Vanderlay's Amazing and Unofficial Statement

• • Ryan VanderLey Artist statement
    
    Songs from the charts are played, on repeat, until the seasons pass and it's time to change ringtones again. 'Open-mindedness' is abnormal and strange. “Stranger” is any other person who walks the same streets as 'us'...”Us” is how I talk about myself. Or “me” I mean. And the best place to find individuality is on the metro, when we're surrounded by 15 girls all wearing the same scarf or pair of fake Ray Ban glasses. It’s so interesting to learn that what we've learnt is completely wrong (for now); at least until 'learning' becomes a trend, and its endorsed by someone cool. Growing from our mistakes is very uncool though; like admitting we all have unique perspectives in life.
    Schizophrenia is seen as a synonym to open mindedness, where both words are “strangers”. Insecurities should control the decisions that we make because “control” keeps societies growing. I see my research the same way as being in an open kitsch relationship with my own surroundings. It’s funny how perverse that sounds when I consider all the cross-cultural contradictions around me. Perspectives are the most important things that I can offer my audience and I want to show them how relative concepts can be, and how important it is to treat learning as a ongoing conversation.
• 

  10 minutes ago

  Michael Roy

  • Boomstick. I like it. Sounds like it'd do you good to get out of the city for a bit.
• 

  6 minutes ago

  Michael Roy

  • Perspective is the only thing you can offer your audience, and i feel like art making is just souvenir making for ongoing learning the artist is breaking waters on. I'm glad you talk so much about consumerism and societies role, because while art constantly talks about it, artists seem to negate the fact that popular trends and aesthetics in high art are controlled by the same mechanisms
• 

  A few seconds ago

  Michael Roy

  •  art making is for the present, a mental calisthenic for the artist to keep learning, apprehending, and redistributing. I don't know what the audience gets from this, other than hopefully a motive to do it themselves. Communication in art seems far fetched, but I do hope for an impetus for awareness. And maybe that takes something jarring.

My granite from which to widdle a sentence

a one or two-page artist’s statement illuminating your artistic practice by discussion of such questions as sources of influence, character of the inquiry, and some suggestion of future directions you wish to explore.

Ok, so let’s talk.  And by that I’m going to talk excessively and in no order because otherwise none of this will get written.  My task before you today is to reply to the request of the quote above.  Well this is hard.  Upon leaving Undergrad I had written an artists statement that ended in relating myself to an alcoholic priest who has locked himself inside his confessional, determining to drink himself to death.  In short, I had become somewhat jaded with the hyper articulation that takes place within the academy, overwhelmed by the inaccessibility of what had at this point become my art and the art of my role models, and ready to declare myself a self aware contradiction.  After staring into the gridlocked argument between my belief of art as accessible instigatory objects for communication among peoples and my actions as an academic practical joker, I had decided to continue making opaque art that criticized it’s own opacity.  After graduation I continued to make work in this vein, but also matriculated through other more pragmatic visions.  Political Work.  Public Art.  Illustration.  In those I found less and less of an argument.  They made sense from idea to process and action, which is something my academic work rarely did outside of our little community.  My grandmother respects why Michael Phelps should swim from Chinese fish, but simply isn’t a fan of Bruce Nauman.  And yet this ran out of steam.  I found myself returning to the works of those art sweet hearts of the academy, and not famed illustrators to inspire me.  And that’s when I decided I had to change what had been a fundamental belief (and I believe and fundamental flaw) in me ever since I first picked up a brush in high school.  Art is not for communication.  Art is for the present.  Artmaking, is soley for me.  Now it’s as dirty as turpentine coming out, even reading it myself, but hear me out.  I believe art making is infinitely more edifying for the progenitor than the reader.  The beloved side effect of course are these objects that have the residue of work left about them, be it a protestant and thick work residue like de kooning, or a clean, intellectualized and notarized work residue like Koons.  Art can inspire communication, but only if the artist is gratuitously engulfing him or herself in the conscription of creation.   Manzoni was pure flame, and his work was pure residue, nothing else. Art is a mental exercise for the present.  There is no great culmination in the future, no grand goal or finish line for me to cross.  I make art because it makes me present of my presence.  I prefer academic work because I’ve found through trial and error that it makes me feel the most awake, and art is best done when most awake.

