Need Help?

[JRRConsult]

Hello Aspiring Art Students, 

I am a long time follower of this forum - it helped me immensely when I was applying to grad schools myself. I have been perusing some of these recent threads, and a lot of you seem to have many unanswered questions about how this all works - and "this" can encompass many things. I work in art academia currently, and I will be the first to admit that the grad school application process is mystifying while pertinent information is often elusive. I struggled with this exact problem during my time looking at grad schools. But having now been through the process myself, I have learned some (but not all) answers. 

Being a professor currently, it is really disheartening to see just how many aspiring students, who do good work, get lost in this process. While I sincerely do want to help, it would be way too much for me to respond to each of these questions individually. Yet, after seeing what some of you are asking and the confusion within, I am wondering if some of you would be interested in some one-on-one consulting, via email or the like. 

It would be simply too overwhelming to take this on as something casual - and usually, this is what professors get paid to do, in addition to just teaching during the semester. What I can offer you, so that it does not become too insane, is this (and I realize this sounds kind of skeezy to post on a forum, but bear with me):

For, let's say, $20 I can offer all y'all any of the following: 

1. Provide standard paragraph sized answers to four general questions about this whole perplexing process, or
2. For an hour's time, I will look over your portfolio and help you narrow down choices of what to include, give advice, etc, or
3. I will do one round of reading and editing one document you may have questions about; this can be your statement, letter of intent, a CV, etc - whichever one of these you think you may need help with the most, or
4. if there is any other reasonable thing that you may need help with, I can look into that as well, or
5. If you happen to be in the same geographic location as I am, I would be happy to meet face to face for an hour's time.
6. I'd also possibly be open to doing an hour of Skype if absolutely warranted - though I sincerely believe Skype is terrible and should not be used in the admissions process, but I digress.

Here's a little about me to just let you know I am not just some crackpot without any clout: 

1. When I was applying to grad schools, I applied to fifteen schools and got into seven; four of those schools offered me significant financial aid, if not a fully funded MFA,
2. I went to a top tier MFA program in the New York City area,
3. I have been accepted into several residencies, including Vermont Studio Center,
4. I have shown internationally,
5. I have been published,
6. I have been teaching for just about 3 full years now; I have taught at two research 1's, a small liberal arts college, and a community college, (and if you do not know the difference between a R1 and a SLAC, you need to before you send out applications),
7. This past semester I helped one of my students get into a competitive international study abroad program at a top international school doing the same thing I am offering here, 
8. I have connected some of my students to various institutions for residencies, jobs, etc - I have provided them face-time with very successful artists,
9. I have been paid to give professional practices presentations to classes,
10. I myself have been awarded an upcoming year long, fully funded residency where three slots are awarded out of over two hundred and fifty applications. 
11. My personal work is mostly focused in installation, photography, performance and new media. I do not paint - though I went to a really painting heavy program and can offer some insight in that regard.

So, you know, I am not trying to prove my worth here, but I do have an idea of what I am talking about. And look, for all that, there is PLENTY I have been rejected from or failed at (which is something we can talk about also). I also obviously cannot promise you that you will get into Yale based on talking to me, or any other specific program. But, if any of you need help navigating all of this, I actually would like to help in a way that I can. 

If any of you need help and are interested, please feel free to send me a private message - we can go from there as to what you might need and how to achieve it. And feel free to ask any logistical questions about anything I did not cover here. I should also mention that my focus in my work is not necessarily solely commercial - I am much more personally interested in contributing to discourse than I am in doing the gallery circuits. I say this because if your dream is to be Anslem Kiefer or Takashi Murikami and show at Gagosian and only make art to make oodles of money, I will probably be not the best person to talk to. I can give you insights about the various gallery scenes, but that is not where my focus is.

In the meantime, good luck to all of you! Believe me, I know how hard it is out there - if something does not happen for you, please do not get discouraged. Though this sucks to always hear, rejection really is just a part of the process. Also, be diligent to really look through this forum and the past years of postings - there is some really valuable information in these threads if you take the time to search through them. 

One more thing: be sure to check out The Professor is In - Karen Kelsky is not arts based, but she offers a wealth of fantastic general academic information. 

Edit: 
Tell you what, let's do this - the first three people to ask me something on this thread, I will respond to the best of my ability. Be sure to ask something general or not so specific that it cannot relate to anyone else besides yourself. 

