Hendriks; Eleanor D. on sat 14 sep 96
For those who are interested, I'm glad to relate my post BFA experience.
I was in a BFA class of 10. All 10 planned on graduate school as the
next logical step in an art career. Most had teaching or a commercial
form of art (eg. graphic design) in their game plans.
As a Canadian who had already spent 5 years studying in the USA, I
wanted to study at home. I applied to every
school in Canada with even a remote connection to clay in their MFA
programs. Most Canadian Universities do not offer ceramics as a formal
program beyond the BFA level, but I figured that if they had a kiln and
some clay somewhere on the property I could probably figure out a way to use
them. I also applied to some schools in the USA, mainly those close to
the border or with absolutely phenomenal programs that I would drop
everything for if accepted. I assumed that the following year I would be
heading for somewhere interesting to continue the idyllic life of a
student and to focus all my time on art.
I was wrong. I received only rejection letters. When my class got
together to review our success only 2 of the 10 went to graduate school,
both to schools at which a parent taught. Neither received any interest
from any of the other schools they applied to. When I reviewed the
situation I realized that I had been applying to a possible 8 graduate
positions in Canada, most of which were not exclusively clay but rather
more inclusive craft positions. Based on percentages I should have known
that the chances were not good, but the implication we received through
our studies was that if we were serious artists we should and could go to
graduate school. I was understandably disappointed that
I had not been accepted but I was also disappointed that we had never
been presented with other options. All of us had our heads stuffed full
of aesthetics, criticism and the drive to push creative boundries but we
had very few practical tools.
As far as I know, five years later all five of us are still participating
in the arts but we have each had to make our own way.
I have followed the path closest to apprenticeship that was available to
me. During the last two years of the BFA program I was the ceramic
studio technician -a job which taught me valuable lessons in kiln firing,
studio organization, diplomacy, and finessing deadlines. The last two
summers I worked for two potters in my hometown. I didn't learn how to
do anything new -throw small pots, wax, glaze, wedge!@#$%, and load kilns
-but I did learn how to do it over and over again. The most invaluable
part of this was seeing two pottery businesses in operation. The year
following graduation I worked for a small company that mass produced
earthenware kitchen utensils -pizzatiles, breadpans, portuguese wine
cups. There I learned RAM pressing and RAM mold making, fettling (way
too much fettling!), production scheduling, shipping, and that I never
want to make 10,000 of anything, not for any reason, and not for any
amount of money!
Now I have been on my own as a small scale functional potter for three
years and think that this Christmas I may be able to say that I am seeing
some success and that I could make a living with clay. And after
Christmas, when the thought of making another mug will be poison to my
soul, I think I'll spend some time with the sculptural exploration of
clay that I began in that strange, perfect and unreal place called
university.
Right now I have to produce a quote for three dozen custom mugs for a
farm organization -not something I would have predicted in school but
perfectly natural now.
Not bitter, just better :-)
Eleanor Hendriks,
Elan Fine Pottery
Fergus, Ontario, Canada
Carla Flati on sun 15 sep 96
Hi all,
It seems to me that an apprenticeship after an MFA would make for one pretty
well rounded education. Artists have the choice, they make doctors do it. If
one of my kids were faced with a decision to choose between an MFA or an
apprenticeship, I'd have to push them toward the MFA because eventually, that
degree will open doors. I'd also suggest that they do an apprenticeship AFTER
they get their MFA because the term "starving artist" wasn't just made up, it's
a fact of life. They would have to ask themselves, "How do I want to support
myself while waiting to become a famous artist?" It takes a special kind of
person to teach and an MFA alone does not automatically make someone a good
teacher. If they're not cut out for teaching, then what? They could luck out
and find an art related job they enjoy, or they could get stuck doing something
they absolutely hate. How many MFA's have waited on tables while they waited
for careers? If clay is their canvas, why not use it for support too? What's
wrong with making functional pottery along with the sometimes unidentifyable
stuff you can't eat or drink from. On the other hand, what if they find an
enjoyable job and the glaze on their artsy stuff comes out of the kiln looking
like caca (unintentionally) and they can't figure out why. What if the clay
keeps exploding or pinholing and they're left clueless as to why? You can't
learn everything from a book. In fact, there's things you'll probably never
even find in a book. If experience is the best teacher, why not soak up as much
as you can from someone who has the hands on experience. An apprenticeship may
also come in handy with repect to material safety issues since schools don't
always seem to cover them in any depth. For instance, an old timer would
probably be able to tell you right off the bat that the reason your hair is
falling out in plugs is from the uranium in that pretty yellow glaze you've been
using, or just how long you can go on breathing in all that dust when you mix
your glazes before you start coughing up blood. (extreme examples, I know, but
you get the point)
Personally, I think functional pottery IS art but I guess this opinion belongs
in the art vs. craft thread, not this one. Oh, the hell with it.... Doug Gray's
post set me off again! How could anyone walk through the cup sale at NCECA and
not see the beauty in some of the functional pieces? How could those morons
who've taken the wheels out of their schools ever dismiss work like Richard
Aerni's plates and pitchers, or Ron Roy's tenmoku pieces as being simply useful
and nothing more? These same snobs seem to really like the modern day
primitive fired work which may be based on the wares of a "lowly" potter who had
the misfortune of building his studio on top of an active volcano. How is it
that they turn their noses up to our functional pottery, but have no problem
calling a 2000 year old celedon bowl that someone dug up a work of art? Someone
ate their cornflakes out of that bowl. Granted, it was probably some emperor's
kid and the cereal probably wasn't made by Kellog, but big deal. It was
functional when it was made but now it's art. Is it art because it's old or
because it's beautiful (even though it may have been thrown on a wheel)?
