PAFA MFA 1 Finale

 

Last week was my final review in front of the faculty of my work for my first year in PAFA's MFA program. It was a real barn burner in some ways between teaching the After School Illustration Class, keeping up with the weekly demand of Judge Parker and trying to finish my final paintings and squeeze in my last few crits with my critics. This was probably my toughest semester mentally as a student as I often just felt a real strong sense of disagreement with certain esthetics and certain teachers. I think I grew a lot as a painter and became even stronger in my convictions as a result. Modernism and I are never going to really agree, we can have a beer and talk, but nope, we  can only agree to disagree. I was often buoyed and supported by my fellow students and that was great. I hope I did the same and think many of us found ourselves in choppy seas.

This final review was better than my first review, though I don't think anyone of my reviewers really loved my work, which is OK. They kinda' wanted to make it the male gaze, but having the male figure in it made it not just that. The fact is they want me to spell it out more, spell out the ideas, and I really don't want to nail it down. or not yet. I like letting people bring what they want to bring, for me that's much more enjoyable. I know what the ideas and influences are, I know what I'm putting in my soup. I imagine myself like a bird with that spot in your brain that says "north" is this way, so I head in that general direction but I might make detours. One of the worst things for me is to nail down what the ideas are exactly--- as then it becomes like an illustration, which is specific and has to be to be good. But i don't want my paintings to be illustrations. This is my big thing about artists statements as well. I know many artists like Dan Miller and Alex Kanevsky also feel that artist statements are kinda pointless--or certainly over done. If you can't tell what I'm doing, you don't get a real strong sense of something--react to it--well I'm not doing it very well. None of the issues the critics brought up were really ever brought up by anyone else seeing my paintings this semester. None of my female friends did and they actually were really supportive of my work including my model, which made me feel great!

I stand before the Jury....its always interesting to get feedback even if sometimes I completely disagree.

I know its the critics charge is to challenge us, but I think if you define something too much and break it down too much you remove the magic and the mystery and the open gate of an idea. I feel what's really important for me as a painter is to leave the gate open, idea, format, technique--everything--then slowly close or resolve ideas. I know the danger is for me as a painter is that other wise it can become too closed off or like what I do as an illustrator. And good god I know they loath illustration for the most part though Renee Foulks did encourgae me to use my skills as an illustrator more in cooking the ideas. Reading Andrew Wyeth's Bio this semester he says this very bluntly that he hated talking about or explaining his work and I agree.

In fact I think Scott Noel was more supportive in my private crit that in the public one, but I was surprised by Mark Blavat, who I think was the most negative in my last review, labeling my work "journalistic". Mark came up to me after my review and talked to me at length about how I could push and incorporate my figures and backgrounds more. Honestly I was surprised as I figured he simply didn't like my work, but in the end what matters is if we can take away something from these conversations to make our work better, not whether the critics will love it more or not. In the end its about us, not them, you have to be open of course, but you can only paint to please yourself in the end. You will never appease all of the critics.

 The Umbilical of Reason 30 x 40

 Dream of the Blue Dress 30 x 40 Oil

This started out as just the figure in the chair but then really ended up as sort of a self portrait as I used myself as the model for the figure in the background.

 The Conjuring 30 x 30 in Oil. This was mostly done from life and there was one more session after to basically tone down the background, finish the hand and add the orange. I got all kinds of great comments from my critics about these paintings as a group. Some like Noel wanted them to be complex, but almost every other critic said keep them simpler. Scott wanted more in the backgrounds, but almost everybody like Denise Green or Mike Gallagher said less. In the end you can end up with really good ideas that kind of cancel each other out and I have to go with my gut.

 This was the final assignment for Bruce Samuelson's class. Bruce only assigned one outside drawing which we had to bring in for our review along with a few of our better class drawings. It's a drawing of my table in my studio done during lunch time in HB pencil. For the most part I kept things pretty simple in the seminar, I either just drew in pencil or sometimes in colored pencils on a Canson pad. I just wanted to draw and keep it pretty plain, no pastels or inks etc. I think because I was under a time pressure it was so easy to just whip out the pencil and draw. Simply just draw what interested me. Since it was pretty low light, very low contrast I just kind of thought of it as a wandering landscape. Bruce sometimes regaled me with tails of the old days at PAFA when he was a student--sounds like it was a lot more fun in the old days!