Edited July 3, 2017 by JRRConsult

[JRRConsult]

Update: So, I have been feeling weird about this posting, and I apologize if it made anyone uncomfortable. I sincerely did just want to help in a way that might be manageable for me, but I have realized that it comes across more as just like an advertisement - like I scour the web looking for young potential grad students to lure into my trap of council -which, of course, is indeed skeezy. (And totally not true at all, just btw.)

I will offer this piece of advice, in response: your first line of defense in grad school application craziness should be the mentors and professors you have built relationships with over the course of your undergrad. (Or, you should indeed be building relationships with them, if you are not.) They are the ones who will ultimately write your letters of recommendation and they are obviously the ones who will know you better than some well meaning but sketchily appearing rando on the internet. These people in your lives are there to help you, you should graciously accept what advice they can give. I say graciously because it is important to keep in mind that they are also not obligated to help you in anyway, especially if you come across as difficult or uninterested. I cannot tell you how many times I get recommendation requests from students who feel like they are entitled to my help. They are not. Despite what some in culture would have younger students believe, your professors are not your employees and you are shooting yourself in the foot in the long run if you treat them as such. I do decline these requests if I feel like I cannot honestly give the student a positive recommendation. I usually tell them to go find someone that knows them better than I do, because I apparently do not know enough about them to write about their various strengths.

And while on the topic of recommendations, it is important to give your professors adequate heads up that you need this done. I had to talk 3 people in my undergrad into submitting 15 letters of recommendation on my behalf, all of which were (hopefully) edited towards the program that I was applying to. You need to be nice to them. Do not give them less than a week to write one. Give them as much time as you possibly can. Since applications are due in the fall, it is a good idea to line up your recommenders in the spring of your junior year so they know what's coming. And building relationships means going to office hours, asking questions in class, being engaged, enjoying (or at least pretending to enjoy) the material. I get requests for letters of rec from students whom I do not remember. That is never a good thing. If you do not stand out to me in class, how am I going to know what to write in this letter? "Student A sat in my class, did not contribute, did the minimal amount of work possible to pass and I never heard from them again." If that's all the information I have on you, it's obviously not going to work out in your favor.

Also, I have numerous students not tell me that they need a letter of rec until I get an email request for one in my mailbox. It happens all the time. DO NOT DO THIS. Again, let your professors have adequate time to write these. Aside from just being rude, they are going to do a half-assed job if you tell them 12 hours before the deadline. And guess what, you are not the only one in your graduating class - your professors potentially have dozens of other students to write letters for, depending on the size of your year. So, be genuinely kind to them, treat them respectfully, do the best that you can in their classes. This will obviously help you.  

Change of topic and one more piece of advice that has been echoed oh so many times on this board: DO NOT GO INTO SIGNIFICANT DEBT FOR A MFA. I cannot stress this enough. Look, I went to a good school. A school that gets hundreds of applications each year for about 20 spaces. Imagine that same scenario now for all the top schools. The people who were my professors in grad school - people who have shown at the Whitney, people who have Guggenheim grants, people who are MacArthur fellows, people who have participated in the Venice Biennale - are so because they still need a job. In all likelihood, you will not make money off of your work alone, you will need a job. Unless you are independently wealthy - which people like Jeff Koons were before they became artists - you will need a job. Even if you get into the Whitney biennial, you will still need a job. For most of you, this will be true. That doesn't mean that you don't make good work, it doesn't mean that you won't have gallery representation, it doesn't mean that you won't get all the top considerations you want to have as artists. It is just the reality of the profession. And, frankly a MFA doesn't really guarantee you anything professionally. Yes, you need one to teach - but if you have been following any of the news about higher ed within the past few years, you should know just how much of a clusterfuck that whole thing is. Being and artist and being an academic are probably the two least secure job trainings that I can think of currently. We're all a little crazy for doing this to ourselves. You will not be able to survive when you have no job or are working for $15 an hour and have $120K in debt from going to Columbia for two years - ESPECIALLY if you have private loans, which you most likely will for that much money. You also have to factor in the cost of living in each of these places. New York is fucking expensive. It's $2+ just to ride the subway now, it's ridiculous. If you cannot make your work because you need to have a job to pay to make your work but you need to work at your job more than work on your work - is it worth it? 

