My response to a humbling question sent from an old student of mine.

The question: 

Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:08:45 -0600
Subject: Hello, how are you?
Hey Kyla,

Thanks for the wonderful note on my last exam. Much better than the crashing and burning plane...even if it did make me laugh. 

Right now though, I'm freaking out a little. I'm afraid of what being an "art major" means (or doesn't mean) in my mind.

Right now it seems that my work is always treated as part of a class, as something for a grade, an assignment, etc. etc. And that's not what art should be. I'm afraid that as I get further into this, I'll discover that I'm actually not that good at being an 'artist'. That I'm merely a good 'draw-er' or skilled with working with a certain material. Because I think that drawing is skill and as such, it can be learned by anyone with the time or drive. But there's step that takes a good drawing to the level of a work of art. And that's the level that I'm not sure I'm capable of reaching. Is this really something that art classes can teach me? Am I going to be pulled aside one of these days and hear, "oh hey, here's the secret no one's told you yet" and then just 'get it' and start making art that's...art? Because right now I look at what I do and I look at what others are doing and my work just seem to be drawings. They're "cool", or realistic, but they don't scream, "oh, Becca did that" when you look at them. They don't keep you looking, awe you, or really even hold your attention. What have I missed in the big art equation? Is there some point where it's supposed to click and my style emerges, etc. etc? I don't know if the other sophomore undergrads are starting to see this, too, but my lack of creativity is scaring me.

-B

My response: 

B, 

So nice to hear from you!

Sorry I didn't respond to this sooner. I don't use the wisc e-mail anymore, in fact, it's disabled. I'm happy to talk to you about this stuff. These are all good questions. If you want to talk over the phone, that might be more efficient, but I'll try to briefly respond here. Otherwise, please feel free to call me anytime on my cell.

Ok--To answer your question(s):

I truly feel that there are some things that you can teach in art, and there are some things that you can't. Certainly a creative sensibility is something that I believe (though many would argue it), is at least somewhat just a part of who someone is. I think it has something to do with how our brain works. Some people seem to make connections that are more subconscious or pre-lingual. That said, don't be too hard on yourself. I began art because it was what I was good at. I fell in love first, with my ability to render what I saw in front of me. It was skill that came naturally and easily to me. It started, in many ways, as simply a joy in copying what was in front of me. Eventually, however, I started getting board with merely copying. I still enjoy just sitting down and painting what is in front of me, but if you work enough, eventually, you start to want more. 

I can tell when I've hit a creative vein because I get excited about what I'm doing, I feel a drive that simply isn't there when I am just duplicating. Things become more intuitive, images arrive in my mind that I couldn't have come to through a merely intellectual process. Often, something pops into my mind and I just follow it, and the reasons or pseudo-logic reveal themselves after the work develops. Sometimes I don't see creative patterns or relationships in my work until years later, and only piece a creative lineage together in retrospect. 

If you have ever been doing artwork and felt a drive, an energy, then that is you tapping into your creativity. Sometimes it is hard to come by. I used to sometimes only listen to one song/album while I was working on a drawing or painting because I was afraid if I changed the music, it would break that spell. Lately, I haven't experienced a creative drive for a long time, and that is difficult. It always causes me to face the same questions that you are. 

You seem to be asking if art can actually be taught, I don't think it can be taught, but I do think that an artistic sensibility can be developed and learned, and that being in a creative environment and around things that inspire you is essential to that process. I think that certain skills and the "language" of art (brush work, materials, technical dexterity) can be taught. I don't think that someone can teach you to be creative, but that one can inspire your own creative sensibility. 

Before you freak out--this is how I've come to look at it: 

Art school, in many ways, is a frustrating load of bullshit. It is a field that is incredibly insecure about it's purpose and value. This is especially because deep down, I think most artists and art students feel the way you seem to feel--that is "what am I doing here? What am I actually learning? How can this possibly be worth the money". After all, how can you teach something that is so incredibly subjective, and, at it's heart, values most of all the creation of something totally new and individual. In that sense--the only art that we can "teach" is creative process and method. That is, we can teach processes, practices, mentalities, creative approaches, studio ethics, work ethics, but all of these strategies are all just a shot in the dark at an attempt to generate or inspire a truly individual process. They are the means, but not the end to art that hasn't yet been defined or realized, and that, by definition, simply won't exist unless you make it, and that is defined by you alone. 

The truth is, I don't believe art can be taught, but I do believe that art school and being in an artistic environment pushes you to be inspired, pushes you to keep making work, and puts you in an environment of (hopefully) creatively minded people. 

In a nutshell, I believe that skills can be taught, art cannot. Nonetheless, sometimes developing ones creative sensibility, at least in my own experience simply requires a lot of work. The more art you do, the more your creativity will develop. When I stop making art, it seems to go away very quickly. If you want to continue working as an artist, you will face these questions and insecurities your whole life. It is very difficult and sometimes I question the career path I've chosen. It takes work, and creatively, the more work you do (and that includes work that you do, and hate), the more you develop your creative sensibility. 