 

This is my set of drawings I brought in for my final crit.

 Niloofar and Kathleen pin up their work and have a crit with Bruce who assigned us individual crits instead of the group critique.

Here is my final wall for my crit in Scott Noel's class. Scott didn't have much to say about the work, my fellow students did, they especially liked the one of the figure in front of the window, but he did spend time looking at them. I told him he's "the carrot and the stick", but in the end mostly the stick--and he laughed. I know we will never agree about the use of photography or many other things, but he is still the teacher I have learned the most from.

A shot of some of the work in the final review in Scott's class.

Scott's crit might have set a record for the longest crit I have ever had, it was close I think to 4 hours by the time we finished. Whew! It was good, but a bit exhausting!! That man can talk about art forever! lots of good ideas but after a time people just kinda start going blank after pushing so hard---the drive is full!

Then over the course of three days the MFA 1 class had our final reviews which most of us tried to attend to see what we have each been doing but to support each other and help out.

 Gus and his final review

 Win Xing sets her paintings up. The faculty really seemed to respond to her work well.

 One of Phong's paintings and my favorite of his.

One of Steve's paintings and a good showing of support from fellow students.


 They keep the cookies stacked and the refreshments fresh over the three days. Its tough on everyone, the students as well as the faculty, a lot of hard work has gone down and people are also kind of tired and a bit stressed but in the end we were all reviewed and rushed to the exits to begin the summer break and get ready for the ASE this Friday.  I know I can use the break and plan on painting my but off for me over the summer. Overall it was good year but I can be honest and say at times I was very unhappy with a certain class, and some aspects of the MFA program. There are too many students in the program and this stresses out the system. I wish there were more figurative painters as critics and I had a better studio. Honestly,  the school must really update things and come into the modern age, we should be able to do more things on-line, not have to stand in line. Our computer facilities need to be vastly overhauled--its a sad, sad computer lab and the internet some days is a joke. All of our teachers must be on-line and be able to deal with email, which too many can't. The incoming department head has a lot to tackle and I wish him well as he will have a big job and big shoes to fill replacing Dan Miller.

For now its time to get away from the place for a bit and recharge and get ready for the final sprint in my journey as a art school student.

PAFA MFA 1: Week 15 Crits and Guest Lecturing

The first semester in my MFA 1 year has almost wound down to the end and we are into the final crit weeks with the hustle and bustle and "go for throttle up" at the "House that Eakins Built." Not enough sleep, a lot of coffee and the usual rush-rush drill is on and everybody seems a mix of worry and anticipation for the holiday break. On top of that and having my research presentation to give in my Writing Seminar, my regular teaching gigs at PAFA and Uarts-- I was a guest lecturer in the Comics Writing class my good buddy Jamar Nicholas teaches over at Drexel University. 

I gave a talk to the class and then did a live demo of laying out pages from two of the students scripts in class so they could watch live the creative process of an artist taking their script and turning it into an actual comic page. I think this was a unqiue opportunity to watch and openly discuss the most important stage in the comic process--the turning of something like a script-which is still very open to interpretation and turning it into something concrete like a comic page. This also gave the students feed back on what an artists needs or wants from a writer, the things that must to be in the script and how often something in a script has to be re-interpreted to work as a comic because of the needs of the medium. It was a lot of fun and the stories were good and different, one being about a bunch of monsters as roomates and the other about a family dealing with a storm approaching, so one more comedic and one more realistic. I discused ideas about staging for humor vs staging for drama, how much dialougue is needed. Do you need to say everything you show and how you can condense information to save space. The couple of hours flew by quick! They had a video rig set up so I could draw and talk and the students could watch the drawings happen---like magic!

