I'm Mel, an adventure artist who loves to explore the outdoors and teach others to get out and make in nature!
I lead creative retreats for others looking to start an art adventure of their own! I've been an arts educator for over a decade and I want to help others persistently bloom into their practice.
Here on RU-vid, I share behind the scenes on my adventures, deep dives into my studio practice and inspiration, answering questions and providing prompts to keep you inspired, and how I'm managing being a full-time artist in the Bay Area.
Hot take: most artists should not try to make art their living. Doing something out of love alone is totally valid. We went through a phase where art seemed like a more viable career. "Look at graphic design. It's where art and marketing meet!" "Be a VFX artist! Somebody's gotta do it, and there's money there." But pretty much all of the "art meets business" fields are drying up as we speak. And now we're right back where we started with the starving artist.
finances also determine opportunities in other fields eg fashion design architecture etc.community college is a more realistic option for those who are financially challenged
My BFA in Painting that I got from the U of Toledo in 1981, cost a total of $5,500. I paid half as I went with a part time job, and borrowed the other half from my parents. It was a different world then. We didn't have to leverage our whole lives for our educations. Most universities had whole departments of philosophy majors. Good jobs were plentiful enough, you could learn what you wanted to know. Many of my friends got 3 or more bachelor degrees in completely unrelated fields knowing they would never be astronomers or writers or geographers or linguists or whatever. I never had any illusions of living off my art. I always knew I would need a day job. I get great satisfaction from my art, and by NOT trying to get rich or fed from it, I can completely devote myself to the quality of my product.
Have my BFA and MFA. Very pricey. My far cheaper associates degree in nursing after the fact has definitely been a way better investment and lets me paint more which has led to more shows via financial security. Your critique was 100% spot on and mirrored my experience decades ago. I spent 10 years struggling to be a full-time artist until I pivoted to healthcare. I got reviewed positively by The NY Times and that was my career highlight. I always had a day job but it wasn’t till nursing that I finally had financial security and was able to start a family. Plus I finally was eligible for public loan forgiveness because I wasn’t finding any full-time teaching jobs as an artist.
My dream school was calarts, but me and my mom realized it was impossible for us to afford it and I’m honestly grateful. I’m amassing some debt at my current school but nothing like 2k a month with variable interest. I’m in my fourth year right now and no way I could pay 70k a year or even the living expenses outside of home!
Let's be honest.....how much money do u need to make to pay off a 100k loan education debt and pay for a mortage and regular bills? I'd have to say at least 100k a year IF your significant other makes 100k a year as well. How many couples bring in 200k a year? I'm betting not many. And really.....where would any newly graduated artist get a job for 100k a year?
It's been a scam forever. I bet there wouldn't be 2 students out of 100 that lived off their art endeavors after they graduated. In fact I bet it isn't 2 out of a thousand. Ya sure there's people who marry a rich partner and are able to use them subsidize their art careers but that's the ONLY way to do it without starving.
Talked about all of this and came to many of the same conclusions. I do think art school can make itself valuable but the model is flawed. There's a school in philly called Hussian where the classes are modeled around working in the commercial art world. THAT NEEDS TO BE STANDARD. If you are in the commercial arts, part of the assignment should be reading the job, asking questions in a professional way, turning in sketches/comps, do revisions, compete the project, do revisions, create an invoice ane follow up on the hypothetical client when they haven't paid and also how to market yourself to potential clients after. If you are in fine arts, do the same with galleries, residencies etc. Then in junior year they work AND GET PAID by legit companies in the area who pay money to the school because they now have a pool of potential employees. It would lower tuition and students would be more likely to be hired. The system should be made so that an art institution can confidently say that the only reasons a student didn't succeed are the economy or the student truly wasn't taking the steps to succeed. When I went to uarts, the only people who I know that got good in-house jobs A. Had grit/hustle due to being related to small business owners B. Found internships themselves and C. Had the financial backing to not have to work so that they could do unpaid internships. This clearly isn't working for anyone other than the loaners, the government, and previously the schools and art clients. But as we see, that's failing.
A very informative and much needed video and I hope that this closing trend can be reversed and I'm sure it's going to need a paradigm shift to do it. However, my guilty pleasure is academic or highbrow art and I hope that it never disappears.
An unneeded schooling when there are workshops and RU-vid to help learn + bad education at these schools + expensive for a job that doesn’t pay a lot in a market that is reducing due to AI
To be blunt, even your half discount from over 10 years ago is way too expensive. It's heaven and hell compared to every other price tag in the vid but still not great. What is that money even paying for? Ever since I was in my college days back in 2010, pretty much all teachers had no personalized office and had to run from one campus to another, earning a paycheck that probably competes with McDonalds hires. Yet the students needed to get these expensive books and materials out of pocket. In general, the culture that it is ok to always live with a crippling debt hanging over your neck to give yourself good credit or get what you are told is a necessary amount of education for present day, it's all not ok.
I'm not going to denigrate any ones choices but I think that Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith should have proved that you don't need formal training to succeed in the arts. My feeling is that unless you need some very specific technical training (like bronze sculpture or figure drawing maybe) the best thing to do is make art -as much art as you can as often as you can. For the money art school costs you can buy a LOT of materials and afford to travel to top tier museums to study the masters. And if you can't succeed that way you probably lack what it takes to make it as an artist. Real artists produce and produce early whether it's Stephen King writing stories from the age of 8, Isaac Mizrahi making clothes in HS, or the Beatles writing music starting at 15 or so. That's the drive you need.
Sadly, many who gravitate to art-making are also shy and timid and not pissed off enough (because that's *unbecoming a lady*) to go out and tackle the real world, in which all of us are selling something or other ALL.THE.TIME, even if it's not called that. Trading time for money in a sal-ary job is an ongoing sale, after the initial interview sales transaction. Then again, the way most people bow down to people perceived to be rich allows those so-perceived to float along without having as many day-to-day responsibilities. Not really.
oh my God! YES to all this. I graduated as a painting student 10 years before you and have been complaining about these SAME EXACT grievances since (I also have been calling art school a "ponzi scheme"). My niece was recently applying to college to be a game designer - one school had a program that was going to teach her the creative side, business side and technical side - the other was RISD which said they "focused more on film and animation" so I strongly urged my niece not to apply to RISD. One thing, if I could add, aside from art school not providing anything close to resembling a practical skill that could earn you a living: most of my classes as a painting/drawing major didn't even teach fine art. The whole experience was 4 years of a group critique(nothing more), where as a painting major, I graduated 1. not knowing anything about color theory 2. not knowing about how to use a brush properly 3. not knowing how to gesso a canvas properly 4. Not knowing what "fat over lean" meant (my focus was oil painting) 5. Being asked once to add semi gloss to a painting (for a job) and not knowing that that meant. We were fed some BS, post modern idea about how all of this stuff was "irrelevant" and that "theory" was what we were being taught (we didn't even learn that). I even took a drawing class once where the entire class just made instillations and sculptures rather than learning anything about drawing. .....20 years later i still say "Heaven forbid I learn how to draw in a drawing class....."
As an applied arts professor at a small university in Tennessee (and used to teach at the Art Institute of Atlanta) I had a totally different reaction to this video. I agree with many of the points, but not with much of the thinking concerning who to blame. The faculty at any university has to sign an agreement to generally represent the school positively. This is framed in lots of different ways, but the bottom line is that we would all get into serious legal trouble if we said negative things about the school where we work publically. The faculty never has anything to do with the money in terms of tuition costs or making decisions about facilities. I have always taught my students about entrepreneurship regardless of the class title. What I have found is that when I start talking about how hard it is to make a living students tended to tune me out and play the “what about…” game…meaning, the students often told me I was wrong and that they knew someone who made a million dollars a day for painting mine craft images on frisbees or some nonsense. So, while I agree that tuition is too high: when I have constructed ways to bring down tuition the powers that be at various institutions have shot me down…when I try to tell students how hard it is to make a living they act like i’m old and out of touch. There is enough blame to go around.
I always knew art school and making a living as an artist is exactly like what you’re complaining about. Art school has changed in that it became extremely expensive. I can understand why expensive traditional art schools are closing. You can educate yourself and develop as an artist at community colleges or state universities. There are great art teachers and advanced programs for artists everywhere. I have art degrees and as a retired person I make art everyday. All that ever mattered to me is that I paint and do what I love. I do not think teaching marketing art is the answer to the failure of art schools. Business class will not get you into high level art world galleries or museums.