You are too young to have a "style", and though many may tell you otherwise, you are also too early in your art career to know what your work is "about". At RISD, we talked less about what our art was about, and spent a lot more time just doing art. 

As I side note, I want to add, that I was given a hard time constantly, and especially my senior year because I just liked rendering. I wasn't interested in content. I just painted faces. I painted 50 5"x5" faces for my senior show. Ultimately, however, my art grew from there. Just do what feels right. Content and creativity follow simply doing--working, working, working. 

Finally--the real question here is, what do you want from your art degree? Do you want to teach? Sell art in galleries? Illustrate? The answers to these question will help guide what art school means to you and what you get from it. 

Whew, that was a super long answer to a very good question. It was actually kind of fun for me to think the answer through. I'm sure you aren't the only one wondering these things. I know I certainly have. Please call me if you want to talk more, I can totally sympathize with your doubts, and these are good questions to ask. 

Best of luck with everything! Happy Holidays!

-Kyla. 

Curious.

Hotel that let's you live like a hamster for a night.

Who knew?

I wonder if any additional non-human species give B.J.'s...

"A Batty Tale of Oral Sex"

"we believe that ours is the first large-scale observational study of oral sex in non-humans" 

-research team member

I'm Making My Own Walnut Ink...

...and I came across this ancient recipe. I find the wording and spelling charming in that olde timey, predictable kind of way. 

Source: A Booke of Secrets ... written first in Italian, and now newly translated into English, by W.P., London, Edward White, 1596

To make inke to write upon paper

Take halfe a pint of water, a pint wanting a quarter of wine, and as much vineger, which being mixed together make a quart and a quarter of a pint more, then take six ounces of gauls beaten into small pouder and sifted through a sive, put this pouder into a pot by it selfe, and poure halfe the water, wine and vineger into it, take likewise foure ounces of vietriall, and beat it into pouder, and put it also in a pot by it selfe, whereinto put a quarter of the wine, water, and vineger that remaineth, and to the other quarter, put foure ounces of gum Arabike beaten to pouder, that done, cover the three pots close, and let them stand three or foure daies together, stirring them every day three or foure times, on the first day set the pot with gaules on the fire, and when it begins to seeth, stir it about till it be throughly warme, then straine it through a cloath into another pot, and mixe it with the other two pots, stirring them well together, and being covered, then let it stand three daies, til thou meanest to use it, on the fourth day, when it is setled, poure it out, and it wil be good inke.
If there remaine any dregs behind, poure some raine water that hath stand long in a tub or vessell into it, for the older the water is, the better it is, and keepe that untill you make more inke, so it is better then clean water.

(link to this page: http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/ink/make_ink_history.html#booke)

A Curious Thing

Yesterday morning, my father and I watched a leafy tree, as if under a spell, steadily and rapidly empty itself of all its leaves. There was no visible catalyst for this event. There was no wind. There was no rain. Just leaves dropping vertically and unapologetically from branch to the ground. The only sound was the quiet patter of tsch, tsch...tschtsch, tsch, tsch, tschtschtsch...tschtsch...tsch, tsch, tschtsch... as the leaves unaffectedly hit their paved resting place. There was no horizontal drift. There were no wayward leaves. Their trip was so concise its leaves left a perfect yellow-green circle directly beneath the tree's branches. Within an hour, the tree was completely bare. 

My Old Blog Was Better Than My Latest

I recently took a look at my old, short-lived MySpace blog. I've chosen to repost all five entries to this blog because, well, I think they are better than the more current entries in this one. They reflect a different part of my personality that I seem to have lost touch with recently. Also I figured I may as well consolidate. Hopefully if I indeed get in the habit of journalling more, my posts will once again live up to their more glorious predecessors. Below are all my posts from MySpace, circa 2005:

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Suburban Rednecks

To preface my story today, I'd first like to paint the picture. We live in a very typical, middle class suburban neighborhood, you know the deal: American Flags poking off practically every house, lawns neatly mowed and saturated with pesticides, and little electric candles in each window. Our house is obviously the hippy dippy liberal weirdo house. Pets always used to be escaping, loud middle eastern music blasting out the window in the evening, bonfires in the back, occasionally the scent of pot from the backyard, and probably a fair amount of glimpses of one person or another wandering about the house in their underwear when no one else is was home and they thought that our neighbors couldn't see. This afternoon in particular, I came home to find my dad sitting on a lawn chair in our backyard, sipping pabst blue ribbon out of the can, and burning trash. Our backyard is not that large, there was a ton of smoke, (he finally decided to burn the dead christmas tree that has been toppled over in the middle of the backyard to be used for "kindling" since January.) and my dad had a smattering of empty beer cans tossed about the chair because he had decided it wasn't worth the energy to take 10 steps inside to the recycling bin. My father has such a conflicted combination or hoosier farm boy and old liberal intellectual man. I say this because you'd expect him to be reading something like "Hunting Magazine" but instead he had a copy of some book called "Eco Economy". Gotta love it. Our new next door neighbor must think we're total rednecks. Maybe I'll bake him a pie and introduce him to the neighborhood.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Family History