In my drawing seminar I missed the previous week due to getting the latest issue of Draw! out of the house and into layout and catching up on Judge Parker, but I got the info on what the homework assignment was. The assignment was to make an alphabet of marks and then use them to make a drawing. You can see my alphabet above and my drawing below. Now to be honest for me this was really easy. I have done this type of thing for a long time now as an artist, working with different pens, brushes etc., in comics, animation and fine art to give a different feel and variety in a drawing. So this wasn't an assignment that pushed me in any new direction. In a way this drawing gave me the feeling of doing the type of illustration you'd see in an old Reader's Digest magazine. Often the artists would work with all kinds of papers, pencils, inks to make a drawing that had a great variety and vitality of line and color. It was fun to do and maybe a bit redundant for me, but I always try and do a good piece of work no matter what--why rob myself of an opportunity to do a good drawing, challenge myself there if nothing else, and to have some fun. Again--that FUN word, something tossed out of ART school too often.

Its interesting to see what my fellow classmates do with the same assignment. In a way I question if we should have any assignments at all or just bring in our work, or all do the same drawing assignment that happens over a long period of time to discuss the difference in the process. In an undergrade class you have homework, like drawing a  self portrait, etc., and they are often to show the skills learned and hopefully honed week-bye-week. But in an MFA program how does this apply? I know some students want some skill based learning and others just want concept based or idea based classes.  You sooooo often hear" skill without some serious content is masturbation", that is even more an opinion in an MFA program, art schools in general-- the endless discussion between differing "schools of philosophy" on what a drawing is. What merrits content, my content says your content is shit. My content can kick your content's ass. The modernists vs the traditionalist. The Mark makers. Marks as a mechanism or process to transport the viewer into the work. I am not a mark maker in that way and for me a bunch of marks don't excite me at all, so a lot of what the modernists call drawings I just don't engage with.

 

Below you can see the work my fellw classmates did with the same assignment and Michael Moore talking about our work in the crit. The class always has good discussions no matter what and who knows where some of the ideas may take root in the coming months.

 

In my Writing Seminar it was our second week of presentations on our research subjects. The presentations were pretty varied and I know some were a bit nervous about giving them. Thinking back now I was unhappy with mine I think because I was pretty tired. I did my presentation of the Russian Social realists and Norman Rockwell- how they painted similar subjects and themes -- Captilaism vs Communism, the fact that artists are always in service of the client or the patron and what they will allow you to show or paint. Several of my classmates came up and gave me some props after my presentation which was nice and Dr. Richards gave me some good feedback and banged me on some historical point that I will fix in my final paper. I felt I was not up to my A game, but that's the way it goes, head down and press on.

During or break we went down the the cits or final reviews that were happening on the 8th floor. We went to watch Gary, one of the students in the writing seminar have his review. You can see Scott Noel, Astrid Bowlby, Jan Batzell, Bruce Samuelson  and Dan MIller reviewing Gary's pieces.

In the back of the room there was a hotbed of activity around the snack table. You need carbs and caffeine to survive a crit!

After Gary's review we went up to the 9th floor to watch Eric's review outside of his studio. Eric really had a whole set-up-environment going with his sculptures and light show. It was a pretty fun review and people did seeme to like his work  and I think he got some good feedback.

Abbey, who is one of the studentsin the High School Program poses with her awesome watercolor painting she did in the Illustration class. Her sister Carla took the same class last year and is now a first year student at PAFA. For me as a teacher this is what its all about, to see an student really work hard week-to-week and end up with a great piece as a result. If you search back on the blog you can see what Abbey did last year the the growth she's had as a artist in the year.

PAFA MFA1: Bye Week and week 14

 The Bye Week of the Thanksgiving Holiday and it's gravy induced happiness, the fog of the carb overload, has gone along with  the turkey carcass to make a soup for the soul in my second to last week in my first semester in the MFA program.

