Professional Practices

This is the first assignment for Professional Practices, I didn't include the questions, but I sure hope it flows enough so that you can figure out what I'm talking about. And holy moly it's long! whoops.

I make all kinds of work; I like to learn techniques outside of my declared concentration. So sometimes my work can be a bit scattered in imagery. I paint, I embroider and sew, I do printmaking and papermaking and now I’m taking a metals class. My art could be described as personal, nostalgic, embellished, simplified or sometimes over-done, girly, harmonious in color, patterned, textured, varied. I think some of my art skills can lend themselves to other careers besides a fine artist, such as sewing; I am also a good baker and know how to decorate cakes with the fancy icing tips. As for real work experience, I’ve worked retail, which sucked, and I’ve been a camp counselor for four years and it’s awesome. I have tried to sell work and show it, though most of the selling goes on at the school bazaar and another bazaar back at home. Same goes for publicly showing work, it hasn’t really gotten seen outside of MCA too much, though I did have a show this summer at a local gallery and sold some work. I did go to the job fair event last semester and my work was over all very well received, Linda Ross and Robert from David Lusk both had positive things to say, so that’s a good sign I suppose. I don’t particularly care about showing in big galleries that are snobby and competitive, but I would like to show at local galleries, mainly I think I will take what I can get.

Professional friends? I’m not sure I’ve reached the point in my life where I have professional friends, I know my fellow student will hopefully be there someday and we can all benefit from each others connections, but it hasn’t happened yet. I do know a number of people back at home involved in the art community, whether teachers or admirers, who could probably help me make connections. I look at a lot of blogs, through which I find artist websites. Not many of the blogs are fine art related, though, I tend to look at more interdisciplinary blogs like Lost at E Minor, and multiple that are geared more towards interior decoration/cute craft and house stuff like Poppytalk and Design Sponge. I would love to be a contributor on one of these kinds of blogs, or have my own similar to them. I would also love to have a community of artists wherever I decide to settle that can discuss and critique and inspire each other. I know with the blogs I follow I could probably try right now to get myself out there and send them my work, or start getting my blog more interesting, but I haven’t yet. As for other things I’ve have already done, I applied a while back to the AICAD exchange program, but didn’t get it, I did however just get the travelling fellowship, and I am currently applying to the Penland Core program.

The internet makes it really easy to find good art, some of those who I’ve found and really love are Riikka Sormunen, Joe Kievitt, Maya Bloch, Mariska Kasz, and Louise Bourgeoius. Riikka Sormunen does illustration work, I think mainly freelance and commercial, but she doesn’t have much information listed about herself. Joe Kievitt does a lot of public commissions and shows at galleries in the North East. Maya Bloch is more of a fine artist showing in galleries and is associated with Thierry Goldberg in NYC. Mariska Karasz worked in the early 20^th century and started as a fashion designer and then shifted to what I would call fine art embroidery, she exhibited a lot, wrote a book and helped to revitalize the medium. Louise Bourgeoius of course is extremely well known, and showed at all the big galleries and is in many museum collections, I just really appreciate her diverse body of work. Because I found most of these artists on the internet, I’m not really sure how well known they are, or who their major viewers are. Karasz and Bourgeoius are both dead, so I can’t contact them, but I have already interviewed Joe Kievitt, and would definitely contact the others, probably through email.