Art Students or Alumni, Describe your peers worst works

[asoir]

Saw this thread on the IMDB discussion of Art School Confidential and thought it'd be interesting to see what you guys have seen, here's the original discussion- http://imdb.com/title/tt0364955/board/flat/35001939


Post away! :confident

:lens: + :xpld:'s are a must!

[nofingers]

The worst stuff ive seen from fellow students is when they get a photo close to what they want from google images, then they paint over it in photoshop, all the while changing nothing, and adding nothing of interest. they should be ashamed of themselves

btw, imdb wants me to register for that link, so im not sure what the details are

[Tenelaus]

When I walked into the studio in my college this morning a stocky woman was rolling around on a canvas while covered in paint.

[asoir]

The worst stuff ive seen from fellow students is when they get a photo close to what they want from google images, then they paint over it in photoshop, all the while changing nothing, and adding nothing of interest. they should be ashamed of themselves

btw, imdb wants me to register for that link, so im not sure what the details are
It's probably worth registering for the stories, here's one-
"I think this one is the lamest of all. Our assignment in Graphic Art was to fill a jar of stuff that reflects ourselves, and then design a lable for it that could describe everything in the jar in under 4 words (lame project to begin with...I know). Our Russian exchange student (cocky little $hit) put his passport in there and one piece of Russian currency, and his lable said "Ilya" (his name). When he didn't get a good grade, he blew up and started going on in Russian, and then said in terrible English, "You all have insects up your anus! You wouldn't know talent if it bit you on the finger!"
He even left the school...went back to Russia. Pretty extreme, but "whatever floats his goat" as he says. "

[aesir]

Please please please dont get me started... Youre tempting me to post some of the senior thesis that came from our school...

[jonton]

My good friend did Art at my school basically because I was doing it. for his final piece for his FMP he did a A3 pencil drawing which was meant to reflect the things he likes in life, the end result was a drawing of a portrait and a mars bar badly done.

Back in school again, I did a 9/11 piece, it was a model of the ruins of 9/11 with a cross with barbwire around it. While using a scalpel I cut my self (accidentally) and used it to add affect (at this point I didn’t give a shit how it turned out) the end result was shit, I now know to keep away from them events with my art. The worst thing ive ever done.

At the art college im at now, I get really annoyed with some people. I have chosen to do multimedia next year, some people in my class are also going to do it... but this is only because they will sit and do manga animation for the whole 2 years.



They sit and draw manga all the time. Ok this is more of a rant now, cool thread!

[Cthogua]

Where I went to school, "Identity Art" was the thing. Which is great if you have some issues with your identity that you would like to work out on paper/canvas/whatever the hell...but I'm a middle class, heterosexual, white male, who had great parents..not really much anger there for me to work from. I thought for a second about doing some artwork about being white, just to be contrary...but theres no way to do that without sounding like a skin head. Also there is something painfully self-obsessed, and arrogant about "identity art" that just gets under my skin. I have been to some exhibits of some really powerful work I would call "ID art" but everything the students did was just a copy of whichever teacher they worshipped (also the art department was easily 80% women, with about the same percentage in the faculty) I had to sit through acres of what a friend and I dubbed "Lesbien Self Portraiture" All of the lesbien girls in the class went through a phase where they just took roll after roll of pictures of themselves, usually holding some 50's kitsch artefact, naked, or dressed in some 50's, Donna Reed style dress. When I took printmaking, it was all about prints of Dick and Jane style characters over some messy textured background that was supposed to represent the rotten seething underbelly of the society that had imprisoned women in these roles (which they seem to be returning to of their own accord via neo-feminism...high heels, make up, and plastic surgery....whatever)

The winner though, wasn't so much a specific person as a situation. There was a grad student that was taking a printmaking independant study with me. For the class she (also an art lesbien) made these lino prints of enlarged 19th century pornography, all nude women, with exaggerated genitalia. Funny, amusing, possibly insightful (not really), the teacher LOVED it and gushed over how insightful it was to extract the porno from its original context and "recontextualize" (fine art for steal) it. It wasn't her work so much that pissed me off, infact it was kinda funny. It was the teachers reaction to her work vs her reaction to mine that ruled the day. I had some large scale life drawings that I did some kind of psychedelic monoprint texture over that I thought was very pretty (always been a sucker for texture) Well the teacher (a woman) immidiatly lauched into this diatribe about the objectification of women in art, pouring nothing but scorn out on me and my work. You would've thought I had just slapped this womans grandmother. She ended up telling me that she would give me a D if I cleaned and sanded all of the plexiglass monoprint plates in the printshop. I spent an entire day in there cutting, sanding and cleaning tons of these plexiglass printing plates...and when the grades came in...F. :$

Thats ok though, because of that failure I ended up taking a painting class for 6 credit hours the next semester and totally discovered my love of the medieum. So.....fuck you bitch.

[DavePalumbo]

I saw the same thread on IMDB, though didn't read too many of them.

One that comes to mind for me was actually not from my school. A friend of mine was going to the University of the Arts (big school here in Philly, tons of slackers) for film a few years ago and I'd go to the student film presentations with him whenever he had a piece in. There were many I'm tempted to mention... so many... but one still makes me want to gouge my eyes. Some kid had done an animation (a really awful digital animation) of a man (?) that seemed to be made of lava lamp blobs or something. I don't know, it looked like a mess. Anyhow, the whole animation was just this stupid fucking blob man looping the same 10 seconds of jiggling all through the song "I like big butts" by Sir Mixalot. I remember everyone thinking it was hilarious. A part of me died that night.

[N D Hill]

Want to know how bad things are here? The University of Southern Maine's fine arts program just gave This guy (http://theoblitorator.deviantart.com/gallery/) his BFA. :nohope:

[Alcian]

That last post reminds me. A mate of mine does an art course up north, I have seen some of her friends work on DA, their work is such a joke. How they think it will equal a career I don't know.
Wish I had a story, but I don't go to an art school.

[Mr. Visions]

Want to know how bad things are here? The University of Southern Maine's fine arts program just gave This guy (http://theoblitorator.deviantart.com/gallery/) his BFA. :nohope:

DANG Exo!!!!!!, that was COOOOOLD BLOOOODED, but, what can I say....

Hope that guy doesn't ever come in here.

The one thing I will say that just irritates me to the core is when someone brings something in that you know is fresh of the toilet, like they literally crapped it out 5 minutes before class, and will defend it like it's the best piece of artwork since the Sistine Chapel! And then they will play stoopid to not knowing when to stop or just utter crap like that. And then what makes it worse is that they have a friend to defend them. If you don't understand, its one of these moments (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ptr4dpN54t4&search=art%20school%20confidential)...

BUT, here's a GREAT story. Ok, for an animation class of mine, we had to bring in production work, completed. That means storyboards, character sketches, background stories, the works. This one guy comes in with a group of friends and sits down. He's wearing a towel around his head, a bathrobe, and about 23 copies of a drawing he had down 2 weeks ago to introduce his piece, TAPED TO HIS BODY. His friends where carrying lamps and a boombox. In the back of my head, I'm thinking in my head (in a russian accent mind you) "What the Crap is this!" He then volunteers to present his work. The lights go off, he stands in front of the class, his friends behind them with their lamps prepped, and then music began to play. For about 10 minutes, he just danced. He danced, and when you thought he was done, he kept dancing. It was like the end of Return of the King, when you think it's over and then it's not. AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN CALL IT DANCING, IT WAS LIKE THE FRAT BOY SHUFFLE MIXED WITH THE ROBOT!!!!! While this was going on, his friends where video taping, laughing like it was the funniest thing since Bush waved at Stevie Wonder. After catching the horror on tape and when the lights came on, we were all in total shock. And the best thing in the world was, we spent the next 20 - 30 minutes debating why and why not that was animation, a copied drawing moving in space. Then he gave us the great, "I don't care if people don't get it, I did it and it's my artwork and that's the way I express myself and you can't critique me and yadaadadadada I like pancakes."

I felt like a hundred kittens died that day.