Let’s Square up and get serious.

SOURCES OF INFLUENCE

I am utterly and inconceivably influenced by my medium, which more often than not, is factory mixed oil paint on stretched and gessoed canvas.  The more pertinent discussion might be why I choose this medium in the first place.  I do so for it’s inherently platonic capabilities.  Painting is an anachronism.  To do so now is only to relive theories, figures, and images from it’s illustrious past.  I don’t want to trivialize it: painting is a dead art form.  There are arguments within academy, but it’s only because academics have a deranged idea of how often paintings are actually seen by people outside of the academy.  To speak through the mouth of a dead man is as platonic as it gets, and as stated earlier, I’ve made amends with this notion that my art objects will not lead to practicality.  To use paint places my feet into an ocean of metaphysical, self-referential object critique.  I am influenced by my existence.  My existence is framed by what I am; a mortal American human being of the 21^st century.  My paintings exist and work as avatars of my existential adventure, framed by not only my existence, but by it’s own.  This includes paintings historical luggage.  I choose paint because of its nefariously well-documented duel enrollments in existence.

Note: talk about cross cultural stuff.  Gwd.

CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY

My work is a constant proclamation of myself onto the subject matter.  I stare into the void.  It stares back.  I stare at the painting.  A retarded paint baby screams at me.  My work is about the perpetual lens of interpretation due to having a self.  I flaccidly attempt to remove the self in sardonic overreaching imagery.  I create images that work as conscious versions of Hegel’s mansions; a house for god that itself is an atheist.  In my work I slip a stitch like a Navajo, or give a sentence too much like an insidious narrator from a poem by Robert Browning.  The character of my works inquiry draws upon my sources of influence; my existence and that of paintings.  Both are imperfect representations of their wholes, alike with art’s transcendental goal of communication.

THE FUTURE

YOU.

"YOU NEED TO GO BACK TO GRAD SCHOOL" – Said to Drew Barrymore by Crazy mom #2 in Donnie Darko

I got hugely carried away with this for which I apoligize. So much that I exausted myself and it's very much still a draft. but this is a blog only 2 people max will look at, so i'll publish it. 

TOP TEN GRAD SCHOOLS TAYLOR WOULD LIKE TO GO LEARN HOW TO MAKE BETTER PICTURES/WORDS AT 

The paragraphs before the list are not super important, and my feelings won't be hurt if you skim it. You might think i'm less neurotic if you skip it, which will probably end up working in my favor. Do whatever you gotta do though, because it's out there beyond a point where i can stop you once I hit "publish". 

The motivation behind the effort that went into all of this is the fact that I couldn't remember Robert Rauchenburg's name last night, which is a sign i'm getting dumber, all alone in this vaccum i've only been in for 3 years now. 

ALREADY GONE TOO FAR DOWN THIS ROAD. CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP. READ MY LIST PLZ Y'ALL. 

On a more serious note, this list is somewhat legit, I like to think. I've spent a good deal of time in wish-fulfillment-fantasy mode researching these things and finally feel like I not only have the opportuinity to serious pursue grad school, but may lose the luxury of living indoors/eating food if I don't do it now. Which I would greatly prefer to waiting around for an arts administration job to pop up, in a city that need at least 200 or so more of people willing to live a live of being underpaid and working too hard, and other things that are generally a huge bummer when they become the linch pin of your entire livliehood. 

