Art School

I think that there is a very difficult balance in secondary education, between the skills needed to function in the real world and the skills to think independently purely for the sake of the "concept." Both are important. Both are hard.

Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated that a course (especially art) always wants us to have a "concept" for our projects. Sometimes I just want to make something for the sake of making it: because it looks nice, or it brings someone joy, or it wasa technical challenge. When art teachers want you to have political charges behind everything you do, it quickly becomes inaccessable to the rest of the world, the people who are, in fact, your ACTUAL audience once you get out of school.

That leaves me mediating a (sometimes) unpleasant conversation between the practice and "art." It is hard to believe that art teachers (in my experience) have such disdain for things that are pretty and nothing else.

That being said, I still like ART. And I still like theory. And I still, pretty much, like my art teachers. The trick is listening to them, hearing them (which can be an altogether different thing), and then transforming it in your own head. Once we can do that, we can all me millionaires! Seriously.