- Visions

[Shamagim]

Whoo...things are bad...:S. Lucky for me, I don´t have much to do with fine arts :) and i didn´t go to any art school...( class rooms creep me out...specially when you have to please a person who haves motives and opinions, but that´s just me :) )

[MoP]

I won't go into detail for fear of some of them reading this forum (that I directed them to in the hopes they might improve)... but there is some really, really bad art produced from my class. My course isn't a BFA, it's a "Computer Arts" degree, which I guess means that having traditional art skills is less of a prerequisite, but even so...

People just either have no idea what they're supposed to be aiming for, or don't spend any sort of time or effort on their work.

What worries me is that in a year, most of these people will probably have a BA Honours degree in "Computer Arts", and while their piece of paper might say they're capable of whatever, in practise they will have no idea what they're planning to do, what job they want, or how to create good art in pretty much any context.

My guess is a lot of them will get jobs flipping burgers unless they wise up to the fact that good stuff doesn't land in your lap, and merely wanting to get an awesome job in animation, concept art or games doesn't qualify you for a role in said industry.

*sigh*

[DavePalumbo]

oh man, I just remembered what the MFA stuff was like at my school. See, the regular students were, on average, actually doing reasonably cool stuff. Some of them were really damn good by the 4th year. But then, the MFA... whoa daddy. I could never figure that out.

[Jason Rainville]

Do graphic design stories count? Sure they do...

Well, there's one ironcly (he loves charity) self-absorbed class mate who always tries to make himself look like he knows everything about design and art.

One day, we're given a series of quotes by our teacher and we need to design a page for each quote that really 'describes' it. One was 'design is the art of turning prose into poetry' another was 'design; not about you, not for you' we weren't allowed to have any other text in on each page, and we could use any pics we wanted.

We all knew we were allowed to present one page of ours, as selected by the techer. That student knew about that, so he demanded that he be able to show one certain page to the class. Before class, the teacher says, no, I'll choose which page.

During his presentation, the student immediatly scrolls to HIS page. It was the lowest quality pic I've ever seen, stretched to fit the 8.5X11. It was a cartoon bird, facing us with wings spread out. In the wings, about ten badly cut-out pictures of childrens heads. In the middle, a huge title saying 'save the children' The quote was not even in sight.

He started a 10 minute speech about how children die starving each day blah blah blah... noble cause, but wasting out class time, missing out on the idea of the project etc. He then argues with the teacher in front of the class for half an hour. Seriously, how can you argue for that long when you don't even have a side to support?

Worst day of school ever. Worst thing was he was sitting next to me that day.....

[Rebeccak]

A guy in my FA class pasted a single pubic hair (his) to the wall with scotch tape as his final project. He called the tape a "simple attachment device". ROFL. (BTW, my school at that time cost around 30K to attend).

[DavePalumbo]

A guy in my FA class pasted a single pubic hair (his) to the wall with scotch tape as his final project.

I defy anybody to top this

[oracrest]

the laziest/most clever thing I have seen someone do at art school was something a roomate of mine did for his english class.

The assignment was to write a 3 page paper that would make something intangible tangible. The cover page said "Potential", followed by three blank pages.

I honestly doubt any of the other papers were as good at manifesting a concept, but alas, he got a D on it, and had to argue his way to that... funny though.

[oracrest]

Want to know how bad things are here? The University of Southern Maine's fine arts program just gave This guy (http://theoblitorator.deviantart.com/gallery/) his BFA. :nohope:

hehe, your funny man.

We had plenty of people like this at SCAD. Its funny how the whole art school thing works. You basically enroll to put yourself in an environment where you can flourish best artistically. The degree itself isnt really worth anything at all unless you want to do something outside of art (like be the manager at many retail places, a degree of any kind is usually enough. this doesnt really apply to people who want to teach art later.... then a degree is handy, although many of the teachers I had at school seemed like they were teaching cause they gave up on trying to get a job in the industry.)

man, i totally forgot where i was going with this post..... :blahblah:

[darth massacre]

A guy in my FA class pasted a single pubic hair (his) to the wall with scotch tape as his final project.
:bow: :bow: :bow: :bow:


I was tempted to post something....but then I realized some of my former classmates troll CA.org and know that my forum nick is darth massacre. And since most of them either own business or are art directors now...I think I'll keep my thoughts to myself :teeth:

[Ilaekae]

Darth, keep thinking like that and you'll just live so long you'll get all stinky and forgetful, and what the hell fun is that? :P

[dogfood]

Not completely art related, but in several colleges of engineering, there is a competion to take a set group of materials and construct them in a way to protect one or more eggs from a large fall (usually three or more stories). An art student entered the competition and tossed all the materials off the roof (without any preparation), followed by a dozen eggs. He called it a compostion piece and it was pretty darn funny.

Of course, had he'd taped some pubic hairs to the eggs, it would have been far more funny.

[Interceptor]

I have never seen the piece, personally. But a buddy of mine said that a girl in his class painted a picture in her menstural blood :(

[Shamagim]

Not completely art related, but in several colleges of engineering, there is a competion to take a set group of materials and construct them in a way to protect one or more eggs from a large fall (usually three or more stories). An art student entered the competition and tossed all the materials off the roof (without any preparation), followed by a dozen eggs. He called it a compostion piece and it was pretty darn funny.

Of course, had he'd taped some pubic hairs to the eggs, it would have been far more funny.


Ahh, yes...I actually do have a story related to that "egg" test.

Well It was basicaly the same, you had an egg, and you had to figure out a way to protect it from a freefall using any materials you can think of.

A guy actually made some kind of helicopter for that test, the thing worked perfectly, and it landed smoothly, but as soon as it landed, the egg slowly rolled out of the small helicopter and cracked XD, other guys used other mini flying machines, some parachute attempts and even used jelly to cover the egg.

Never the less, most of them failed...and the one who didn´t was someone who actually forgot to prepare something for the test. So he went looking for materials for his presentation and the only thing he could find was a plastic bag, so he fills it up with water and just puts the egg inside.......And the egg survives the freefall XD.

I guess a story where the lazy wins, but the point of the exercise was just to protect thee egg from a freefall, so you could say that nobody actually got the point and over did it using some unessesarily complicated devices.

[DavePalumbo]

I was discussing the egg drop thing with a friend once and he came up with the idea of packing the egg in ice cream and dropping it. never tested it, but it sounds pretty genius to me

[MariaSunderland]

Ah yes... there's two horror stories like these ( ok, horror is a little much ) that I saw when I was in college 4 years ago.

In one of my classes, we had to work on something that represented us. It could be anything really. Considering I moved a lot in my life, I decided to make a mold of my foot (and I nearly cut it off trying to get the damned thing off lol ) and the poured wax into the mold. I polished the wax foot ( it showed up to about my ankle ) and put two pencils crossed into it. Needless to say, I was never really good with sculpting, but I worked hours on polishing the piece, etc.. I was proud of myself for once when it came to sculpting. I had fairly good grade for it. I wasn't bragging about it much lol

But the thing is, in my school, there were art clicks. A group of people who considered themselves real artists and would befriend the teachers for better grades. I wasn't one of them because they knew I wanted to be a comic book artist, and at that school, that was a sin. (And if you happened to say you liked mangas, then you were almost sure to fail your courses, and I'm not making that up. I tested it once >_> Cost me my history of arts exam by a mere point, but it was worth the look of hatred from that teacher ;) ) A girl from that click sat down to do her project the night before handing it back. What she did was take some plaster, make a... I dunno what it was. It was a blob of plaster really, a little smaller then the size of her hand. She polished one side quickly (and not very neatly), then stuck needles in the plaster and added a few pieces of lace. What she wrote under it, on a cheap piece of paper and a marker was "Oneself means nothing, and thus, I am nothing." Well, she got a nearly perfect score for it. When I told the teacher she had done this on a whim, he shrugged it off and said it was the end result that counted... but WHAT end result!? I guess I don't understand contemporary art then.. because to me, that was a botched up project made by the little click assured to have good grades.

And here's another story, if you guys are interested.