I've been scanning old family photos for my dad. He's been bringing out rickety ornate albums filled with tin types and binder after binder of plastic sheeted old photos in various stages of preservations and decay. It's easy to accidentally assume with some photos that they were intended that way, yellowed and cracked, as if that was the desired aesthetic of the time. It's hard to remember that these people were better known in color. It is so easy to forget the existence of things that are not recorded. We must remember that their presentation is just that, a staged rendition of a family or person, how they wanted or were supposed to be seen. It's easy to get drawn into this act of preservation. Knowing that whatever I choose to leave or take away will then been considered as fact, and forever remembered in that way, in my aesthetic and through my control. It's also interesting to notice, how certain facial characteristics are preserved. In the case of my father, his father and even his father, it is a pair of stubborn ears that serve as an unmistakable identifier, but diminish slightly with each generation. From my great grandmother's eyes, we get the large upper lids, and Jesse, my younger sister got her delicate mouth, compact and pleasing, with a downward tilt and upward smile. I can't say what I have been given from these phantom people in piles of photographs, but I can see it, or maybe just feel it. Perhaps it's a figment in my mind, but there is a certain similarity in the eyes and facial structure that gives me a pleasing sense of belonging. In a way, recording these photos is following the path of my existence backward, it goes on and on, with no limit, through this chain of people who by some strange stroke of luck or destiny, I owe my existence.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Art History

I am sitting here in front of a room of bored seventeen year olds. I, fortunately, have already gone to highschool, which affords me the luxury to check me e-mail while I listen to some miscelanious brit narrate passionately about the angst and passion of Delacroix over a series slow pans over low quality projections of his paintings and the din of fuzzy blairing classical music. I also can leave and go to taco bell for lunch, which is always a treat. Despite Amy the cafeteria lady's kind offers of a free lunch, I feel an inate repulsion (as I did in highschool) to wilted iceburg lettuce and day old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was nice of her to offer though. Maybe I'll take her up on a free coffee, but probably not, since I find the cafeteria to be a substantially intimidating place. The narrator just muttered in his gutteral accent "What is the sea? Why is it sublime? It is because of its vast expanse...the merest half glimpst of the waves, the rest, lost on the horizon..." And then he goes on to use cliched frases such as "...Infinate desire for what we can never attain," "What torments me is my loneliness", "the vigour and passion of youth", "the look of a mothers eyes", "Braces of despair", "all is error", "without extreme baring, there is no beauty", "Dare to surpass oneself!". Deep, very deep.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Carriage Driving

Saturday and Sunday I found myself once again sitting behind Theo's fat ass plodding through Philadlephia at 2 miles per hour to give guided tours of America's Most Historic Mile. Last summer I was a carriage driver, fortunately I escaped around August, but was roped in again by promises of mucho dinero on Valentines weekend. It's amazing how little things in that world have changed. To think that I couldn't sleep the night before for fear that I would have forgotten the dates of the Revolutionary War or the year Ben Franklin established the first fire insurance company. What I found is that driving a carriage is like riding a bike, only not, becuase it involves, carrots, a live 2000lb animal, history, french braiding, and street smarts. I'm just glad I'm not out there today, it's raining. Anyway, more on this later.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

First "blog"ever, I am now officially a internet dweed. (you probably are too)

Dear everyone, I felt compelled to share my day today because it made me laugh. Today I found myself slightly hungover, sleep deprived, and substitute teaching 2nd grade music class. It was wild, let me tell you. All I was given to entertain them was a 15 minute video on Duke Ellington, and then to top it off, my only other option was a 40 minute dance video. Teachers seem to forget that the sub has NO IDEA WHAT SHE IS DOING. It's kind of weird having and 7 year old waving her hand in your face and telling you the best way to get the rest of the class under control. At this particular school, the method is making a peace sign and putting the index finger of your other hand over your mouth. Whatever, it doesn't work. Anything for $60. It's amazing watching a room full of 7 and 8 year olds try to sit still for fifteen minutes. One class got a little out of hand. They started out just wiggling a bit in their seats to the beat of the music, which I thought was cute, so I let it slide, next it was the air trombone, and then, before I new it, they were falling backwards off their seats (on purpose) and making farting noises with their armpits. Later in the day during another, more manageable class, I got a little knock on the door, and all of the children who had misbehaved were hand delivering notes of apologies WITH illustrations. Here are what some of them had to say: "I am sorry that I was folling off the benchis and makeing people laf. I am sorry I made fun of the sexofone." -Clay "Daer, cyla, I am sorry about what I did. I am sorry that I was falling off the bench. I think that you are a grate teacher."-Jake "Dara Kila, My name is Sam. I did a bad job. I Stonk. I lugh't a lot. I am Sory. Love Sam" "Sorry Kyla for my bad Behavyour. music is "ayeom"(illegible word). From Tommy" You get the idea, now I have a handfull of little treasures. So that was my day. Thanks for reading.

-Kyla.

Going the Way of the Passenger Pigeon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon