That Time I Got Reincarnated as an Art Student

It’s election night.  Every election for the last 20 years I spent overseas, where you have a nice sense of detachment, and the added benefit of living 13-ish hours in the future from the chaos.  By the time the polls close, usually I’m just beginning my Wednesday morning.  This year, the counting is hardly begun, but I’m supposed to go to bed and hope I wake up in a world where American democracy still functions.  Although I haven’t been what you might call an active participant in the democratic process before, I have been paying attention, so I’m pretty damn nervous tonight.  And since it has been a hellalong time since my last blog, I figured distracting myself by working on a post might not be a bad idea.  So here we are.

It's hard to believe three months have gone by since I moved to Minneapolis.  The reason it’s been a hellalong time since I blogged is because I simply haven't had time.  You see, I am now the protagonist of an isekai* anime.  I have transmigrated into a new person.  That's right.  This is that time I got reincarnated as an art student.

This is notably different from the first time I "went to college."  When I was an undergrad, I went to a public, state university, which just happened to have a school of art within in.  So technically I was an art student, but I was also an education major, and the vast majority of my learning wasn't focused on the visual arts.  These undergrad bitches here have no fucking idea!  When I was taking geology and logic courses, they’re just taking more art.  But that’s okay, because now as an MFA student, I also get to eat, sleep, and breathe art.  I’m just doing it following up a whole other career.

From Deep Time, Amanda Hamilton's show at Bethel University 

It seems like in my first incarnation on campus, financial aid used to consider grad students taking 9 hours to be full-time.  Well, I’ve got 14 this semester, as long as you don’t count the course I’m auditing, which seems kind of insane, but I’m having fun, so at least I can say I’m not suffering from insanity.  Yet.  

To be fair, though, most of those hours are my mentorship.  The foundation of MCAD’s program is developing your studio practice under the supervision of a mentor.  We each individually reviewed the list, contacted and interviewed artists who we believed could benefit our work, and chose the one we wanted to work with.  Mine is the amazing Amanda Hamilton.  Each week we meet and review what I’ve been working on and my goals for the semester.  Last week we shook things up and went to the Walker and spent some time with their permanent collection, which is currently curated on the theme of place…I wish I could take credit for knowing that and planning to go for that reason, since it’s a major theme for my work, but I just figured we could visit their artist book collection (which we did, and it was fantastic).

I spend a lot of time in my studio.  Before I started my MFA, I didn't really think I needed a studio.  Since I never ate at the dinner table, it became my de facto studio space, and back then, that was good enough.  But now I have these three walls to tape up my works-in-progress, as well as some of my favorite past work.  I have two big tables to spread out scraps of paper and a low shelf with short divisions to hold my paper.  I have windows to store my books, and to grow plants for (hopefully) making dye at a future date.  It feels comfortable, and I like the fact that when all I'm going to do in a day is work on my art, I still have a place to go.  I have a reason to get out of my apartment.**

Garlands, by Stephanie Hunder

When I'm not in my studio, I'm usually in the printshop.  Sweet fuck, it feels good to be a printmaker again!  My work over the last seven years used collage with gouache paint, so it may come as a shock, but I always used to identify as a printmaker.  When I was planning what I'd be doing over the course of my program, I planned to get reacquainted with printmaking, with the intention of moving on to other things in future semesters.  Now I just...kind of what to keep printing.  I mean, I've been doing mixed media with my prints, and I still want to make installations, I just...want to do those things through my prints.  I think a big part of that is the faculty here.  The professor I TA for is fantastic, the professor whose class I’m auditing inspires me a lot with what she does (her work is directly above this paragraph, from her show this fall), and there are even more faculty I haven’t had the chance to work with much yet (fingers crossed for the spring semester!)  Oh, and the shop is probably 3 times as big as what we had at UMKC (and the shop there was already the best facilities in the program).

Ponca, Ponca Camp, by Henry Payer, at the newly reopened Joslyn Art Museum

Almost all the reading I do comes back to either art or aesthetic theory.  Okay, not all the reading I do, because cheetahs don't change our spots, and since Princess began reading the Dresden Files last fall I've been itching to catch up with her.  BUT THE READING I DO FOR SCHOOL IS ART RELATED.  How to critique well.  How different artists are influenced by their context.  Major theoretical underpinnings of artistic practice...and going back to look at a collection I’m familiar with like the Joslyn, with new knowledge, is pretty eye-opening.  I even have a little time to do my own research.  The library itself just amazes me every time I walk in there.  Want a book of anatomical illustrations from different periods of history to inspire your body-related artwork?  They've got it.  Want to check out some artist's books?  They've got those, too.  They even have quirky librarians that are super excited to talk about whatever you are looking for, whether it's historical costumes or paper making.

AND OH!  That reminded me of the print library.  You see, once upon a time, MCAD was part of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Even though they are now separate institutions, they are attached at the hip, and MiA has a freaking fantastic print library that we are able to visit.  I've only been there once, for a class field trip, but it left a pretty big impression, and that's just one small part of the museum.  The rest of it is just as good.  Since I got here, I've seen an exhibition on collage, learned some new mokuhanga artists, watched Buddhist nuns paint a sand mandala - SOMETHING I NEVER SAW IN SPITE OF LIVING IN MONGOLIA TEN YEARS AND TRAVELING IN TIBET - and now they have an exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrec prints and paintings.  Also, I voted there a week and a half ago.  Because where better to vote than an art museum, especially when you can do it early???***

In my so-called spare time, I go to art events.  It's a bit like being back in Japan - there are too many events, and not enough time to go to them all.  Also, being a student takes up just as much time as being a teacher.  But I've been able to go to my mentor's artist talk in September, and last month painted while listening to Christopher Harrison talk about his work.  So far, my favorite was Nicola Lopez’ show at Highpoint Printmaking, because she combines printmaking with installation, and it’s given me so many ideas.

So yeah, as The Evil One observed, I am enjoying the hell out of this degree.  Far more than I did any previous one.  If anything, I know it’s going to be over before I’m ready to go back to real life.  But for that matter, who knows if I’ll even go back to real life?  Given that I was kind of burnt out on teaching (the whole premise of my transmigration) and that I feel like I need to be closer to my mom while I still have her, maybe I’ll stick around Minnesota for a while.  Or maybe democracy will fail tonight and I’ll be desperate to escape reality again.  I guess only time will tell.

*A genre where the main character transmigrates into a new, often fantasy, world

**Believe it or not, there was a time when I was the opposite of a homebody.

***Actually, the answer to that is "via mail," but I screwed up my Iowa absentee ballot request, and this is an election that anyone of conscience just can NOT miss.