This one happened at the last exhibit in college yet again. It was an exhibit to showcase our work, a synthesis of what we had learned. The point was to have a 2D and 3D piece ready for the exhibit. If you weren't ready, you'd fail. I won't describe mine as it would be too long, but I had fun making mine (and no sculpting XD buahaha! ). But anyways, one of the guys from that same artist click came in late. His 2D piece was never shown, and he brought his 3D piece in the middle of the exhibit... and what it was, was nothing but a cheap replica of a transparent beach ball with a bunch of bells, tissues, and well... just about anything he could have found to put in it. The only part that was nice about it was that it went around endlessly through the corridors of the school and exhibit. But that guys' 2D piece was never shown. Worst yet, a few days later, when the class gathered for our last course and recap of the exhibit, he was still working on his 2D piece while we were talking. And it was nothing special, a drawing/collage of whatever... can't remember, doesn't really matter. One way or another, he botched his project from one end to the other, and he should have failed because he never met the criterias, mainly to be ready for the exhibits while we all were. Even that teacher was not too happy with him, but there were 4 teachers evaluating the exhibit.

I think I got 78%, which was really good in my case. But that guy got, if I remember right, 90% and up.... when he should have failed.

I know grades shouldn't count in arts, but this really angered me. Because he was part of the 'real artists', it meant he had priviledges... -_-; I dunno if it's like that everywhere, but I remember those two years being very, very frustrating.. -_-;

[fishw]

he shrugged it off and said it was the end result that counted... but WHAT end result!?



i love how one day they say that, but the next they say "it's not about the end result or the visual product but about the process"

[~*LM*~]

Well I was amused in my recent drawing 101 class when the worst possible student in the class, summed up everyone on the last day with a vociferous: "I don't think anyone is better than anyone else in this class at all."

Heheheheheh. Whatever ya want to think that makes it rise for ya bud.

[Shamagim]

To be fair, it must be hard to be a fine art teacher. In my opinion, to make a fine art class bigger than 10 people is just useless. A teacher is a person teaching something subjective, he will have favorites, he will also favor things that in his opinion are more artistical......

So how to teach something that is supose to be the reepresentation of "subjective"?...

[DavePalumbo]

whoa, I just realized something. Did you guys have, like, an actual class called Fine Arts? It's an issue I feel I'm always defending, that there is still good painting in the Fine Arts, but it just occured to me that some people might have a class with such a ridiculously broad subject matter. It's like taking a class on "being a doctor" or something. At my school, classes were things like Anatomy, Life Painting, Landscape Painting, Animal Drawing, etc. It all culminated into a Fine Arts program. The most out there that any class got was Form and Structure, which was conceptual sculpture nonsense (and also mandatory :( ). If you wanted to screw around with instalations and abstract you generally did it in your own studio, not in a class room. It just occured to me that other art schools might not have the same approach

[Redder]

Fine Art at its worst -- urine, blood, masturbation, a dead cat, porta potty, dirty shoes, the circle of love, and more.

I was a freshman at ArtCenter when I did a piece of artwork that involved large rolls of plain construction paper strung between trees.

A large pile of old, dirty, and worn shoes mixed with faded keyboard keys piled up in the corner of the room.

Several glass jars of urine arranged into a straight line by tint and shade.

The porta potty church alter which was a porta potty lined inside with velvet felt, candles, and golden crucifixes.

A cross made out of small little pornography photographs.

The words "This is not artwork." in German painted with stenciles onto a wall.

A road killed cat inside a resin box.

There are many pieces of artwork which dealt with masturbation. There was the performance piece of the artist masturbated in front of the audience. Another piece was a self-portrait photograph of the artist masturbating in a chair. The sound of masturbation was used in another piece in which a hidden sensor tiggered a tape of the artist masturbating everytime the viewer walked into the empty room.

A full sized replica of a man making love to a tree.

The orgy circle of inflatable animals. Several different inflatable animals were tied to helium ballons and postioned into a circle of love.

A cast of the artist's penis done in blood.

A car door wrapped in canvas, painted red, and bolted to the wall upside down.