I am aware I will not get instantly rich if/when i receive my next piece of paper 

the entire system our world is governed by wants to tell me is useless. This does not even bum me out, because I'm not even going for professional reasons when it all boils down to what is just me. DFW has a lot to say about this lens of self and being completely, totally, awfully, and offputtingly self centered. And leverages this sentiment into an even greater one that condenses the human condition into the more beatiful way i've heard it be articulated by anyone, ever.

It's really simple. We humans are hardwired to be self centered by what goes down to the neurological structure that is the physical makeup of what we experience and understand to be "consciousness" Therefore being a member of the human species can never be completely severed from being inately self centered. 

Though we might have more fun if we gave into this, did something with our lives that translates more directly into a successful and productive life as defined in Globally Capitalist terms, for those uf us plagued by the urge to think about...things...as a general or inate part of how we develop and experience reality in not just abstract, inaccessible discussions of shit like capital R reality and capital M Mondernism and whatever we've come to agree upon that describes whatever the hell is going on at the moment

I came here to write a list, and feel somewhat redy to actually follow through with that now, so here we go. Because as much as I would like to put a degree from freeartschool.blogspot.com on my resume one day, we will need real degrees before the US News and World Report will say we are worth paying for. I negated my own point there on purpose because that is the only way I think I'll be able to get myself to stop typing this part and get on to the list.  

credentials: literate, has the internet, knows how to abuse free time, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in Everything Studies from webmd.com.

1.UC San Diego

This is the only program I'm going to do this sort of in-depth shit about. So stop being a bitch and just bear with me for a minute, dear reader. Kidding, you know I love you. 

This one is at the top by a long shot for me at the moment. Mainly because it places emphasis on research more-so than traditional components of "studio practice", which would actually make me feel like I had a disciplined studio practice for the first time since setting foot into an art academy. 

This means you don't have someone who comes and checks how many paintings you've made every day if you're a person who only produces something "finished" looking once every few months. I'm talking about myself mainly, but I feel like Roy does this to a lesser, but still there extent. Derrick would like it here too I think, but could and will easily thrive anywhere. Me, not so much. Opie has proven more than I through his dedication to never coming back from Korea, so this probably just me we're talking to here. But I'm gonna try real hard to make you guys feel as strongly as I do about it. Cause I think we could totally tear ass in San Diego as a trio. And I really don't want to move 3000 miles away from everyone I know about the word right now. It would be fun, guys,  just trust me. 

My main reason for being so into UCSD is the fact they give zero fucks about the tradional things that usually "structure" how professional practice as a visual artist is supposed to want. You can figuratively, almost literally do whatever the shit you want here, as long as it's approved by your super intimidating committee of highly accomplished academic bros and ladies. 

Another takeway point for me that I won't go into as much detail just yet, or at least here, mainly for the sake of keeping this thing shorter than my SOP ended up being is this: I would feel like like a huge fake person critiquing all-things-bourgeois in the land of all things inaccessible to most people that happens within the walls of a high-priced academic institution.  

• They are currently the only place that offers a PhD geared towards visual arts practice that seems legit, by any means whatsoever. They are actually the only school I know of with one, but I'm no expert yet. 
• The advantage here is we could spend more than two years figuring out what we are doing with this shit we're are undoubtably going to spend even more of a fuckton of someone's money on. Granted we are spending more money we don't have, but here/what I'm getting at is there is a guarantee other schools can't quite match. Because when you are a Dr. of Visual Shit (i'm pretty sure you get some sort of say about how what you become a doctor of is worded, which is appealing, so I call Dr. of Visual Shit first. Let it be known) 
• They put something I've never been able to quite say eloquently into beautiful words on their website, by said UCSD doesn't enfore the "arbitrary time frames" a traditional arts education would. Which summarizes every problem with visual arts education i've spent every year since 2005 banging my head against a wall...into what they have boiled down to a very concise 3 words. Basically, your due dates, the amount of time you spend on your projects, and the final form your thesis eventually take have no predefined parameters, except for that your advisors have to not think it's total bullshit I suppose. I thought programs that don't use traditional grading scales we're dreamy. But the Pass or Fail system seems like child's play in comparison to this place.
• If you're into making art with supercomputers, they have pretty much the only lab full of them of it's size that's devoted mostly to art-making. Wait because it gets hotter because of the next bulleted point. 
• Collbaoration isn't really encouraged, but seems more like a requirement. Not that I would expect them to place parameters on what collaboration actually means/how it is supposed to occur, because they are blatantly not into that kind of thing. It's not just with other artists, too! Scientists and Mathemeticians and all of these great individuals society usually keeps away from us actually seek out visual artists and work with them to realize whatever they are researching, which would make what we are doing seem so muc more important, I'm convinced. 
• I say this because they describe what is essentially the backbone of their ideology is that "all artistic projects are viewed as being serious intellectual endeavors"

