA chronologically, you see it get very boring and homogenous. That was the result of attempting to make a singular style. It wasn't so much that I purposely used multiple styles, than I was using different techniques in the same painting, leaving some things as drawn outlines and other things rendered. I liked the effect. I felt it allowed you to consider the images solely, and find symbolic meaning in them and then relate them to the other images. It slowed down the reading of the narrative a little. I ended up creating vignettes to isolate the differences which led to multiple panels, before I started to get boring. I really enjoyed the work I made at MICA my first year and the faculty I was working with. My new work is quite different from the work I did at MICA, but not as different as the jump I made from the work I was doing before MICA. It's that work trying to creep in and meld with the things I was doing at MICA that has resulted in what I am doing now. That earliest work was trying to make style work as metaphor. I have a couple of stories that I HAVE TO get out of me before I can discover the true freedom that I'm searching for as a painter. I can see where I want to arrive in my head, but I don't have the map for how to get there. It's a matter of getting lost and looking for something familiar to get you going in the right direction again. I'm trying to figure out how to put together everything I've done, discovered, learned, and invented so far, without feeling like I've left anything important out. It seems impossible, because every time I pick up a paint brush (or a squeeze bottle) everything keeps expanding. Painting is like the universe. I don't think one person can ever fathom it. It feels so good just write about this stuff. I'm so sad that I didn't get into school. I really want to be around other people who think about this stuff. Isolation can be good, but not all of the time. P.S. Garden was the second painting I did at MICA.

Maybe you guys can give me a tour next year. I'm thinking about applying to MICA. Probably Hoffberger, because I primarily paint, but I'd be totally down for Mt. Royal if they felt that is where I belonged since my work relies very heavily on image making and not so much on pure painterly issues. How does the application process work? Will they consider you for Mt. Royal if you apply to Hoffberger and they don't think you belong with the "purists" or do you have to make separate applications? I know the boundaries are kind of loose between programs sometimes. When I went to MICA as an undergrad there was a student in Hoffberger who was making 3D doll like creatures.