Recently, Rebecca Mezoff wrote a blog post for the British Tapestry Group about her experience of apprenticeship to becoming an artist. She expressed some of the push back she has experienced by not having an MFA. Molly Elkind followed up with a response on her MA degree.
There are a lot of ways to become an artist. You can learn on your own – study books, journals, take classes and workshops, you can find a mentor who will teach you, become an apprentice or you could go to university for a degree. The truest thing that I know is there is no one choice that will make you feel validated.
After many years of self-study, I began classes at a university to build a portfolio. I knew I wanted to pursue an MFA. I am a lifelong student. My MFA was my second master’s degree – clearly, I love the structure that school provides. There were other considerations as well in making my choice.
Could I have become an artist without grad school? Yes, but without the time constraints, I think it would have taken me a lot more time to find my voice as an artist and begin a cohesive body of work. School gave me a boundary. My work was important, and the expectation was that I would prioritize it. I had deadlines and thus I learned to put my work first and to carefully consider all the other demands on my time. I learned to say no to things that took me out of the studio. This is perhaps the most important thing I learned to do in school.
An MFA program gives two to three years of dedicated time to develop. Those years go fast! The time the program sets out should help put a boundary around time. For many artists, it will be one of the few times in their lives when they have a long span of time to do little else than to make work.
Art school is not just about learning to make something. Many people come into school with a history of making (insert your media area here). Skills will be fine-tuned, but the actual technique isn’t the focus. The focus is about the reasons why we make—the conceptual bases for the art, what we want to express and communicate.
I learned to find my voice in my work—why I make what I do, how to create a body of work and how to sustain a life as an artist. This is the skill I find so many non-academically trained artists longing for. The leap for me from making random pieces that seemed to have no relationship to each other felt so far beyond my grasp. I really needed a mentor to help me connect the dots.
In addition, students learn how to talk to people about their work one on one, larger groups and for audiences. Ideally students also learn to write about their work. Artist statements are key to helping convey ideas in writing to enter shows, residencies and grants.
Students learn how artists research. This is also a building block to professional studio practice. The introduction on critical theory and art gives a framework to understand the common themes and movements of art making. It was my first introduction to the formal study of art and art criticism. I read a lot in my three years of school and I continue to do so. The research that I did was particular to my voice as an artist and included writings on place and home, immigration, land and land uses, the language of landscape, nature writing and the history of textiles. For each artist this will be different.
The fact that artists spend a lot of time researching comes as a surprise to many people. They think we just make things one after another. Being an artist means always learning something new. We have to know a lot about a lot of subjects. Some of my biggest leaps forward in my studio come from a sentence in a book that flipped my understanding of a subject and propelled me forward.
School provided me with access to a variety of artists of all media, be they students, faculty and visiting artists. I was surrounded by equally dedicated people striving for something more. The importance of this cannot be understated. The environment should create a feedback loop. Everyone else is working hard, stretching themselves and pushing through. This inspires you to do likewise and then inspires others and on and on.
Formal and informal critiques are an important function of the time in school. Receiving feedback allows artists to know how we communicate through our work. It helps the times when you have questions about a work in progress or need some advice. This is the thing that most people say they miss after grad school. Setting up a crit group outside of school can be challenging for many artists.
An MFA is a terminal degree. There is no more schooling available no Ph.D. This is important if you ever want to teach at the college level. Depending on the program you will likely gain experience teaching. You may have opportunities to gain experiences in other areas such as working in a gallery.
So, what is the right path to become an artist? It depends. An MFA did not free me from doubting myself, from sometimes getting stuck, but it did teach me how to persevere.
Rebecca writes in the blog post about the bias against those not academically trained and against hobbyist weavers from professionals. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I can connect it to a larger bias of textiles not being seen as art but merely craft. A great book on this subject matter is String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art by Elissa Author
Art is intellectual, classically defined as painting, drawing and sculpture. And who historically has done these intellectual arts? Who has made the hierarchy? Who has traditionally made textiles? Historically it has been acknowledged that the art craft split occurred during the Renaissance. Raphael made the drawing, and the craftsman wove the tapestry from the drawing. Raphael was the intellectual artist, and the weavers executed the idea. This workshop model is still common in contemporary art.
Getting an MFA in textiles did not remove me from the fight over what is art and who has permission to make it. We are part of a structure that benefits from the inner fights we have over who is valid and who has standing. When I first joined my local weavers’ guild, I felt a bit alienated. I was looking at work with another woman and chatting with her. She said she is just a hobbyist and she didn’t have the knowledge that I had as a university-trained weaver. Here is someone who has been weaving for forty years. Her understanding of structures is vast, and she shares that knowledge with others freely. She hasn’t just put in the time, but she has put in the hours of study. No one had to step in and cut us off from each other. We do it to ourselves.
It is up to those of us making textiles to push back against this arbitrarily forced hierarchy. It doesn’t serve any of us. Apprentice, university trained, lifelong self-study student, professional or hobbyist, just make the work, stop apologizing. You are not “just” a textile artist. You are an artist. I will write you a permission slip if that will help. Email me. I’ll send it to you.
View of the MFA Exhibition, May 2018