This has been a complicated semester for me at times, frustrating and I honestly welcome the end of days and a time to reset and work "off grid' for the winter break. I have mixed feelings about the first semester in the program. I am happy with the progress of my ideas and thinking, and feel I have opened up some great avenues to my work, fresh avenues that come directly from my work in the undergrad. I've fallen back in love with drawing and have been doing more of that than painting, but want to take these ways of working in my drawings back into--or combine them with painting. I am digging deeper into themes of the loss, the shift between two states, the collapse of memory, the collapse of mans dominion over nature, the collapse of the urban and the suburban. The home or the house as a symbol, and this all came out of my love for painting urban themes as well as painting in plein air. Just now I feel these things are all like fresh ingredients tossed into the soup. Will the soup be any good? Or will I have to dump it  and go back and start fresh. How can my technical process change or grow to reflect these ideas, does it need to, and if so how can the mediums chosen execute or hinder?  The biggest frustration for me has been time, I haven't had even 2 days in a row to work, so I hop from  student to teacher to cartoonist and professional. Sometimes all in one day--so the break will give me more time to just work on my studio work, and maybe even get back out to nature and plein air paint.

 I enjoyed my critic Martha Armstrong very much and feel I did get some good feedback from her, but I will not have her next semester so I am frustrated with that because I won't have a continuation of the discussions we started this term. They like to mix up your critics in the program which I suppose has a plus of getting a lot of thoughts on your work, but the downside is that a good conversation gets cut short. I will try and sign up for Martha again if she has any open slots in the spring. I also don't think that "more thoughts" are always better thoughts either. The wrong critic or someone who doesn't get your work, or like the type of work you are into will not always end in feedback you can find useful. I wish we had more painters as critics and more figurative painters as well.  A lot of the critics work in the program I just don't feel a great kinship or response too. I suppose it's my continuing issue with much of modernism, I just don't find a lot to love, and craft wise too much of its is non-retinal and that is an excuse for crap. There, I said it!

Luckily I will continue on with Michael Gallagher as a critic, and I've had Mike as a critic and  a friend  for a few years now and we have a great repor and the history of many great conversations. Since the core of the program at PAFA in both the undergrad and the MFA is based on having the critics and their feedback on your work, having at least one long term critic for me is essential. Having a critic who has watched you grow and change over a long time is also for me an essential thing, to be challenged is also a great thing, the back and forth in a long conversation is essential dialogue for solid artistic growth and the development of your work. New ideas, new stratagies are the "Mother's Milk" as old Prof. Gimley world say-- but to not get anything you can use is a waste of time and a lot of money and is surely spilt milk.

 In my Drawing Seminar we brought in our drawings we were working on in the studio or where ever we are working, and then Michael Moore had us do drawings of each others drawings. Mmm, ok. I did a bunch of sketches of others peoples drawing and they did some of mine, I suppose to walk a mile in another artists shoes. But I am not quite sure the why of it ended up as anything useful. I have worked in many other "styles' and worn many other shoes as a cartoonist, especially in animation. The ability to work that way is actually essential in animation. So I can draw something as a riff, like the first piece above on this post, but for me it feels like "busy work". Maybe for my fellow classmates they got more out of it than I did. It was interesting to see some of their takes on my drawing, but for me I think the exercise would have been more interesting to see everybody do something based on the same drawing--run through their personal process---or not. I mean in an MFA program does that type of exercise bring forth real movement or growth, would you have to do it longer term? I always try and be open and give it a go in school, even when I don't dig the whole assignment or idea. I can always reject anything in the end, jettison it with the zillions of other things I have or keep it in my pocket to use later. I think the hard thing is you become more selective in what you keep and its harder to find those things worth keeping as you advance.

 We lined up the drawings we did of each others work below along the floor. It was like a Christmas of drawing--or like a line or drawings done as an offering or as worship!

 Everybody draws and sketches each others work after Ashley showed us a few scenes from Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.

In my Writing and Research Seminar we are turning in our big research papers and starting to give our presentations to the class. Next Friday is my turn at bat, and my research project is on the Russian Social Realists and Norman Rockwell.

Last night was the big opening at the Rosenfeld Gallery for the Plein Air at Camphill benefit show. I hopped down to Old City to see the work of the other artists and friends and press the flesh a bit as they say. Lots of great work for a great place for special needs kids. You can see more on their website and the show is up till Sunday at Rosenfeld.