That being said, I would not trade my experiences for a 9-5 for anything. You have to find a way to make it work for yourselves, in whatever way that is. You need to define what success will be for you personally. Is success showing? Or is success just having studio time each day? There are multiple ways to lay down your path, you just have to find what is write for you. 

Lastly, I want to address what is perhaps the primary things I wish I had known before I applied to grad school: you should be in the community of who you want your peers to be before you apply. Meaning, if you want to go to a New York school, you should be in the New York scene. If you want to go to a LA school, you should be in the LA scene. Speaking of my own experience, I came from a non-metropolitan area to go to a New York school, but I can tell you that 90% of my class already knew each other before coming - and more importantly, they already knew the faculty. They were all apart of the "scene" as it were. The students I went to grad school with were art handlers, or they interned at galleries, or they were assistants, or whatever, but they already had some "in" to the program. I was one of a handful of people who came from the outside. (So, it is possible - believe me, if I can do it, others can as well. But it is rare.) How do you do that if you're in no-place, Iowa? You pack up and move to Brooklyn. Or to Silver City. Or wherever. You become a part of the community in which you want to build your relationships. 

And that being said, there are many art scenes out there, not just the New York or LA scenes. And New York and LA are not the only places that have important and contemporary communities. It is vital to really research where you want to be and what you want to be a part of before applying. These relationships will be your lifeline for the years to come after you graduate. You and your peers should help each other in one geographic area, and if you go to a New York school, I can tell you that area is Brooklyn. 

I say all this because I run through these threads and I see all the same schools people are applying to: Yale, Columbia, Rutgers, Hunter, UCLA, Cal Arts and so on. If you do not want to live in New York after your MFA, do not go to a New York school. If you do not want to live in Los Angeles after you complete your MFA, do not go to a LA school. Similarly, if the admissions committee members (who will be your future potential professors) do not know you before you apply, what is going to make you stand out from the hundreds of other applicants? Be apart of the community that you want to grow in before and afterwards. There are always exceptions to this, but I have found this to be true in the majority of my interactions both in my own experience, the experiences of my peers and the experiences of my students. 

So, how do you do that - how do you start to build these relationships if you're out in middle America with the closest museum 500 miles away? You apply for things - for anything. And you keep on applying until you get something. I will tell you what, the reason why people who art successful in the arts get to the places they do is because they persevere. It is not the ones who have the best work or the most talent or who are the smartest. It is the ones who keep on getting up after every rejection and going to do the same thing again and again. (What's the definition of insanity?) Apply for residencies, apply for internships, apply for grants (and learn how to write a grant) and so on. Apply, apply, apply. The more you apply to things, the more your work will get circulated. The art world is surprisingly small, there is a strong likelihood that the same people will come across your work more than once. And, if it sticks out to them, they will remember it and watch how you grow - this has actually happened to me personally. There is plenty that happens behind the scenes that you do not know about. 

I have known people who have literally applied to Yale half a dozen times before they got in. I know someone who applied to Skowhegan for 8 years prior years before they got in. Perseverance. And also smart perseverance - you should be aware of the type of work that the institutions you are applying to produce. Obviously do not apply for dominantly heavy painting program if you are a photographer. But also, if you are interested in abstraction, do not apply to a program that produces people doing social practice - unless of course you feel need a drastic change, and if so you should state clearly in your application letter. Research the faculty, research the current and past MFA students, know what kind of work is coming out of that department and make sure it lines up with what your aesthetics are. Once you know a program, then find out who you really want to work with - if there are no professors there who you are interested in mentoring you, then why are you applying to that institution? And when so find some, you can see where perhaps they work during the summer, or where they are speaking next, or what they've written, or where they have a show, and so on. I know one person who just got into Yale because of the experience they had at a residency with a faculty member. It significantly helps to have prior connections before applying.

But I also know someone who is now an assistant to a very well known painter because they cold-emailed. (I should say that this painter is not a factory artist like Koons or Murikami, they only hire a handful of assistants.) But, they also did their research - the person who is not an assistant introduced themselves, why they liked the artist's work, how they thought they could be helpful to the artist and so on. So there are, again, various ways you can tackle these situations. 

Should you go to a post-bac instead? That's a whole other bone of contention. Should you apply for grad school right out from undergrad? John Kessler said that at Columbia, they do not even look at applications from students who have no experiences beyond undergrad and that if that's your case, you should save $100 on application fees. (Or $1000+ depending on how many schools you apply to.)

These are some of the things that I tell every student of mine and every student I come across who will listen to me rant. These are some of the things I wish all students knew before applying to grad school and that I also wish I had known. Ultimately though, know that what you do and that your work is important, you just need to find the right place to nourish it. Have faith in yourself and faith in the work - it is the only thing that will get you through to a successful career.

I again apologize for being sketchy. If any of you have general questions, please feel free (free being the operative word) to ask below. I probably won't write as much as this post, but I will at least try to give you some insight. 

[akuyakuneko]

Hello!

Thank you for your posts and you are being amazingly resourceful already!

Last year I applied to several programs and got a few interviews, but I was not admitted (a few rejects and two waitlist).I would be very interested in knowing if you have any advices to further develop one's application, fix what's "wrong" or "weak". 

I did my undergrad majoring in a non-art field in a small LAC (though I do have an art minor, I was one class away from getting a studio art major, but I did a year-long individual study in painting), I wonder if that was a "minus point". 

I prepare to apply again this year, narrowing down the programs that I will apply to, to make sure I get enough insights about the school, the location, the faculty members and the supporting resources. 

[1%learnings]

hi thanks for thanks that's awesome

would you mind also making a bullet point list

of the most important parts

so it could be shared with everyone else in the world 

and to make it more shareable

thanks a lot

really wanna share the msg / points

[darsenbehelm]

Wow - exactly the type of thing I was looking for because I've only recently made the decision to pursue an MFA. Totally lost, am getting a lot of variance in the questions I ask in the art community I'm involved with, pretty overwhelming + don't even know where my work falls into the style of school that would fit me best. I'll gladly you take you up on your services, that is a really generous post. I'll PM you for more of what I'd like to talk with you about. 

[JRRConsult]

On 7/5/2017 at 11:04 PM, akuyakuneko said:

Hello!

Thank you for your posts and you are being amazingly resourceful already!

Last year I applied to several programs and got a few interviews, but I was not admitted (a few rejects and two waitlist).I would be very interested in knowing if you have any advices to further develop one's application, fix what's "wrong" or "weak". 

I did my undergrad majoring in a non-art field in a small LAC (though I do have an art minor, I was one class away from getting a studio art major, but I did a year-long individual study in painting), I wonder if that was a "minus point". 

I prepare to apply again this year, narrowing down the programs that I will apply to, to make sure I get enough insights about the school, the location, the faculty members and the supporting resources. 

Hi akuyakuneko, 

It would be hard for me to gauge without seeing your portfolio. If you are comfortable, I wonder if you might be open to sharing your work on this thread - I can look over it and give you some general thoughts, and it may also be advantageous for some of the others on here to have an open process like that. If you are not comfortable, and that is totally fine, please feel free to PM me and we can go from there. 

Generally speaking, I think it is good you got on some waitlists rather than just flat out rejected - that is at least showing you that you are going in a right direction. In regards to your only having an art minor, I can tell you that, off the top of my head, I cannot think of anyone I have come across who was denied entry to a grad program based on their prior degree alone. In fact, I have known some who did sciences, math, psychology, etc in undergrad and it really only helped expand their work. In the end, it comes down to your portfolio - as well as how you jive with the rest of the department. Remember, most of these programs are looking to admit not just artists, but real people. Your personality and how well they think you will fit in is also a huge determination. 

As far as not going to a big named school, if a committee responds to your work, it will not matter. However, as I mentioned above, undergrad is a huge part of the way students network to get into grad school. (This is something I wish I had known myself prior to the application process.) So while it will not hurt you to be coming from a SLAC, you are at a slight disadvantage simply through connections. I can tell you that in my graduating class, there were about 20 students and about 4 or so came from one institution, and another 3 or 4 came from a similar institution. So that's almost half the class right there coming out of two schools. 

I do not mean that to be discouraging, but it is simply the reality of the situation. But, that does not mean that you should not apply and it does not mean that your chances are lower than anyone else's based on work alone. If the work is good, that will speak for itself. 

Good luck and keep us posted! 

Btw, for the rest of you, I am working on a bullet point list of the remarks I made in my original posts above, that is a great suggestion actually. I am working on it around my other obligations, but when it is ready, I will post them. Please keep in mind that this is just one person's perspective - there are bound to be countless other points of view that you will encounter. (This is the blood-sport of academia after all - people love to disagree just for the sake of doing so.) So if something someone said is not working for you, follow your educated instincts as to what you think is right for you and right for the work.   