Canfield sold San Diego to me as a city worth ending up in, if we want to get comfortable and whatnot, by pointing out a remarkably simple thing I'd never really thought about. And that is that more shit goes down in "border towns" than anywhere else. and San Diego is a short drive away from 

So I'll wrap up rambling about this place by saying we could live in a place even more socially charged than Memphis (or at least it's socially charged by something a little bit different) but instead of getting overwhelmed and going into some lame, dark ass abyss of depression, we could just go to the becah. Because it's right there. Derrick can keep riding his bike and showing us up at being physically fit and generally more disciplined and well adjusted, while Opie and I take up surfing and catch up to him in the department of non-abject-laziness.

Go look at the faculty too. They seem super legit. I'll sell them by saying Norman Bryson and Lev Manovich are there, who are basically pioneers in some generation-defining theoretical shit. Or at least Manovich wrote the bible of what we call "New Media," but there are a lot of dope people who write about new ways to make painting and drawing relevant that 

More Practical "Pros" on my all-pros-no-cons list i've spent way too much time on by this point:

• They are less selective than places like Yale and Columbia, specifically in the area of past academic performance. I'm convinced it will take a lot of solid convincing to do that, but i've put this much time into convincing you guys of it by this point that I'm less intimidated by doing this than I was an hour or so ago. 
• As long as you can justify a mediocre GPA with seamlessly beautiful logic articulated in 3 pages or less,  a good-lookin'/though-tprovoking portfolio/ and a resume with something like 3 years of teaching in Korea, or something more watered down like curating an art show for a big shot hospital, your application won't be used as lining for a cage a small animal is kept in, like it probably would be at Yale. 
• They seem a lot nicer and smarter than pretty much anyone else. And nice weather would mean higher seratonin levels and generally lower levels of self loathing, which has become my hardwired understand of the months between October and Feburary as. 
• Convincing them you are capable of being taught to someday move object using only your brain isn't the only way to get in, according to some people I talked to on thegradcafe.com. You can also just be a supremely legit artist in a more traditional way, like Derrick for example. Who can already bend spoons with his mind so he is still way more ahead in this game.

If you don't feel like reading all of the above, here's the quick version:

visarts.ucsd.edu | super selective (no numbers to give quantitative proof for that yet, but i'm waiting on an email response from some admissions person. Let's assume 1 billion apply and about 100 people get in, just to keep things motivationally dramatic and generally unrealistic (that's the tone of everything above, for context) | highly interdisciplinary, encourages collaboration (not just w/ artists), emphasizes research as more important component of art practice than...most places.

Basically if you guys don't humor me by sending them an application this friendship is totally over. I like to think I don't ask very much, but this is pretty much a the sternest demand I've ever given anyone. Let's go dudes.   

2. Bard College

Sexy in similar ways to UCSD that are...well, totally different. 

All good stuff:

1. It's a summer program – meaning you are only on campus June–August, and spend the rest of the year doing independent studies. 
2. 90 miles north, or a short train ride from NYC. Most of the faculty live in NYC and commute. 
3. The faculty constantly rotates annually, and always consists of new and already established art badasses. (arists, curators, historians, poets, critics, fish, birds, whoever is most relevant at thie time basically)
4. I've heard people describe it as being a lighter/way more fun version of Yale.

