brianmc

That's awesome. Welcome to Charm City!!! I think you'll find it extremely stimulating.

No. I really don't think it is worth the money, especially if the tuition for that is anywhere near what MICA's regular tuition is. There is no guarantee of anything. I would enroll in another program if there is one that you think would be rewarding, or work solo and apply again next year if you have your heart set on Hoffberger. It's just way too much money to not receive credits toward your goal. You could rent a killer studio for a couple of years for 30K. Look into residencies if you need the interaction with other artists. Some cost money, but nowhere near what MICA costs. I'm personally watching Hoffberger to see who is going to take over. They have still not found a new director to replace Grace Hartigan as far as I know. They have had an interim director since she passed in 2008. They seem to be holding out for someone special. I hope they get somebody really great. I'd love to go there if I could get in. See if you can track down some people who have attended post-bac programs and see what their opinion is. Did they tell you who the director of the post-bac program is that you would be working with?

@littlenova Good point. Again I failed to really think that through. An MFA would be great experience for someone aspiring to be a senior level designer or art director and such. Just the interaction and collaboration they would have with all of the other high level designers who were attracted to the program would ready them to lead a team. I definitely feel this is the type of program where students SHOULD take a few years off after undergrad to work and figure out what they want to focus on at the grad level, and to make certain that the field is something they want to pursue. And I agree with you on price. 100k still scares the hell out of me...and it would no matter what I was studying. It's not a house. You can't sell it to someone else if you get tired of paying for it.

I just thought of an analogy that might help here. I have been a professional bartender for 11 years. Shorty after getting my BFA in painting and not being able to find a job I took a two week bartending course that enabled me to get a job doing catering gigs through a temp agency for $8/hr. The first night out on a temp gig, the manager of this private club offered to bring me on full-time for more money than the temp agency because I had done a better job than his full-time staff. That manager tended to be a bit of a job hopper, but he gave me three of my first four bartending jobs. Today there is no mention of bartending school on my resume. Everyone in the business laughs when someone comes in to apply for a job who just got out of bartending school as I'm sure all of the cool places did that didn't hire me when I was first blanketing the city with applications 11 years ago. I worked a lot of crappy jobs the first year and a half. There have been numerous occasions where some random crap I learned in bartending school has helped and I do feel strongly that untrained bartenders lack discipline, but I would never admit that I went to bartending school. I tell anyone who is impressed with all the random crap I know that I learned everything at this corporate place I used to work where we had to pour test to get a shift. Most of the bartenders I have worked with over the past 11 years started out as waiters or busboys and worked their way up through the ranks, while getting paid, instead of paying as I did and still having to work my way up. I took more of a lateral course where I was bartending at a crappy bar for what the busboy was making at a good bar. We all ended up at the same place. I am a way better bartender than most of my co-workers, but at the end of the night, we all walk out with the same amount of money.

Ok. I'm going to chime in because I've wanted to get this off of my chest for a long time. I received my BFA in 1999 and at that time there was no such thing as a graphic design MFA. As far as I was aware the people who taught graphic design in the two different art colleges that I attended had only BFAs and were working in the field as well as teaching. I don't know if you need an MFA to teach graphic design now. I'm sure you can be grandfathered in if you've been teaching before the GD MFA was invented, but I'm guessing you need one to get your first position if you haven't already been teaching somewhere. That is why I'm kind of in a hurry to get my MFA and get some teaching experience, because word is on the horizon of a studio art PhD, as if anyone can afford that or as if it is even necessary. I've been taking some digital imaging courses at a local community college over the past year and I know the teachers there have gotten their MFAs after teaching there for a couple of years and continued to teach while taking a part-time MFA program. I know some other courses are taught by "staff" who have only an associates degree from that community college. I really don't think a GD MFA will help advance your career as a designer the way it can open doors for someone in the fine arts. I really think your portfolio is everything in that field. I think a high school kid who has the skills could get hired if he/she could show a portfolio proving they are good. I am not a designer and have not researched any of this. I'm sure you know a lot more about it than me. But I wouldn't go that far in debt. I'm guessing you want to teach. But I think you can probably make more money working as a designer. What I meant to say in sentence after sentence of rambling is that I was very disappointed a few years ago when I started thinking about getting an MFA and I went online to discover that many schools were adding GD MFAs. It made me really feel like education is just a rip-off, purely a business. A majority of your time is spent working independently on your own work in a studio art MFA, but that isn't really the nature of design. There is always some sort of outside influence or idea that needs to be communicated in design. I guess I don't understand what you actually spend your time doing in a GD MFA program. It seems to me that you could be getting paid to do whatever it is that they are going to be having you pay them for. That's just my humble opinion. If you are really passionate about teaching and need the credential, then erase erase erase.

