How can I help new fine art graduates navigate and construct their own career map of a successful career?
UCLA Library (2021). “Positionality & Research: How our Identities Shape Inquiry.” [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTHFud7fr8c [Accessed 19 Oct. 2021].
meganleanne44 (2015). Positionality Statements. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpcIVzGYhVs [Accessed 19 Oct. 2021].
I am surprised that Patricia replied to my email again and recommended me three artists:
‘Dan Kelly is an artist who is also a hairdresser. He runs DKUK hair salon and art gallery in Peckham. ‘ https://dkuk.biz/
‘Katrine Bohm started a beverage company called Company Drinks — which is also an artwork.’Patricia said.
‘Tom Ellis is a painter. When he was starting out he used to support himself by making furniture. And then he started to show his furniture with his paintings. His furniture is now considered as sculpture and is an important part of his practice.’Patricia said.
Tom’s combination of painting and furniture activates a striking duality. ‘The fact that they are object types of such a different order allows me to move freely between ostensibly art and non-art activities,’ he says. ‘The furniture serves in part to “depressurise” the painting practice by creating a more culturally blurred setting for its display – a painting above a sofa is a very different proposition to a painting isolated on a pristine gallery wall.’ Tom says he feels that The Wallace Collection brings art closer to the ‘unruly multiplicity of real life, and here we have life in all of its wild and wonderful facets. (Nast, 2016)
How to explore other abilities?
From last tutorial, Jasminka gave me a good suggestion. My project now is related to two group, newly graduates group and mature artists group. And I need to match them.
So my plan is :
After unit 2, I realized that actually, I am trying to find a rope that is a career model for newly graduates and myself.
I have summarized some of the abilities that new graduates need to have from Intervention in Unit 2.
1. Business ability
Meaning: The ability to pick the direction of market trends
Artworks: The ability to produce commercial work, not just be obsessed with own personal style.
2. communication ability
Meaning: The ability to communicate with customers and audience.
Artworks: The ability to consider the audience when creating artworks, rather than just being a loneliness teller.
3. cooperative ability
Meaning: The ability to cooperate with enterprises and institutions.
Artworks: The ability to create works that fit the theme of exhibitions.
Looking back at my decisions in the project so far, I find that my way of thinking is one-dimensional instead of thinking from a more diversified perspective.
I began with the problematic employment of art graduates, and I analysed the reasons for it. Then I found that it’s a complicated problem that contains many different reasons, from policy, personality, education to society etc. But for a one year MA project, I cannot solve all of these problems, and I have to start at one point.
Then the process becomes to:
I find my way of thinking is very direct, point-to-point problem-solving. For example, I only consider art students changed careers because of employment difficulties, but I didn’t think that at least they found a job. Should we do what we love or love what we do? I only consider how to help the audience understand the works of art students, but do they care whether the audience can appreciate their works?
I think I lack the ability to think comprehensively and critically. At the same time, the background research is not enough. In the future, I will ask myself more ‘why’ when making decisions and thinking about problems.
In my first intervention, I try to create a brochure about how to create a business account by interviewing successful people. I successfully interviewed three people (my previous classmates who did very well), while other famous artists who didn’t know me didn’t reply to my email.
Then I realised that it was a failed intervention. Because I didn’t change anything and successful people won’t tell you their secret.
From this experience, I learned that what is real intervention. Interviewing could be background research or secondary research because it only knows something from others rather than your own experience.
Why it happened? firstly, I think I didn’t understand the meaning of intervention. But it was a good failure, at least I learned what intervention is. Secondly, I think I lack some life or work experiences. I even didn’t notice that successful people won’t share their secrets. I need to be more thoughtful and have more logical thinking. Next time, if I want to know some ‘secrets’ from others, think about why they would like to tell me, what I can offer them, and what profit they can acquire from me.
During unit 2, I did four interventions.
At first, I try to help art graduates sell their works better, and I think one of the reasons people won’t buy artworks is they lack resonance. So I mainly explore the best way of combining sound and painting to help the audience have more resonance when viewing artworks.
From 1) add the sound corresponding to the picture, to 2) invite the audience to create a sound for abstract painting by themselves, to 3) apply synesthesia to create melody, to 4) use sound to convey the same emotions of the painting.
In this process, I used intervention to verify and evaluate my research question. For example, after intervention 2, I noticed no direct relationship between purchase behaviors and resonance. So then I change my goal from generating purchase behavior to shorten the distance between public and artworks.
I want to say that intervention 4 is more successful than others in some way. Because it reaches out to real audiences and the sample size is the largest, and the data shows that it works.
But recently I have been thinking about another question. For artists/art students, do they really care about whether the audience can understand their work? If I find a way to help art graduates sell their artworks better, how can I ‘sell’ it to them? Will they accept it?
In addition, selling art is not the only way to help art graduates facing employment problems, nor should it be.
Now, go back to reflect and analyze the work that I did; I find that each intervention actually corresponds to an ability that art students need to possess in employment.
Then I realized that I am finding a ‘rope’ between newly art graduates and mature, well-rounded artists. This rope is a career model to guide newly art graduates on how to plan their future careers and what kind of ability they need to have.
So, I plan to find this ‘rope’ in unit 3 through more different ways and interventions. And my newest question is: How can I find the rope between newly art graduates and mature artists to guide art student plan their careers.