Stuff that seems good/maybe bad simultaneously:

1. Bard has a somewhat scandalous reputation for the place to go if you are okay with being piegonholed as an elitist of all things Left of conservative. This seems to be because they know how to party while maintaing academic badassness.  Like a smaller version of NYU, only in the woods by itself and because of this more dangerous. I came across some blog of little didactic, parable-ish stories about how conservative people take long detours around Annesdale-onHudson out of sheer fear they might be infected with the Liberal cooties plague. Basically I think it might be the only option if we ever want anyone to think we are tough guys in any way/shape/form. 
2. This leads me to think a degree from here is likely to increase your chances of getting laid, which I am not above pursuing for perhaps this reason alone. 
3. It seems to either attract or turn everyone into hyper-hipsters, who probably end up being made icons people in Williamsburg have posters of in expensive apartments. There ar pleanty of ways to take advantage of this, but I should keep this list somewhat on track. Expect another post on this topic in the not-so-distant future. 

3. NYU ITP program

UCSD lite, basically, mainly through it's emphasis on finding new/creative/innovative ways to use developing technologies. They are not art-specific, which is attractive in it's ways. Basically they centrazile around finding new/innovative/more creative applications of more "cutting edge" technology, open to anyone who has something contributing to that. Sounds fun to me, but takes a pretty strong devotion to a very specific interest. You should check it out, but I won't be mad if you're not as into it as I am.

itp.nyu.edu

4. University of Washington Seattle

A solid, more traditon MFA Canfield reccomended because of it's strong liberal arts faculty. Which is enough for me, as much shit as I've talked prior to this. Seattle seems cool, too.

5. NYU MFA

Cause, yeah...It;s NYU & shit. 

art.nyu.edu is my guess for url. google will correct me if im wrong. 

6. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Because Minneapolis is supposedly the shit, and the University supposedly has a way stronger faculty than the more expensive private-school most people study art at there. Another Canfield recommendation.

7. University of Chicago

This is the one Canfield says we all have a guaranteed in at, through his BFF that happens to edit the most influential journal of critical writing ever, according to JSTOR. WJT Mitchell. He's a badass writer/academic, but much less charismatic than the guy who will be recommending us.

Plus it's in Chicago. There's also that.  

uchicago.edu

8. Cranbrook Academy of Art 

Everything I like about this school is also a little bit of a turn off. But it's supposedly the best of the best as far as private schools go,  in terms of the whole school and not program-specific stuff (ie: SVA for Illustration),  I've concluded it's best for people who are okay with paying out the proverbial ass for and elitistly fancy MFA, but don't like RISD or SAIC (me).

Pros:

• Less selective but seemingly as awesome as everything above, if you're willing to pay for it. There are scholarships, but they're MCA stingy with them. 
• Charles and Ray Eames designed the Eames chair in their first year there. Probably the coolest detail of any I could list.
• Outside of Detroit (socially charged blah blah), but happens to be in one of the top 5 wealtiest suburbs in the country. Basically the mecca for self-loating bourgeois people who are becoming even more bourgeois at the same time. despite how iffy this sounds, the work that comes out of here looks better than any other school i've looked at, so they're doing something right there. 
• 
  

 

I. On Introductions

As many hours as I’ve spent in front of my computer, typing furously with tunnel-vision focused towards figuring out just why it is I feel compelled to make pictures. After all this, I’m not sure I’m capable of giving an honest, conscise answer for this – other than the fact that I feel compelled to.

