Art school is something that is either taken way to seriously (CCA I'm looking at you) or is completely blown off as some fools folly. In my fourth year here at the Academy of Art I have realized its somewhere in between, Art students work their REARS off. I know people finishing other degrees and from what I can tell its about double the work time. Yes studying Law or Medicine is tedious, but those guys get to party. There's a lot less partying going on when you have a project our teacher expects you to spend 40 hours (yes, a full work week) on, times 4 classes. What? 160 hours worth of work a week? not every week per say, but ya, some weeks. Especially during finals. There's no test, its just present what you have worked so hard on and let the masses right it to shreds during critique. The first 2 years I was here we were loosing a student a semester to suicide. Sadly this "hippie" life style isn't for the weak of heart. Your art CAN'T Be personal. If its personal you will be destroyed. Art school is NOT for your life passion, that book you've been writing since the sixth grade, the comic with 17 installments, your "character". No, this is for breaking down everything you thought you knew, everything you hold dear, and replacing it with hopefully better knowledge. Unless you get a nut job professor, in which case you will spend the next semester getting disemboweled by your new teacher (ask me how I know this). So why do it? Arnt artists supposed to be dreamers and creators? We are, but to compete you need to have a a Liam Neeson set of skills, and some how try not to kill off that dreamer, the one who wrote 17 issues of your unpublishable comic because while its bad (your comic is bad.) there is creativity, a few good, usable ideas, and when your finished, jaded and broken you can pick over the carcass for little bits of meaty goodness. Anyways, welcome to my blog!