(Ooooo, another can of worms) Are the snobs hypocrits or not? Does this make
sense or sound dumb? Enough! I'm giving myself a headache.
For the record, the only reason I singled out Richard and Ron is because there's
a postcard of Richard's work hanging in front of me and I'm drinking coffee out
of one of Ron's cups right now, but I've got my own "Clayart Wall of Fame" in
the livingroom covered with pieces by people on this list...... Elca Branman,
Bacia Edelman, Russel Fouts, Barb Mazur, and Cheryl Shoemaker. When I'm done
with my coffee, Ron's cup goes back up on the wall and not into the cupboard (I
do wash it first.) New York is a bit out of the way for a shopping trip, but
one of these days I hope to have a real live Richard Aerni pot instead of a
postcard because I'm crazy about his work. (Ok, so I did show some partiality
but what the heck) Some of these people call themselves potters, some don't, but
however they choose to describe themselves, they're all artists to me.
Even though I consider the art snobs to be pure pendejos, I feel sorry for them
because their arrogance has blinded them. There's an entirely different world
of art that they will never enjoy. But hey, there's hope for them if they can
manage to get their noses out of the clouds. Ya never
know..............stranger things have happened.
Carla
(freezing in Pittsburgh for the first time in months.........I hate winter!!!)
Vince Pitelka on mon 16 sep 96
>If one of my kids were faced with a decision to choose between an MFA or an
>apprenticeship, I'd have to push them toward the MFA because eventually, that
>degree will open doors. I'd also suggest that they do an apprenticeship AFTER
>they get their MFA . . .
>Carla
Carla -
You make so many good points in your post, but I would suggest that aspiring
potters consider the apprenticeship BEFORE graduate school for the following
reasons. I do not know of a BFA program that completely prepares the
average student for a professional career as a potter, nor does it
completely prepare them for graduate school. I think they desperately need
additional experience before pursuing either goal. I really do believe that
very few students are properly prepared academically, psychologically, or
emotionally to enter an MFA program directly after completing a BFA program
directly after completing high school. Very few have the maturity, life
experience and self-direction to make the most of grad schools. This is of
course not an absolute - there are plenty of examples to the contrary. But
generally, a BFA graduate who goes out into the world for several years to
really explore and experience their media will be much more able to make the
most of graduate school. Perhaps this is especially important for an
aspiring potter, considering the record of aspiring potters being directed
away from pots and towards sculpture in grad school. No value judgement
there. I love both directions, but as I indicated in a previous post, we
need to seriously re-evaluate and revamp the higher education system in the
arts to include and encourage the functional arts (in the traditional sense
referred to as craft). An aspiring potter who completes a BFA degree and
then secures an apprenticeship or residency for several years will develop
confidence in themselves, their skills, and their aesthetic, and will be
much more able to survive the onslaught of the art snobs in so many grad
programs. Again, no value judgement intended. Personally I love to
hob-knob with the art snobs, but I am professionally and ideologically
committed to the promotion and perpetuation of fine pottery.
I don't want to reactivate that old thread about whether graduate school is
even necessary for an aspiring studio potter. Personally I think it is a
great route to take, because it opens up so many more options, as Carla
said. On the other hand, the individual who is really self directed might
do best with a BFA degree and a good apprenticeship or residency. And of
course there are those who do just fine on their own without the academic
track, with or without a traditional apprenticeship. There are plenty of
heroic self-made potters around to prove it. Each aspiring artist/potter
much choose their own track based on careful consideration of their own
goals and aspirations. Perhaps that is the most difficult thing of all -
selecting and following the best possible track.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka - vpitelka@Dekalb.Net
Phone - home 615/597-5376, work 615/597-6801
Appalachian Center for Crafts, Smithville TN 37166
Jack Troy on tue 17 sep 96
"Each aspiring artist/potter must choose their own track based on careful
consideration of their own goals and aspirations. Perhaps that is the most
difficult thing of all - selecting and following the best possible track."