Sorry about Yale...but getting into RISD and MICA is really impressive. Both are supposed to be great programs. It's kind of comforting to here that you didn't get in the first time around for someone like me who didn't get in this year. Pop back on here next winter and let everyone know what you think of your program after a semester. No one seems to do that and everyone applying wants to know. Best wishes in your forthcoming adventure.

Hey yyy, Major congratulations. Do you have any work online? I would love to see it.

Haha. Depending which route you take to the Institute, you can definitely go through what looks like Cracktown. Baltimore definitely has more than it's share of big city problems for a mid-sized city with the nickname "Smalltimore." But it's not too bad. I never had a problem in eight years and I passed out on the sidewalk drunk, in the middle of the night, at least once that I remember. (I'm not proud of that. I just got so tired of crawling:) I lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn NY (East Williamsburg [my ass]) for six months and got violently mugged. I never lived in that crumby of a neighborhood in B-more though. I'm actually looking into buying a small apartment building on the edge of the Station North Arts District where it starts to get sketchy, but I've learned not to walk around alone at night, at least I think I have. Stay tuned for my post "Tenants wanted "walking distance" to MICA." Anywho, things to do for three days while visiting MICA aside from the MICA tour: Check out The Windup Space (http://www.thewindupspace.com) and Metro Gallery (http://themetrogallery.net). Both are close to MICA's grad studios on North Ave. Both are bars that double as arts venues. They have live music most nights so there will probably be a cover charge. Be forewarned, I think they both have 1AM licenses, so they close an hour earlier than most bars which can kind of rain on the fun when you are having it and the lights go up way to early. Take a cab back from this area. Don't stroll far from the bar after dark. It gets sketchy fast, it's sort of block to block. (410) 685-1212. It's good to have it in your phone. But you can probably hail one, the train station is nearby and there are a lot of cabs. Run through the Baltimore Museum of Art (http://www.artbma.org) and check out the Cone Collection, if you like Matisse. They have a small Contemporary wing that is more Modern and pretty mid-century painting heavy, but they have what I consider to be the best Hans Hoffman I have seen. They also have a few decent pieces in the Old Masters section and some great primitive art and such. The American Visionary Arts Museum is cool. A great collection of folk and outsider art. (http://www.avam.org) The Walters Art Museum is also great for older art and artifacts. (http://thewalters.org) The Maryland Science Center is supposed to be cool, but I've never gone for some reason. (http://www.mdsci.org) The National Aquarium is great if you want to see fish out of their natural habitat. (http://www.aqua.org) I think it's really cheap on Friday's after 5PM, but I don't know if they still do that promotion. There are a bunch of small live theaters. Everyman Theatre, Theatre Project, Center Stage, Load of Fun Theater (literally across the street from MICA's grad building.) Google or grab a City Paper when you hit town to see what is playing. City Paper is a good source for finding what is going on around town. The weather is supposed to be great this weekend so you could ride the Water Taxi and see how many of the discounted cocktail coupons you can use before getting "sea sick." (http://www.thewatertaxi.com/schedule.html) The Charles Theatre has a mix of art house and main stream movies that are on the artsy side. Also close to MICA. (http://www.thecharles.com) Check out the Paper Moon Diner to see where people eat in the middle of the night. Although they are changing their hours this summer and no longer going to be 24 hrs. I don't know where the bartenders will go after work after that. (http://www.papermoondiner24.com) The list of cool bars you could go to is endless. Baltimore is a real drinking town, as are most cities where people don't have to drive to get everywhere. Some worth noting are: The Horse You Came in On in Fells Point, where Edgar Allen Poe allegedly may have had his last drink (http://www.thehorsebaltimore.com) Fells Point is one of the oldest areas of Baltimore that didn't burn in