What I can tell you is this: When I was 17-some-odd years old, father and I went to San Diego where I saw a retrospe exhibition of Vik Muniz’s work. What happened that day in the galleries of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is rather ordinary-sounding, but if you could see it would laugh. I dragged my poor father – a man who you might describe as state of Arkansas incarnate – fron room to room spouting excited explanations of why each photograph was so astounding to me, to which he politely feigned interest. That day, an interest linked to each aspect of my current visual arts practice was forged.

I only hope that the long-winded explanation of specifics, in relation to why I feel UCSD is the ideal environment to develop these practices will articulate a sense of belonging I envision without boring you to death. Here goes.

I. The Past, the Present, and Idealized Personal Vision of the Future

For a while there, my dad and I drove to visit his brother in Bakersfield, and always stopped in San Diego for a few days on the way home. I remember passing the UC San Diego campus and fantasizing over what it would be like to walk the campus as a student. Truth be told, I all but forgot about these daydreams when the time for college came around. My MFA program research has gone on casually for three or four years now, always a source of wish-fulfillment fantasy at times when I feel stuck.a I was aware of UCSD but in no specific terms; It was always programs on the east coast, usually NYC that captured my interest. A recent catch-up meeting with a past professor – who I dare is  the only professor from my undergraduate experience I have profound respect for – recommended I read Norman Bryson, a favorite of his. On my way home I picked up “Looking at the Overlooked” and promptly began reading it when I got home. Hours went by in what seemed to be minutes, and three days later upon finishing the text, I can say my mind was blown in a way it hadn’t quite been blown before.

Reading it came uncannily close to home. A series I made in Spring of 2011 called

“Aura of An Era” was motivated by an exploration of the exact concerns articulated in a way so much more profound, I was compelled to research whether or not other outstanding alignments existed among discourses authored by UCSD faculty. Lo and behold, another connection was certainly on the list, which I will go into before I’m done here.

Despite my tone, I will have you know I am vehamently against the idea of “gushing” over anything. Usually, I’m quite attached to “keeping my cool,” so to speak. While sitting there, in front of my computer as usual and delved into research, a practice I’m quite fond of but hadn’t been motivated to pursue for a few months, at this point in time. Fortunately for the UCSD admissions commitee, and unfortunately for myself, I will be unable to

II. My Past, Present, and Idealized Vision of “Future”

My academic background concentrates in Photography, or at least that is what my transcript will tell you. My transcript will also tell you a little bit about how utterly boring the academic environment of my Undergraduate experience was, aside from three courses and one Independent study with a certain professor whose last name starts with a C. I understand now that there is no excuse for mediocre academic performance at the college level (Something I understood at the time, but felt too preoccupied with extracurricular activities to bother too much with). After graduating I worked in a University museum for just over two years, rubbing shoulders and exchanging ideas with people who’s lives were devoted to scholarly dissemination. It was this, and not so much wallowing through the mundane trenches of day-to-day entry level arts administration that kept me going. I loved the glimpses I was getting of academic life and wanted deeply to be a part of it.

The closest I got was a chance to work on a few grants. This was enough, however. It gave me a taste for the challenge involved with really digging for solutions and solve problems facing the creative community via analytic practices. This implanted in my mind that perhaps Art History, and not Visual Art is where I really belonged. My experience with art education simply did not provide the intellectual stimulation I have come to learn I thrive due to. Part of my benefits package here was a tuition waiver, so I applied to the Arts History program and enrolled classes. About a week before these started, my supervisor decided to pull the plug, believing I should devote my energy to training our new employee before diving in to what she knew would consume a great deal of my energy and attention. At this moment, I knew something wasn’t right. My environment didn’t want for me what I wanted, and it was time to go look for somewhere that did.

Over the next few weeks I poured over what my next step would be. I knew it involved graduate school but I didn’t know the answer to “for what?” and “where?”. Close analysis of my practice led me to the conclusion that I wanted to continue studying visual art in a place with versatile structure, strong academic resources, and emphasized research as an integral component of artistic practice. Many colleges and universities dance around this in descriptions of themselves, but none address with the same directness as UCSD.