Edited July 13, 2017 by JRRConsult
adding content

[akuyakuneko]

On 2017/7/14 at 2:54 AM, JRRConsult said:

Hi akuyakuneko, 

It would be hard for me to gauge without seeing your portfolio. If you are comfortable, I wonder if you might be open to sharing your work on this thread - I can look over it and give you some general thoughts, and it may also be advantageous for some of the others on here to have an open process like that. If you are not comfortable, and that is totally fine, please feel free to PM me and we can go from there. 

Generally speaking, I think it is good you got on some waitlists rather than just flat out rejected - that is at least showing you that you are going in a right direction. In regards to your only having an art minor, I can tell you that, off the top of my head, I cannot think of anyone I have come across who was denied entry to a grad program based on their prior degree alone. In fact, I have known some who did sciences, math, psychology, etc in undergrad and it really only helped expand their work. In the end, it comes down to your portfolio - as well as how you jive with the rest of the department. Remember, most of these programs are looking to admit not just artists, but real people. Your personality and how well they think you will fit in is also a huge determination. 

As far as not going to a big named school, if a committee responds to your work, it will not matter. However, as I mentioned above, undergrad is a huge part of the way students network to get into grad school. (This is something I wish I had known myself prior to the application process.) So while it will not hurt you to be coming from a SLAC, you are at a slight disadvantage simply through connections. I can tell you that in my graduating class, there were about 20 students and about 4 or so came from one institution, and another 3 or 4 came from a similar institution. So that's almost half the class right there coming out of two schools. 

I do not mean that to be discouraging, but it is simply the reality of the situation. But, that does not mean that you should not apply and it does not mean that your chances are lower than anyone else's based on work alone. If the work is good, that will speak for itself. 

Good luck and keep us posted! 

Btw, for the rest of you, I am working on a bullet point list of the remarks I made in my original posts above, that is a great suggestion actually. I am working on it around my other obligations, but when it is ready, I will post them. Please keep in mind that this is just one person's perspective - there are bound to be countless other points of view that you will encounter. (This is the blood-sport of academia after all - people love to disagree just for the sake of doing so.) So if something someone said is not working for you, follow your educated instincts as to what you think is right for you and right for the work.   

Thank you so much for your reply and sorry for the late reply. I found your posts quite empowering especially for someone who's self dubious and unconfident at the moment. I get a little bit scared by the idea of posting my portfolio. To be honest, I feel I lack in so many directions. After a few days of consideration, I decided to do it not only because I want to share my work and get feedbacks, but also since I know I need to start working from there. There was time I feel so bad about my old paintings that I want to start over and do something completely different. Now I see (and maybe it's just for me), I would prefer to build on to the old ones. I'll PM you too, please check the inbox.

Thank you so much!

 Here's my personal website: www.yeqinart.com

 

[JRRConsult]

On 7/22/2017 at 1:35 AM, akuyakuneko said:

Thank you so much for your reply and sorry for the late reply. I found your posts quite empowering especially for someone who's self dubious and unconfident at the moment. I get a little bit scared by the idea of posting my portfolio. To be honest, I feel I lack in so many directions. After a few days of consideration, I decided to do it not only because I want to share my work and get feedbacks, but also since I know I need to start working from there. There was time I feel so bad about my old paintings that I want to start over and do something completely different. Now I see (and maybe it's just for me), I would prefer to build on to the old ones. I'll PM you too, please check the inbox.

Thank you so much!

 Here's my personal website: www.yeqinart.com

 

Hi Ye, 

First, let me apologize for the delay in responding - the summer always ends up being a crazy time and I have gotten swept up and carried away with all sorts of banal yet necessary things. 

I have to also say thank you for being brave enough to share your work, not only with me, but with the group here and those who will come across this post. I am hoping it will prove to be a useful exchange, both for you and for those who may be facing similar questions in their work with the questions you raise. 

Let's get to it then. I will be upfront and say that I am going to be as honest with you as possible, so please do not take any critiques personally - ultimately I hope this discussion here will help your portfolio and your future plans as an artist. We also could be talk about all of this work for hours, so it will be hard to cover all of what I am thinking in one post - but I'll do my best. I am going to approach this as if you were applying to a top ten MFA program - i.e., programs that are interested in contemporary art and its nuances - and producing artists for a market that fit within those guides. If you were applying to a different kind of school, that knowledge would shape the conversation some. I would be interested in hearing where you are thinking of applying.