There are just two weeks left in the PAFA After School Program that offer college level classes to high school kids from all over the city for FREE! This is the programs biggest year yet with record numbers of kids coming in every day and taking part in classes in Life Drawing, Painting, Illustration and Still life. Once again I am teaching the Illustration class and have two fellow MFA students helping me. Above you can see Ashley helping one of the students draw a portrait using herself as a model. The painting above is one that is just about finished by one of the students who worked every week on the piece, working it up from a series of comps or thumbnails to the final illustration in watercolor. We have even had students come from this program into the undergrad at PAFA this year. It a charge to see artists who are young really grow in these classes and its a great opportunity for any students from any school to come in and have this rare and great chance to work in such a great art school like PAFA. Hats of to Al Gury and the donors for making this happen and giving a lot of kids maybe their only real experience to work in such an environment.

PAFA MFA1: Week-11-12

 Since the Hurricane a few weeks back it seems things have been a race to try and catch up as the semester clicks off to the last four weeks and our final crit week before the full faculty.  Unlike my last year in the undergrad program this first semester has never felt fully comfortable as far as my schedule. I never felt like things worked out as I hoped and I realized my last year a in the Certificate I had no classes as I had completed my requirements. This semester everything ends up being a split-day, or a whole day where I don't get to do any work at all. I never get two days of just painting or drawing other than working on the strip. But I know next semester that will change when my storyboard class at Uarts is dropped till next Fall. But my bitching aside I do feel that I have gotten a handle on some things I really want to explore more and so much of my frustration is probably due to that--I just want to draw and paint.

Exploring my own personal mythology as it were, the tenuous nature of things, entropy and the difficult to codify, the mythology of the house. I have also really fallen back in love with drawing and want to spen a lot of time exploring drawng again as well as painting. I think for the last several years as I became a better painter and that became my main focus I sort of left drawing just for my comic work. But having the Drawing Seminar and really getting into the drawings of Andrew Wyeth as well as Edwin Dickenson I feel really energized about drawing again. Its so simple, you, a pencil and a piece of paper. The drawing above is the latest big drawing I completed of on of the abandoned  houses out off of Route 1. I have many more drawings planned of these abandoned homes as I continue to explore the current theme I am working through.

 We have also had our mini-Open Studios in school. These are just a way for us to see what each other are doing and the big, school-wide and open to the public event will happen next semester. It was fun to walk about and see what some of my fellow MFA and 3rd and 4th year students were up to. There are artist doing just about everything I think except video as PAFA just isn't up to speed here with facilities to let you do that.

 Michael Moore's Drawing Seminar continues to click along. Some weeks the side talkingand the humor get really great and I enjoy the side talk and joking a alot. I think this is something that is often missing from the art experience. It can't all be wearing black, smoking cigs and drinking and moping. I know for myself humor is a huge part of my life. I think its connected to my joy and ability to be serious about not being serious. I am serious about art and life but you must be able to burst the bubble of self importance as an artist...I think at least for me it helps the being self critical aspect that is so important to growth.

 I also find the gestures and poses people get into endlessly fascinating. These moments are what I hope to capture in paintings or drawings as well.

 Here are some more pictures from the Open Studios. There are people doing all kinds of things, some silly, some serious, some.....

More pictures from the 9th floor and the gang studio.

Here is another drawing I did in pencils as I watched the election returns with my fingers crossed. Its in a B pencil on Strahmore and I just started with the coke bottle and let te drawing grow out without planning it. I am finding this process of just letting the drawing grow organically a turn-on at this moment. Below you can see my studio at the moment, I call it my "Submarine Studio". I have two sides, like in an old submarine movie, a drawing side and painting side and work back and forth. I do really miss my old studio on the 4th floor, and look forward to getting a better studio next year, but for now I'll have to make due and end up working at home a lot more.

My friend Kathrine checks out the work on my wall outside of my studio and a few fellow students check out what I have going on inside. Everyone comments on the amount of stuff I have in my studio--I know!

Over the Thanksgiving break I plan on working as much as I can, I still have a 20 minute presentation to finish for my Writing and Research Seminar with Kevin Richards so I need to get that cooking to!