III. More Specific Connections:

Advancing my Practice Through Technologically-Advanced Practice

I found more precise articulations of things problematized my former experience studying visual art than I have ever been able to come up with on my own. I also found something I hadn’t quite bargained for; An MFA program with a strong emphasis to the integration of advanced technologies into visual arts practice, that didn’t compartmentalize this methodology away from more traditional arts practices, like many programs I’ve come across seem to.

Just a few weeks before, a friend of mine, and the only artist in Memphis I’m aware I believe qualifies as a practitioner of New Media approached me asking for recommendations of essential texts that dealt with the discourse of advanced technologically-based media. Without hesitation I suggested Manovich’s “Language of New Media” as a quintessential starting point. Though my practice does not yet involved with technology at this level, I explained how it was still able to have a profound effect on me a few years earlier.

. Every so often he IMs me, and happened to the day after researching UCSD with a quote from the book. After discussing it for a while, I told him Manovich was not only on the faculty of my new favorite MFA program, but the school also housed a lab considered to be a supercomputing center for the visual arts for the West Coast. We proceeded to “geek out,” for lack of a better term, for a good two hours over this (“we” meaning mostly him going on about what supercomputers and what he could do with regular acess to one.), I believe the ideas I jotted down during that conversation comprise the direction I see my work going in, if I were to be given the opportunity to attend. Many seem to imitate, but no other programs offer this sort of astoundingly advanced resource that I am aware of. Ones that do center around the integration of highly-advanced technology into art making seem to isolate the profound value of these sorts of applications from a wider community of arts discourse, which frankly has cause me to become disillusioned with the entire appeal.

I’m looking to get my feet wet in whatever strikes me enough to develop a strong interest warranting presence in my work. What I perhaps like most about UCSD is that it does not use the term “interdisciplinary” lightly. Only a few places use it in a way that does not sounds out of place; Most give off the air of not just a “buzz-word,” but something more specific, like a deliberately chosen and placed key word to bump them towards the top of prospective student’s Google searches. Whether or not this is genuine might be irrelevant. The fact in this matter is the ways in which things I do become interwoven to form what i call my “visual practice” either wouldn’t be encouragedto a degree that would genuinely comprimise my work, or that they simply lack the highly unique resources available at UCSD.

IV. Cross-Disciplinary Leverage for Collaboration


A third empasis of UCSD is what has essentially ruined all other programs for me in comparison. Not only does typical program structure dissolve at UCSD, along with the parameters imposed on the form student work should take, but also the notion of singular authorship provided by encouraged collaboration. Working collaboratively with creative people is in short dear to my heart. I have organized several exhibitions centered around the idea of collaborative art practice in my work as an independent curator, and currently am working on the largest-scale implementation of this devotion.

I won’t go into detail here, but Art of Science is it’s name; It brings together 33 local artists together in working partnerships with research scientists working for St. Jude Childen’s Research Hospital. It is the second year of the project and the results have been tremendous. Though I am involved only at a curatorial and administrative level, I believe it is one of my greatest creative sucess stories to date. Curatorial work is something I previously thought I would have to abandon to pursue an MFA, or at least deprioritize during my studies. I view curatorial practice, writing, and interpretive work as being deeply integrated component of my visual arts practice, and was thrilled to learn. I was thrilled to learn this sort of integrated practice could thrive genuinely at UCSD through intensive research, and courses that suggest an environment where the idea of artists working as curators are not looked down upon for a lack of scholarly disciple that comprimises the ability to remain objective. Art and intellect seem synonomus here, in a way other places imply through their elevation of “visual intelligence” and “studio practice” to being all an artist should do fall terribly short of.

