Here is my grad school application process in chart form. They are listed in order of my interest in their programs. With the last letter coming in yesterday, my graduate application process is officially over. Here is how it panned out: In mid February, the first contact I received was from Tyler, telling me I was a finalist and asked how committed am I to coming there because they wanted to nominate me for a Fellowship.  End of February I hear back from Tyler, they have accepted me! I get a thin letter from SAIC, they haven’t accepted me, but want me in their “Close but no Cigar” Post-Bach certificate program, um… no.  Beginning of March: I receive a thick letter from Indiana Bloomington, They’ve accepted me! No word of aid. I do a telephone interview with the Dean at MICA, do well but I’m not encouraged that I’d get in. Mid March: I hear from Tyler again, I got the fellowship. That pretty much sealed the deal with them, I’m going to Tyler. Late March: I get a thick packet from MICA, I’m in…with Scholarship! Unfortunately the biggest scholarship they offer only covers half of the cost of the program. Its great, but when a comparable institution is offering a free ride, with a monthly check, its hard to pick an alternative. VCU send a thin letter, and in a condescending tone, says I just missed out in the final round, and that I could benefit from applying to their summer residency program (riiight). So ultimately, I got into two of my top choices with some form of scholarship, and one of my safety-net schools (Indiana). I didn’t make it into my top and bottom choices, but in all honesty all of the schools I applied to are well funded, reputable programs. Going to any of them would have been a good choice. Tyler ended up being my choice, with the combination of the city (Philadelphia), the Facilities (A sprawling kick-ass new building), the aid (who can beat getting paid to go to school?) and the people (they seemed very laid back, not pretentious at all). I am so glad its all over, the waiting, the forms, and more waiting. Now the stress that is apartment searching…

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!

Some of what is happening in my studio.

I am painting a lot of large work. Before grad school started, the largest work I was making at the time was about 2x5 feet. Anything larger was impractical to paint since I didn’t have that sort of space after graduating from Auburn. Now that I have space, walls (that I now wish were even taller) and storage, I feel I am only limited by my ambition to paint. So here are a few pics of stuff still in progress.

Some of the stuff closely adheres to the work I did before, while other things, like the Chrome skull painting, are more of an experimentation with imagery. Seeing how these different sorts of images play in context to the rest of my body of work. 

Here is a majority of the work I made over the past semester. I made about 11 or so paintings, many of which are among the biggest I have ever painted. One wall shows some recent minimalist influences.

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.