To go to art school.. Or not? My Art Education

I remember art school vs. not art school being a difficult choice that I felt like my entire future of my artistic career would hang on. I wish I’d been able to find some more perspectives on art school and ‘making it’ as an artist at that time in life, so I’m writing something.

My great-uncle is a figure painter and he told me at thirteen years old to get a business degree in order to sell my art. Well, I both resented that and remembered it, so five years later I landed in the middle of what I wanted and started studying entrepreneurship at an art school. I went for a year and a half and then dropped out. It’s been over two years since then and I am working on my first figure commission for someone. I’ve been living independently of my family. I’ve had shitty lonely experiences and jobs. I just got fired. I’ve learned how to keep my bills paid and keep things running. I’m still an artist. Here’s what I learned about art school:

What art school will give you:

• a degree
• a larger body of work
• an alumni network
• loan debt if you aren’t rich
• greater conformity of your work to industry-specific or teacher/school-specific expectations
• entitled and elitist viewpoints about art and the world (or the experience of being victim to those)

What art school won’t give you:

• validation or meaning to your work
• automatic connections that matter
• the secret sauce that will make you and your art hot shit when you enter a world without school
• social skills and curiosity to connect with people (no I don’t mean “”networking””)
• a place to be that inherently values you for anything but your money

Some things to think about:

• life runs at the pace you run it at. There is no milestone that means anything about your personhood if you do/don’t do it at a certain time, or do it at all.
• A lot of being an artist has to do with creative thinking, the willingness to do different things, and evaluate and question tradition. The expectation of going to college (especially right out of high school) as a signifier of your progress and value is an idea that deserves to be questioned. Therefore an exercise that could serve you as an artistic person is seeing the expansiveness and creativity of your own options. Art school is not the only thing, and if it was never something available to you, you don’t have to go through it to be an artist.
• The art college is an institution, it has its own interest at heart, not yours.
• You don't have to have the latest technology or tool or material to make something amazing. If you have a pencil and a piece of paper you can be a great artist. You can use things around you too, like cardboard, trash, anything, even if you feel like you have nothing. Art does not exist to limit but to empower you to create.

(in progress)