Tyler School of Art sent me an email today.
It had all the names and emails of people in the Painting Drawing and Sculpture Graduate program. Google Powers Activate!
Shocking how few of them have websites.
So… Tyler School of Art Grad Orientation was today…
And it was pretty great. The faculty (at least in painting) seem to be very laid back and have a sense of humor. The building once again is gigantic. And the funniest part of the day had to be the woodshop training.
THE EPICALLY LONG WOODSHOP TUTORIAL.
People thought that the shop tech was kidding when he said the walk though would be at least 2 hours long. You can tell many of the other grads were like “really?”, but boy was he on them money! At first everyone seems fine and they don’t have much issue with how thorough he is being. His excruciating detailed walkthrough of every possible scenario on the Table Saw was ridiculous; ridiculous considering how so many didn’t have all that great of a view of what he was doing.
An hour rolls by and people start looking around and saying to themselves, “Wait… It’s been over an hour and we are STILL on the table saw.” We stood there, shifting our weight from one foot to the other, some give in and decide to sit on the dusty floor. We finally move on to other powertools, and it blows everyones mind how mind numbingly long this is all taking. By the time we get to the last tool, everyone is mentally counting down then number of ways he can demonstrate it.
We are finally free. Hang out a little for an hour, check out each others studio spaces, and meet with our specific concentration. Nearly everyone in my first year painting group already knew my name, they website stalked me. I guess that makes sense, you want to see what you are going to be up against working along side.
Then there was a bit of a mixer, with an insane amount of food. Most of the people are very down to earth and have their own funny awkward qualities. Thats sort of the thing with art students who choose to take their practice this far, they tend to be either completely normal, or warped in some funny way. One guy was from Korea, and it was go immediately to grad school from undergrad, or do his mandatory service to the Korean military. Luckily he was accepted. One printmaker didn’t even bother finding a place to live, he is essentially couch crashing until he figures out where he’d like to be. Talk about being casual about things!
In all, everything seems great, although the idea of a first semester review, that can determine if you stay in the program, is a little SCARY. I am hoping things will go smoothly, and this seems to be the start of a great experience.
Oh and this is my 300th post! Yay!
Tomorrow is Painting MFA Applicant Reviews for Tyler
Meaning that the Painting Grad Faculty and us painting grads get to look at this years crop of applicants for the painting MFA program. Also, eat and drink a lot of beer in the process.
I love this! Being able to literally see every applicants portfolio, and have a say as to who gets in, is a bit of an awesome power trip. I know I was a pretty early pick when I was accepted last year. I was notified in the first week of February, where some of my peers didnt know until nearly summer. (horning my own toot!)
It will be nice looking at so much work, and kind of imagining who would be good for our group.
I am tired of the race thing. Can I not deal with it? Oh yeah, I CANT.
I know this girl in my grad program who when she gets a little tispy, will try to start “deep” or “controversial” conversations about issues concerning my race, or sexual orientation. She will point out a comment I made on facebook about a girl wearing boat shoes and how I had something to say about boat shoes having a particular connotation where im from in the south. Instead of letting me say what the connotation is, she shushed me thinking I was going to get into an argument. She does this all the time instigating topics and then wanting to terminate it when people could potentially not see eye to eye.
I am able to conduct a conversation with tact. I am not a confrontational person, and she of all people should know that I among the grads am MOST capable of carrying on a conversation about a controversial subject in an intelligent manner.
What burns me up the most is that she often uses the fact that I am on a minority based fellowship as an argument to say I am spoiled or privileged over the white majority in the program, just because her former black boyfriend who also had the fellowship at one point was spoiled. She even thinks I am a special commodity, thats more desirable because of being a minority. First of all, I’m not her ex boyfriend, so just because we are both black has NO bearing on anything that we may have in common. Secondly without the fellowship I WOULD NOT BE IN GRAD SCHOOL AT ALL, where as the other white upper middle class students I am surrounded by are here in spite of having little aid. I wouldn’t be able to attend grad school at all if it weren’t for my fellowship which is part of the point of the award existing in the first place. Its there because when you get past undergrad, you are several times less likely to see people of color, especially African Americans, in graduate and terminal degree fields. And if it weren’t for this, I would be one less. Heck, even WITH the fellowship there are only 2 black people in a group of over 60 graduate students, and NONE in the over 50+ member art history graduate programs.
In essence, I am tired of people thinking they know my perspective due to some generalization about black people, or by some black guy they know. They don’t know shit about what MY situation is, and if they think getting a fellowship means I am privileged above them, they haven’t taken a hard look at their lives to know what real privilege is.
Real privilege is being able to paint whatever you want and not have it be politicized. Real privilege is doing something bad and having it only reflect on YOU, and not your entire race. Real privilege is being in an environment where your race never factors in as a negative. Real privilege is never being told you are doing something well in spite of who you are.
So in my most polite opinion, fuck her, and anyone who thinks I am spoiled or priveledged over white people. I am tired of people not being able to see things from anything other than their perspective. And what I have found is that the people who consider themselves open minded liberals are often just as bad at it as any other more predictable group.
No one is going to read this. It doesn’t matter, I don’t give a shit.
I realized I hadn’t posted in a while…
So this is what happened in the past couple of months.
- Got a boyfriend! His name is Paul and he is awesome. First guy to actually admit to being my boyfriend.
- Started year two of grad school. Working on a huge number of new paintings. I haven’t posted any images because they are all still in the middle of being worked on, and some of them are employing new techniques that are a little hit or miss in terms of execution. I’ll post new images soon.
- Got a new camera! Its a Sony NEX-C3 and I love it. DSLR sized sensor, interchangeable lenses, but with a camera body that is as thin as a normal point and shoot. Never been satisfied with the images my camera makes like I have been with this camera.