the Fire of 1904. So there are some really cool old smelly bars along cobblestone streets all around there. It's a cool place to stroll around for a bit. The Brewer's Art, in Mt. Vernon makes their own in-house Belgian style beers. (http://www.thebrewersart.com) The basement is the cool spot to drink, but they have incredible fine dining upstairs too. Mt. Vernon is also Baltimore's unofficial Gayborhood and probably the most interesting and eclectic part of Baltimore. The intersection of Charles and Eager St. is the hub of that. That is where you will find The Hippo and Grand Central Station. The Club Charles, is where John Waters is known to sometimes go when in town as well as MICA students. (http://www.theclubcharles.com) It's the original cool bar in the Station North Arts District. Canton Square (2900-3000 O'Donnel St.)and Federal Hill (Cross St. and South Charles St.) are big bar hopping areas with lots of offerings, but brace yourself for what New Yorkers would call the Bridge and Tunnel crowd: fraternity and sorority crowd that moved to Baltimore from Jersey and Long Island to go to college. You might have a "situation" there if those kind of people annoy you. Most of them aren't too bad though. It's kind of like observing primates at the zoo, only with the added benefit of drinking beer. The Mt. Royal Tavern on Mt. Royal Ave. right along MICA's main campus usually has an interesting cast of characters too. It is worth stopping in for a drink, just to check out the Sistine Chapel Ceiling replica that some guy painted for free beer. It looks just like Michelangelo's before it was cleaned. The Inner Harbor is where most of the chains and tourist traps are located. You can find a Hard Rock Cafe, ESPNzone and a Howl at the Moon down there. I'm a vegetarian so I'm the worst when it comes to recommending places to eat. Baltimore is big on crabs, crab cakes, crab dip, crab soup and anything else they can put crab meat in. If there is anything specific that you would like to know, send me a msg. or just post it and I'll try to remember to check here. Baltimore is a fun town, or at the very least a town that you can make fun in. It's getting more expensive all the time, especially if you get close to the water, but it's still pretty reasonable and can be down right cheap once you learn where to go and who has Natty Boh in a can. I hope you have a great time. I think you'll like MICA. Public transportation in B-more is pretty much limited to cabs, but it is safe to walk around in the daytime.

@fordr...If you are just finishing up undergrad, you are getting plenty of feedback. I wouldn't waste any money on anything that doesn't offer you credits towards your educational objective right now. Debt sucks and makes it harder to be an artist. (Unless you are rich, then waste money on whatever you want.) Just keep working after school as much as possible. If in a few years if you feel the need to be back in an institutional environment then consider something like a summer program. In the meantime you can look for residencies that don't cost anything. My strongest opinion is that there is no greater research for art than life. Go out into the world and live and make art. That's just my opinion though.

I'd be glad to help in any way that I can. I lived in Baltimore for 8 years. Unfortunately a lot of the cool stuff in that neighborhood has started happening since I left in early 2006. I hope to move back to the city in the near future and plan on moving to Station North so I can hopefully network and get some opportunities to put work up. Ask me anything.

And one more note about MICA. They have a huge fundraising effort to get money for the general fund and spare no expense at trying to get the best faculty and best facilities available. They make it possible for NYC artists and artists from other east coast locations to have full-time status by teaching an AM and a PM course on one day and another AM course the following morning followed by a few office hours and then back on the train to their studio with all the perks of being a full-time faculty member. They put them up for the night in one of the houses that the school owns in the neighborhood. It is very clear when you are enrolled there that they are not satisfied being number three or four on U.S. News' list. They want to be #1. They are constantly expanding the facilities and upgrading the tools and technology. They definitely deserve their standing at the top.

Mt. Royal is great. Hoffberger and Rhinehart have huge reputations, but they are more diehard painting and sculpture. Mt. Royal is set up to be more open. Call it cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, general fine arts, whatever you want. There will be people painting, sculpting, collaging, making videos, installations, doing performance, all depending on who enrolls. You are in the same building as Hoffberger. Actually it's a recent addition to MICA's campus and it houses independent studios for senior undergrads too. It's a huge community of competent creative people. There is a building right across the street where local artists rent studio space, and there are a few theatre groups performing in the neighborhood and bars that have perfomances and resemble art galleries as much as bars. It's a pretty exciting neighborhood rejuvenation that's going on there. Don't be too alarmed if you see a boarded up building or two. That's just Baltimore. Urban flight desecrated the city in the late 20th Century, but a renaissance is taking place neighborhood by neighborhood and the Station North Arts and Entertainment District as it has been deemed looks like it might be the next spot to explode if the recession ever ends. Don't get me wrong, MICA was fun 11 years ago when I was an undergrad, but that area is a hotbed for people wanting to live a creative life now. If you can afford MICA, I would definitely do it. Baltimore is a great town for producing independent voices from Edgar Allen Poe to John Waters. It's in the water, although I still wouldn't swim in that water. You can do anything in Baltimore. It will embrace everything from folk-art, to high-art, to low-brow grossness and you might even see it all under the same roof on the same night from time to time. There is also a decent music scene from original acts to cover bands. You can find someone playing live seven nights a week. Just don't expect the home team to win many baseball games:(

Nathan, Do you know your financial aid status at the schools yet?

Can you get an apartment in NY for $800? I used to pay $1300 to live in Bushwick. Bushwick sucked then. It was up and coming. I've heard it's nicer now, but I don't believe it.

Is CalArts really a painting school now? When I visited both schools in 1999 they had the exact opposite reputations. I wanted to go to UCSD because it was so beautiful in La Jolla and because there were a lot of people painting. I didn't apply to CalArts because no one was even using art supplies and I felt I would be really threatened there as a painter. My how things change when you are not paying attention. UCSD gave you a full-ride for some reason. Find out what that reason is. Unless they just like to bring a traditional painter on each year to use as a whipping post, I don't think you can beat going to grad school for free. And it was 80 degrees in November when I visited San Diego. Couldn't have been above 78 in Valencia...brrrrrrr:) But seriously, ask CalArts make a counter offer to the full-ride at UCSD. I almost guarantee they will give you something even if they don't match it.

I wanted to throw a name in there too if you are looking for inspiration in figurative painting. Check out Raoul Middleman. He is a real painters painter. I envy him. His paintings are so fresh and amazing. Sometimes he can finish a large canvas in just an hour or two. It can take him 5-6 hours to set up his palette though. Not at all how I work, but I have always admired him. I took a class with him at MICA. He's nuts...in a mostly good way. He would make us draw behind our backs, with the lights out, all sorts of crazy stuff. The best part of his class was when he would take us to the library and talk about old narrative paintings and point out the quirky symbolism. http://www.raoulmiddleman.com/gallery.html Remember, don't stress out too much. It looks to me like you have some real talent. Just keep developing your voice. Imagery will start to pile up and you will someday have too many weapons to choose from when you feel like you want to tell a story. Keep a journal about what things could mean and how certain symbols could be mobile and take on multiple meanings. Sometimes jotting down some ideas in a journal is better than a sketch book. And sometimes you'll write stuff that will make you feel like a hypocrite when you read it a month later. You'll find that being out of school will force you to find out what is really important to you when you have limited time to work. It is also good for clearing your head of all of the influence of your instructors.

Everyone is right. You don't want to get in just to "get in." It is important to get in somewhere that is interested in your work and wants to watch you develop it. It is important to be with faculty that are going to be as encouraging as they are critical. I had a bad experience working with faculty that weren't right for me as an undergrad. I transferred into MICA as a junior painting major and things went well the first year and the faculty were great for the most part. I received the second biggest scholarship award that they offered in the returning students scholarship competition. As a result of doing so well, I was invited along with about 20 students from various majors to participate in a pilot program my senior year, where instead of taking five 3 credit classes, we would all be in a 9 credit seminar where we would work independently for the studio component and have weekly crits and we met to discuss critical readings once a week as a group for an art history/liberal arts component. The seminar had four faculty. One was a studio teacher who was highly conceptual, one was an art historian/ critic who was more or less into highly conceptual art, loved works such as re-enactments of grocery store checkout lanes in art galleries etc., another was a curator who had worked with Fred Wilson and other such conceptual artists, and the fourth was the school's resident philosopher. As a painting major this was the worst possible thing I could have ever gotten involved in. It became very apparent that the group of faculty had sort of assembled themselves and pitched the idea of this program based on their own common interests in conceptual art and boring rhetoric (boring to me, I don't mean to offend anyone who enjoys that sort of thing.) We were required to write a ten page thesis. I never really knew what I was supposed to write about. I felt like they wanted us to trace our bloodline back through art history and link our work to issues in contemporary criticism which was very hard considering the whole "death of painting" that had taken place. The more I critiqued with these faculty the more and more I edited my work down until it was almost barren of meaning to me. By the beginning of the Spring semester when other students were applying to grad school, I just couldn't wait for school to be over. All of the painters in the program were frustrated. Thank god a few of them still applied to grad school. One got into Yale. He was probably the most combative with the conceptual faculty and I think he was still working with some good painting faculty in his other classes outside of the seminar who were encouraging him and writing him recommendations. He was an awesome painter and deserved to go wherever he wanted to. I unfortunately was just trying to graduate as a transfer and didn't have the leisure of taking classes with the faculty that I liked in my final semester. Once I got out, I didn't pick up a paint brush for about 10 months and when I finally did I was only making one picture a year for about six years. The only good thing that I could see that came out of that program was that my anger and frustration coupled with the fact that my work had reached a complete dead end led me to an interesting and rebellious place when I started painting again. I have since fully recovered and have been working regularly for a little over two years now. I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that if that same seminar had been led by a painting faculty and an art historian who loved Philip Guston and Max Beckman like I do and a curator who had put together a Carroll Dunham / Lari Pittman show I probably would have loved it. I have a feeling that getting into the wrong graduate school would be very much like my experience as a senior undergrad at MICA. I was bitter for many years and didn't say a lot of good things about the school. It is only recently that a friend of mine has started attending MICA and has some of the same faculty that I had in my junior year that I have started to regain the many positive memories from my junior year. MICA was awesome. I wish I would have just taken their normal senior independent program with faculty from my department like the other 130 seniors did that year. I feel like I was sort of robbed of my childhood as an artist/painter being exposed to all of that tired jargon about consumption and surrogate simulacra or whatever they were talking about. I'd would really have rather argued about the meaning of the personal symbolism in Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" and have the faculty tell me that I was too heavy handed. Instead I had a disinterested art critic telling me to look at David Salle because he killed painting and no one cares anymore. Everyone keep your heads up and who cares what is cool and fashionable right now in the art world. The beauty of the whole situation is that we will be the ones to decide the future. If you're tired of the rhetoric, you can contribute in the effort to change it. The general atmosphere of pluralism in the contemporary art world is pretty exciting. I hope everyone finds their niche and a program where they can thrive. I only applied to one school this year. It was my back-up school on my original list. I decided I would be perfectly satisfied going there, but didn't get in. They weren't even ranked by U.S. News. They were listed at the bottom with all of the n/a rankings. Major blow to the ego. But I will trudge on. I don't really care what they think. I don't really care what anyone thinks. I like making my work and it alone inspires me to continue and always raises a new question that keeps me going. If I never sell anything again and never get offered to show, I will still paint because I have to so that I can go to sleep with a satisfied conscience. There is value in all of our work. I'm thrilled that so many of my co-workers who have never studied art or been to a museum, like my work. I guess that makes me low-brow, but so what. I am the proud son of a ditch digger and an administrative assistant who have one semester of college between them. My grandfather never finished high school. I could give a crap what an art history PhD thinks, or a bunch of people running an MFA program. I want to make art so I do. I've never wanted to make art just for others. I want to make art that serves me and for others to look at.