- Vince
Good point, Vince, although I'd put in a word for those of us who just bumbled
along as if following some sort of cosmic dowsing rod, taking classes here and
there, reading everything we could get our hands on, using other people's
equipment to a point just short of rudeness, falling asleep with pots on our
minds and waking with new ones there as well, living with favorite pots from all
over, visiting every potter within a hundred miles, making, making, making, and
discovering in the process that a career had chosen us.
I've always had great wonder and admiration for those who could, as you say,
"select and follow a track," but thankfully, the House of Ceramics has a wide
and commodious back door, and many of us have let ourselves in that way, and
what was the first room, we found? The kitchen, of course. Many of us stayed
there, potting for those shelves and cupboards, while others moved into the
tonier rooms with the pedestals and mantle pieces and the walls that could use
clay that hangs up. It's a right jolly house with new rooms being made all the
time, it seems.
There's something to be said for those potters you rightly point out - the ones
with no degrees except degrees of success as they might define it. As Hank
Thoreau put it, "[formal] Education makes a straight-cut ditch out of a
free-running stream." It doesn't have to, but it can.
Jack Troy
Jonathan Blitz on tue 17 sep 96
I just wanted to add my $.02 to this discussion because I feel that I had
a rather unique education in this field that gives me a different
perspective on the choices that people make.
I was an apprentice for 2 years in high school, I then went on to KU and
spent a year there, and I returned to my home town completely disillusioned
with art school. From there I started a co-op while I finished
undergraduate school in an unrelated field. While I did not feel that the
experience in art school was a waste of time, I was far better trained
than the grad students.
My feelings are thus:
1. Undergraduate art schools are by and large completely inept at training
professionals. Students in most schools are not pushed hard enough to
learn the production techniques and work ethic, not to mention business
principles, to make it in this field.
2. Graduate school is a place to explore a mature line of work. Either a
somewhat developed series of sculptural forms, or a new direction of mixed
media work. You are wasting everyones time, and especially your own
money, if you go to grad school to learn to be a production potter. I am
23 and I don't think that going to grad school right now would accomplish
much at all.
3. If grad students were ready to go back, there
would a better synergy in a lot of departments between the faculty and
themselves. Many of these programs are fraught with political contests,
and pecking orders. This type of {expletive deleted} is really
unconscionable.
4. My own return to grad school has been postponed for 2 reasons. First,
I am fairly well paid to teach right now, with students who have become
professional potters through my tutelage and their own hard work, and I
am aghast that a professional such as myself would be asked to pay
thousands of dollars year in tuition to attend a program that I would be
improving by my presence there. Second, I am not at this point willing to
relocate in order to follow someone elses teaching. While there are
several people who have garnered my admiration, I haven't learned enough
to know that someone else has something of value to teach me.
5. The value of an MFA is limited to that of teaching. While this isn't
bad for some folks, I think schools are a nice place to visit but...
I certainly respect other peoples lack of resources other than school to
develop professionally, but we all really teach ourselves. Art education
is really somewhat of a charade. If the students can earn a living, then
I consider them successful. I want my students to feel that I gave them a
fishing pole, and not just a basket of aesthetic pleasing carp.
Pompously yours,
Jonathan Blitz
Don Jones on wed 18 sep 96
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
> I certainly respect other peoples lack of resources other than school to
>develop professionally, but we all really teach ourselves. Art education
>is really somewhat of a charade. If the students can earn a living, then
>I consider them successful. I want my students to feel that I gave them a
>fishing pole, and not just a basket of aesthetic pleasing carp.
>
>Pompously yours,
>Jonathan Blitz
Jonathan,
Thanks for your post. I was feeling a little lonely.
I've always wanted to say something like this but never had the guts on an
academic forum.
Hope you don't get flamed to badly.
Don Jones
claysky@indirect.com
raining again here in Albuquerque
Marcia Selsor on wed 18 sep 96
Dear Don,
I agree with Jonathon. and I've been teaching in Academia for 22 years.