The same goes for design schools. If your industry has died out here in America like mine did with textiles-they don’t even teach you how to freelance and to network etc run a studio yourself because the professors at least in my school were freelancers and they don’t want the competition. Often if a field is dying out they don’t have corporate sponsorship anymore and therefore the costs also go up. Btw Harvard should be a hedge fund they maintain a 4 billion dollar endowment. WTF are they still charging students for any education?
This video confirms the cruel reality that, for most people, the only path to becoming a professional fine artist is to be independently wealthy from some source other than art (probably from family, via inheritance or marriage). That way, you can take the necessary creative risks without starving.
I was all the way with you until the last few minutes when you started talking about artists and financing. It came off as classist to me. Where are kids of color and lower incomes just all of a sudden going to acquire this knowledge? They should be able to trust that when they get a college degree anywhere, and get a loan to pay it, that they are guaranteed at the least a decent education. They don’t have the privilege of financially savvy parents, or people to teach them entrepreneurship.
Step number one to jump starting the making of art. Disabuse yourself of the notion you will ever make any money at it, ever be famous or get into a big NYC gallery. There! Now you're free! Go for it!
Thank you for this. I was horrified to learn what people are paying for art school. Your points about the invisible classism in the art world are well-made, too. I have been an artist my whole life, living off the sale of my artwork. About the time you went to art school, I took on my one and only student/apprentice. He was 18. I promised his parents that I would get him into at least one gallery after a year with me. We succeeded. Today, he is on the verge of becoming a full-time Painter, with sales as his sole income. One point I think worth your exploration is the fact that most art schools promote art reflective of today’s art world, by which I mean art that is only about art, not life. Art that is cold, elitist, inpenetrable. I gave my apprentice a few simple tips that helped him succeed; Make at least some art each day that is meant to sell, that is well-crafted, beautiful in the Keatsian sense, that you are happy to make, and that will further your knowledge of your craft. The sales of this art will buy you the time to make art that pushes the envelope. Thanks again for a revelatory video.
I am a self-taught graphic designer. What saved me in this career was the fact that I had previously worked in sales and marketing-without that knowledge I would have struggled. All education should be free.
If art schools taught the business and financials of running a private art career (and could demonstrate consistent success stories) maybe people could justify higher tuitions?
Your video is refreshing. It’s not often today that you hear someone discuss a problem with common sense. The problem is not just for art schools, but for all colleges and universities. Why? Because there are no checks and balances. In the real world (where we all live) if a product or service is too expensive, they will go bankrupt or lower the price to be competitive. These common sense rules do not apply to any educational institution. They continue to raise tuition and expenses at or beyond inflation each and every year. Why? Because they can. The most refreshing approach to solve this problem are schools that are set up to alternate semesters with school one semester and working for a company or institution in your field of concentration for a paycheck the next semester. Doesn’t exist? Check out Kettering University ( formerly GMI Institute). It’s not an art school, but this concept would work for any school and leave you with little to no debt. You should demand this of any school you attend or go elsewhere.
I dropped out of being an art major (state school, thank goodness) the minute I realized I didn't want to 'be my own boss.' The whole idea surrounding the independence and lack of selling out by starting your own business was not for me. If i had continued to pursue art, I would have struggled daily with assigning myself a list of tasks and fulfilling those tasks in a way that forwarded my career. I quickly realized I wanted to outsource that labor and get paid consistently by fulfilling a list someone else furnished for me! Neuro spicy life hack: what you're told to want might not be for you <3
Art schools have been turning out students who produce nothing but crap since at least the 90's. Mine formal art education was a total waste of money. Over the years, I have honed my skills on the job, by interacting with mentors, and utilizing tutorials.
The writing around art can be so, so poor. Drives me mad reading artists talk garbage about their work as they think that's what's required and it doesn't tell you anything about what you are looking at. Obfuscation helps no one.
One thing people can do to get away from the mess that is arts business and culture is become a plein air painter. Seriously. Getting outside, away from institutions, and having a one-on-one with nature - which is a challenge in itself - is incredibly liberating and rewarding. And if you do it for yourself and do it with authenticity, it might be the most rebellious thing you can do as an artist. Worked for me.
Art schools are a liberal hell hole. Why on earth would I pay to learn something? Try to show off my art to people to who will reject me from art school? An art degree does not guarantee working for a AAA game company or for Hollywood. I seen people with the shittiest art go to art school and I'm like "Why are you there?" I can just go on the internet and look up tutorials that can increase the believability of my art work because people only care about your portfolio.