I will close this part of my statement by touching upon deep interests in relation to courses from your listing. Courses such as “Imaging Selves and Others”, and “Performing for the Camera” encapsilate a lot of what my work is currently concerned with. I believe “Strategies of Self” and “Strategies of Alterity” describe a solution for intellectual hangups with the issue that have developed in the intellectual vaccum of an un-schooled environment. “Re-Thinking Art History” is a concept I’ve explored through my Self as Self By series, which included images I reinvented to include myself, and my understanding of them through an accompanying lecture, and would love a chance to revisit. “Human Interface” examines a theme I’ve become recently engaged with and feel I have much I could contribute to a dialogue concerning. “Communities and Subcultures” and “Public Spheres” offer the intellectual direction to permeate the membrane of gallery walls, something I would like to do through both my arts practice and work with exhibitions and public programming. “Theorizing the Americas” and “Problems in Ethnoaesthetics” hit on key areas of intellectual interest, and the faculty I assume lead these discussions happen to be prolific contributiors to the theorization of visual art in relation to these highly-politicized subjects. San Diego’s proxmity to geographic and metaphric “borders” and the general communities that reside close to them, along with everything aforementioned in this paper will undoubtably culminate into what makes UCSD the abosolute ideal for the environment I visalize myself and my work thriving within.

IV. On “Special Circumstances”

Since you mention “special circumstances” in the description of your admissions procedures, I feel as though I must swallow my pride and address a few things I believe qualify as such. As you will see, the grades I took away from my undergraduate career are not stellar. You seem as though you are a place worthy of only individuals who’s academic achievement is stellar, and this is completely warrented. The excuses, as much as I loate giving them, involve my personal life, my medical history to a certain degree, and an academic environment that much more  sucessful efforts outside of it’s walls than it was able to engage me with inside of them. The photography program I spent the majority of my course hour within cycled through three department heads throughout my four years there, all who taught for two years and went on to become department Chairs at small universities. I was never able to engage with any one of them long enough to feel influenced by them beyond a superficial level, knowing they viewed what they were doing as a stop along the way. Art History tried to pick up the slack of intellectual under-stimulation, but only one professor managed to motivate non-mediocre performance from me. As mentioned previously, one professor who taught under the umbrella of Humanities is all that saved my experience from being completely un-worthwhile. He is also viewed unanimously as the most challenging professor to ever pass through MCA, and who recoomended this program to me.

On other notes, I have gained control over certain aspects of my personality that lacked discipline I lacked at the time. The main thing responsible for lower grades came down to being the fact that I was late to class a lot. I can’t tell you how many end-of-semester discussions I’ve sat down for discussions and been told I deserved a much higher grade, but hands were tied by institutional guidelines. Since then I’ve worked 2 years of full-time hours, and sought medical attention for what turned out to be a somewhat sleep disorder that have regulated this problem almost completely.

Admittedly there were other contributing factors. I allowed extracurricular efforts such as starting an arts collective and working for arts organizations, and a general devotion to self-education outside coursework I should have prioritized too much of my attention. Though this resulted in a level of professional sucess since graduating atypical in comparison to others in a struggling creative creative community, it is certainly a hurdle for pursuit of graduate study, something I want to oursue above all else.

I did however manage to be consistenly self-motivated towards realizing a level of ambition, which has become a personal means to overcome mitigating circumstances throughout my life. I have managed to suceed despite factors that constantly weighed upon me, such as managing a degenerative eye disease that affects my visual practices at all times, and family issues that demanded my attention. The fact that I lack the high academic standing certain apllicants doesn’t hinder me but only motivates me to try harder. I have no doubts about my ability to perform to UCSD’s notoriously high expectations. I hope you will consider me as a candidate for your program in regard to other ways sucess can be measured, and believe when I say academic performance will be my highest priority at UCSD.

I feel as though San Diego has chosen to call me back through a profoundly serindipodous alignment of factors. I want nothing more than to answer this call by joining what I view as the MFA program most suited to my interests. Others might suffice, but fall quite short in terms of the experience you offer. To say “I look forward to hearing from you” would tragically understate how much I truly desire this opportunity. Thank you for your consideration.