One more preface: these kinds of discussions or critiques or "studio visits" take up a significant amount of one's grad school experience. It may be interesting if other people weigh in with their thoughts on this thread as well, it could get a beneficial dialog going. A virtual "studio visit" if you will. 

So: I was looking over your site and I see some interesting things happening - though right off the bat, immediately after looking at the work, I was looking for a statement to inform me of how you view the work. This is for everyone, but be sure to have a general statement of why you do the things you do on your site. Your audience is not inside your mind - sometimes we need help in deciphering what we are seeing, especially if work is in the beginning stages. 

Just to be perfectly honest, the first barrier that I see you initially running up against in conversation about your work is whether or not these are kitsch paintings. I can see a graduate committee going through hundreds of applications, not take the time to get to know your work, and dismiss them as "hobby cat paintings" - that is something you do not want. In that case, it is up to you to visually frame your work in an interesting or creative way so that it catches someone's attention. I touch upon this below, but it's SUPER important with work like yours to include your installation/sculpture pieces because that's your tie-in to the contemporary art world and lets the committee know that you are thinking about things in a way that aligns with current discourse. I would even consider leading off with those images, with the paintings following. 

So my first main request from you, without knowing any kind of background aside from what is available on your site, would be for you to tell me what differentiates your work from other so called "pet portraits". Just for the record, I can see there is more going on here than just a simple painting of a cat, but I am curious as to your thought process and to how you talk about your work. 

An unfair reality is that it is often very hard to use animals in work - and not just for you, for anyone. They fall along the lines of "puppy photos" or cutesy decoration. It's a fine line to have to walk where one could fall into the kitsch territory really easily. So the kitsch factor is one thing - but something else totally opposite is that throughout canonical art history, animals are so often loaded with hidden meaning. Cats can often represent the female or female sexuality; they can be cunning and guile; the can be cute and affectionate; they can be standoffish or aloof; think about all the different stereotypes out there of what a cat can mean, even on a very basic level. After this, I would think about animals in painting, I'd say from the renaissance up to pre-modernity. Right off the bat I think of the cat in Manet's Olympia. Again, the cat is used as a stand-in or an emphasis on the sexual nature of the subject's profession. Though, there's an interesting article in The Telegraph that talks about Manet's insertion of cats (specifically his cat) into a couple of his paintings. So I am curious as to your relationship with the cat and why you think your cat is important enough to paint it. What are you hoping your cat can tell us? 

Beyond just the cat itself, there is the relationship between the cat and the general human. Contemporary house cats are one of the few animals we  keep as pets that do not have a direct variant in nature, unless we look at feral cats - though even feral cats have a distinct relationship to humans. (Yes, I know about lions and tigers - I am speaking to the size, quality and disposition relating to the house cat specifically through domestication. Even dogs still have a somewhat wild non-domesticated variant of the species.) In your work, I would again want to hear you talk more about your relationship to these animals and why you paint them, and why you portray them as you do, compositionally.

In your piece, "I'm Here", I would be interested to hear you also speak to the legacy of the use of animals in eastern art history. Off the top of my head, this image immediately reminds me of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. As we know from art history, the Japanese built in all sorts of metaphor for various mythologies within their prints, which is also at the forefront of their specific culture. I am not as familiar of the use of animals in Chinese art history, though I would be curious to hear your thoughts on that. One thing that comes to mind is perhaps the subversive (or just honest) nature of the Ukiyo-e prints - I am thinking specifically about the highly sexual ones, with octopi performing cunnilingus, and so on. I am not bringing this up to be a pervert, but I am wondering if there is some kind of subversive thing happening in your work as well. "I'm Here" hints towards this the most, but I would be interested in having a discussion of why you are portraying the cat as such in relationship to the figure. There's an obvious "naughty" (for lack of a better word) aspect, but I am wondering if/how you can push that further. 