Can anybody throw up the names of any MFA Studio Art programs that they know of that take applications and admit students in the spring semester for those of us who didn't get accepted for the fall. I can't fathom another year and a half at my dead end job...it's miserable.

I got my rejection letter from the only school I applied to today (Towson University, Baltimore) so I guess I'll peace out. Congratulations to everyone who got in, and best of luck to all who are waiting to hear from your dream programs. I hope you get in. To those who didn't get in, keep your chins up. These decisions don't necessarily reflect the value of your work. Don't change for anybody. Stay true to yourself. Maybe I'll see you here next year.

Hey LittleNova, How much is the deposit to hold your spot at Maine? That is a great option to have with full-funding if things don't work out at MICA. MICA is a pretty cool place. I went there for undergrad. I am waiting to here back from Towson's MFA program right now. It's the only school I applied to this year. I have been living an hour away from Bmore (halfway to Philly) where I grew up for 3 1/2 years now. I left Bmore in early 2006 after living there for 8 years to move to NYC (didn't work out) and I miss it terribly. It feels more like home than home. Do you have any opinions of Towson's program or have you heard anything? I really want to do a teaching assistantship as part of my MFA experience so I've really only been looking at public universities. Anyway, from what I've been reading all over this site, I think you will here from MICA by the middle of the month leaving you time to decide. They are probably wrapping up interviews this week. As an undergrad, my financial stuff came with my acceptance materials. Best of luck to you.

Nathan, I think the piece would benefit from anonymity. It could definitely be read many different ways. I see it as sort of being patriotic, but I would understand if the family members of someone overseas in uniform saw it differently. I don't think it is necessarily a one liner. I think it's better than Piss Christ. I think it would be fun to debate the meaning and intention with someone while viewing it in a gallery. I agree with those who say that it doesn't feel like your other work, but you are also pretty diverse in your image making. I really like your images like The Source and The Fire, but I absolutely love your landscapes too, especially when they have big dramatic cloud formations stealing the show. Your cityscapes are quite beautiful too. Even when there is seemingly nothing there of great interest to look at you capture beautiful compositions and create space that I can get lost in. And the roadkill are great too. You have several really great portfolios. I definitely think you should get a couple of offers for grad school. With that being said, I don't know the first thing about photography or what they are looking for. I think a lot of us have a tendency to want to get political in our work right now. I know I do. I'm fighting the urge to let it take over my work, but I'm losing the battle in a lot of my paintings. I'm trying to suppress it, but I'm not sure how successful I have been. I would love my work to raise questions in the viewers mind and make them think about issues without really shoving my opinion down their throats. I guess I would like to be poetic and not preachy. I have a little bit of a sarcastic personality and I love satire, which makes it harder to be a poet.

My bad. I was under the impression that it was wet, thinking that you couldn't hang it. I still think it would make a cool limited edition print too.

Do you still have the piece? Take a ton of pics. Maybe climb up on a latter and shoot straight down filling the frame, not so much to compose a photograph, but to document it as an art piece.

Nathan, It took me a minute to decipher the image underneath, but that's good, it kept me looking. How would you display this if not with photo documentation? I think it's an interesting piece, it could be very powerful if the circumstances around it are just right, which they pretty much are, but the balance of public opinion needs to not be so balanced.

33. I'll have been out of school for over 11 years if I go back this fall.