I don't think the University setting can provide all that one needs
to develop a profession. We are only undergrads here. A large part of
my time is spent trying to convince business majors, or others, that
pottery/ceramics has a long history in humanity and a daily significance
in our perspective on life. Meanwhile, the rest of the campus thinks we
are playing in the mud. My few specialized cemaics students are encouraged to
seek apprenticeships thru a "practicum" experience with local potters.
They also assist me in building kilns, glaze prep, traveling the web,
and visiting the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena (nice resource).
I try to spread the source of their information. I am not enough.
Marcia Selsor
mjbmls@imt.net
http://www.imt.net/~mjbmls
Vince Pitelka on fri 20 sep 96
Jonathan -
Your message concerning your own experience in academia is interesting and
illuminating, but yours is only one example, and your generalizations about
higher education are completely off the wall and could misdirect many
aspiring artist/potters. Let me respond point-by-point.
> While I did not feel that the
>experience in art school was a waste of time, I was far better trained
>than the grad students.
Good for you. Why even mention it? If you were so well trained, it must
have allowed you to really make the best of the academic situation. Right?
>Undergraduate art schools are by and large completely inept at training
>professionals.
While it is true that most undergraduate art programs do not spend enough
time dealing with real-life issues of professionalism in the arts, much of
the problem lies in the student's unwillingness to aggressively SEEK the
information they want and need. As a general rule, American students are
lazy and expect everything to be delivered to them. Anyone who graduates
from college and then complains that they did not get what they wanted out
of the experience is missing the point. Anyone who tolerates incompetent
teaching and administration for the duration of a college education deserves
just what he/she gets. And anyway, a college education is and should be
preparation for a fulfilling life. That's why I strongly recommend a
college education AND an apprenticeship or residency for an aspiring
artist/potter.
>Graduate school is a place to explore a mature line of work. Either a
>somewhat developed series of sculptural forms, or a new direction of mixed
>media work. You are wasting everyones time, and especially your own
>money, if you go to grad school to learn to be a production potter.
Huh???? Yes, graduate school is a place to develop and explore a mature
line of work, but the minute you place parameters on what that work can and
should be you are shutting off creative development and free expression.
While graduate school may not be the place to hone production skills, it
certainly is the place to strengthen your aesthetic, your range of skills,
and your vocabulary of form and decoration. This will make a stronger
potter with greater confidence in material, technique, and stylistic
direction. The same may be accomplished through an apprenticeship, but do
not exclude the MFA as a very valid route to professional studio life.
>If grad students were ready to go back, there
>would a better synergy in a lot of departments between the faculty and
>themselves. Many of these programs are fraught with political contests,
>and pecking orders. This type of {expletive deleted} is really
>unconscionable.
I don't get this. You seem to be blaming the graduate students for a lack
of synergy. This supports my claim that many graduate students are
unprepared for the experience. I think that all students should work in
their field out in the real world for at least a few years after undergrad
school and before grad school. Hopefully this will give them the confidence
to deal with the political contests and pecking orders, which are,
unfortunately, a frequent part of academia. Ideally, any student at the
graduate level should have enough autonomy and self-direction to make the
most of the situation despite the negative politics.
>I am aghast that a professional such as myself would be asked to pay
>thousands of dollars year in tuition to attend a program that I would be
>improving by my presence there. Second, I am not at this point willing to
>relocate in order to follow someone elses teaching.
Jesus, Jonathan, you're starting to whine. Besides, if you really do your
research, and with all your experience, you can find a program which will
give you a teaching assistantship or technical assistantship with tuition
waver, and it need not cost you much. And if you are not willing to
relocate to follow someone else's teaching, then grad school is obviously
not for you. When you are willing to relocate to follow your own desires
and ambitions, then grad shool will be the right thing to do. That's much
more important than folloing anyone else's teaching.
>The value of an MFA is limited to that of teaching.
Baloney. The value of an MFA is in the maturity and confidence in yourself
and your own work and your command of the media, and the range of diverse
experience in the arts during grad studies. It is excellent training for a
fulfilling life.
> I certainly respect other peoples lack of resources other than school to
>develop professionally, but we all really teach ourselves.
It's hard to tell here if you are giving us a break or handing out an
insult. And we only teach ourselves within the limits of our capacity to do
so depending on our environment and associated creative stimuli, and on the
amount of time we can devote to self-teaching. Academia is just an
opportunity for greatly accelerated self-teaching.
>Art education is really somewhat of a charade.
What a sad thing for anyone in the arts to say. If you really think it's
broken, go get an MFA and a teaching job and help fix it.
>Pompously yours, Jonathan Blitz
You got that right.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka - vpitelka@Dekalb.Net
Phone - home 615/597-5376, work 615/597-6801
Appalachian Center for Crafts, Smithville TN 37166
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