Going off of that, you are starting to touch on something really interesting regarding social media, how we depict ourselves, the cat as a meme, and so on. I think there is much more there that you can mine to perhaps deepen the imagery some. And ultimately, that may be something you want to concentrate on for the work as a whole - speaking for myself, I am not so much interested in you portraying cats. I know what cats look like, I know what they do, I know their game. What I am interested in is your relationship to the cat, the cat's relationship to society as a whole and the cat's relationship to culture. Right now in the work, you are starting to scrape the surface of that - but I would encourage you to dig way deeper and really figure out what it is you want your work to say. There is literally so much writing out there on meme culture, all you would have to do is Google it to get started. I remember coming across a paper written as a PhD (I think) thesis specifically on the cat meme in internet culture. If you haven't already, it would a great thing for you to look into.

But speaking of a cat's relationship to a human: you touch on this some, but there's also this issue of privacy and how cats generally do not respect that. In the Trump era, where women's rights are on the mind of many people, the use of a cat as a symbol for invasion could be interesting also. Even in the sense of horror - I mean, those cat claws coming underneath bathroom doors - that's a horror movie waiting to happen. Again, the subversive.

There is also a discussion to be had about how you paint, meaning the direct treatment of the material. As I have said before, I do not paint, so I am somewhat naive to the treatment of pigment on canvas. Though, stylistically, I can pick up on different treatments of the medium in different pieces of your work. I would be curious to hear what makes those distinctions for you and what your relationship is to the material itself. One thing I am thinking of that may be useful to you is to look at someone like Dana Schutz - both in embedded meaning, but also style. I'm not a huge Dana Shutz fan, but one of my favorite pieces of hers is "Lion Eating Its Tamer" - (click through the images on the Petzel site, you'll see it.) That painting is rife with all sorts of emotions and situations, helped both by the subject and by how the subject is painted (and also the size - the painting is fairly large). This would obviously be a totally different painting if it were more based in realism. I would encourage you think about how the way you paint can influence or produce meaning in the content. 

Going off of that, your "pushpin" pieces are an interesting contrast in the use of abstraction - that's something I would be curious to hear you speak about as well, how you paint, how it abstracts the image, what that does to the painting, why chose to do it, etc. 

Finally, I find it super interesting that in the midst of all these paintings, you have one series that deals directly to installation and/or sculpture. "Your Hair All Over My Laundry" is some of my favorite work of yours. I will admit that part of this is because I am an installation artist, so I personally am always drawn to work that occupies more of definitive and specific space. Beyond that though, what you show here are the consequences of an action - in this sense, having a cat. I have had cats too, and I know how tedious it can be to keep everything hair free. But, this immediately makes me think about why humans do the things they do - that basic question and exploration is where I think really great work starts to come from. I mean, humans are such odd creatures - we keep these animals in our homes with us, that cause all sorts of messes and distractions, animals we willingly subject ourselves to caring for, and spending money on - not to mention the need to scoop poop. And what do we get in return? A pile of hairy clothes. I mean, it's really absurd if you think about it. And yes, I know that pets contribute to our lives with companionship and "love" and so on - but that idea of exploring that human condition into why we do the things we do is really fascinating. Again, I think you could push this idea further - think about Joseph Beuys who lived in a gallery with a coyote - and also think about someone like Mark Dion who had a show I saw in New York at Tanya Bonakdur where live birds occupied the same space as all this ephemera, with the interactions of the two making the work. (The viewer could also enter the cage - always helps to have an audience participatory wow factor to art. You may also want to look at Ann Hamilton's clothing installations) But this idea of having the physical reactions to the after-effects of a cat are really interesting - what if you could make everyone who entered the space react to the hair? What if you had so much hair it floated in the air? I'm just pulling things off the top of my head, but it's an area I think is work further exploring. 

You also may want to look at the Whitechapel Series volume on animals. (If any of you do not know of this series, get thee to a bookstore, stat.) This will bring up all sorts of other issues such as animal freedom, animals and capitalism, dominance and oppression, etc. It could broaden your senses some. I am trying to think of other materials that I can give to you to read . . . and not coming up with much. if I can think of anything worth while, I will send it along. (Someone else like Diana Thater may be interesting for you to look at also - she is a totally different artist than you, but it may prove useful to see how she deals with her subjects, who are often animals.)

So, those are some thoughts. Please feel free to respond and keep the conversation going. To reiterate, if you are planning to apply for this cycle, we should keep in touch. And if any others have some (constructive and kindly put) thoughts, please feel free to weigh in. 

Keep on keeping on - you're onto something here.
JRR.

Edited August 4, 2017 by JRRConsult

[1%learnings]

do you think there could be a bullet point list?

would be helpful