[Jedmo]

Well I'm about to graduate from SCAD so, needless to say, I've dealt with this crap for all four years. Its gotten better towards the end now as a lot of the real losers have disappeared. I think I've mostly dealt with the same "done five minutes before class but still getting praised" garbage. I got over it though. The bottom line is that if everyone who went to art school actually became an artist we'd have a lot more artists in the world. I dont let this stuff bother me too much anymore because, honestly, a professor may not say its bad in critique, but an art director will. So, in the end, they arent going to get work. Now thats from a commercial art standpoint. Where "fine art" is concerned well who the heck knows what is going to be acceptable from one day to the next.

[MariaSunderland]

whoa, I just realized something. Did you guys have, like, an actual class called Fine Arts? It's an issue I feel I'm always defending, that there is still good painting in the Fine Arts, but it just occured to me that some people might have a class with such a ridiculously broad subject matter. It's like taking a class on "being a doctor" or something. At my school, classes were things like Anatomy, Life Painting, Landscape Painting, Animal Drawing, etc. It all culminated into a Fine Arts program. The most out there that any class got was Form and Structure, which was conceptual sculpture nonsense (and also mandatory :( ). If you wanted to screw around with instalations and abstract you generally did it in your own studio, not in a class room. It just occured to me that other art schools might not have the same approach


It was a series of classes related to a Fine Arts Program, really. But in college, I only had ONE class (and I mean 3 hrs and that's all) where we were aloud to draw a nude model (compared to university, where I had full sessions reserved to that). I remembered they let us have 3 hrs of drawing the portait of a partner (which I had done in high school back in the maritimes -__- ) I had ONE drawing class in college. And that's it, really. The rest were general classes where, as you put it "screwed around with installations and abstract". They were all the same, just with different names, really.

I dunno how it is elsewhere, and mind you, maybe it was just my school that was like that, but abstract art, installations and the like were the way to go for anything. Contemporary art all the way. As long as it was probably morbid, disgusting and disturbing, it was top class, no matter what. (There were exceptions, but you had to be in the artists click with the teachers for that to happen). Doing anything figurative was not well seen (thus why graphic novels were like a plague over there) and would have you pass the course, but just barely.

Now don't get me wrong, I know contemporary art is NOT always like this. But my college teachers would teach it that way. Once I got to university, those teachers showed me otherwise. But until then, it was a pain.

And the best way to see this, is that when I went to university, some of these 'clicked artists' I spoke of in my course went to another university... and over there, the 5 mins pieces done to get praised by friendly teachers was over. Most of them quit after a year.


[quote]"i love how one day they say that, but the next they say "it's not about the end result or the visual product but about the process" - By fishw

Hahaha! My thoughts exactly! ;)

[fishw]

davepalumbo-i wish more schools were like wherever you went.

[dogfood]

I guess a story where the lazy wins, but the point of the exercise was just to protect thee egg from a freefall, so you could say that nobody actually got the point and over did it using some unessesarily complicated devices.
I would say that cleverness overcame lack of preparation. I value clever people, but it rarely takes one terribly far without some sort of dedication.

I haven't been to art school, and only had two real art courses in college, but these stories have caused a theory to form in my mind:

Art schools make money by having students pay for an art education. This can be a valuable experience, but not always, and not at the same level (given that everyone's different). If these schools start slamming students for performance deficiencies, these students would probably blame the school and start paying someone else.

I know this sounds very cynical, and I'm certain it isn't like this consciously, but there has to be some element in the larger schools, where the teachers are fighting to keep their jobs. This may also be a factor with Maria and her art cliques.

I think there's also the factor that the teachers often don't have to produce work in the real world. Many of them do and most are honorable professionals, but some of the ones that have inspired these stories seem like they can indulge their egos at will and leave the world that their students are going to be cast into. It seems to me that a note to the administration (after graduation) would not be out of place. One may not do anything, but one may also die from a thousand paper cuts.

But, again, I've never been to art school.

[Dead Bunny]

Everything at Pratt EVER!

Well no I guess there were a few exceptions... emphasis on few...

[Steph Laberis]

Best Bullshit Assignment by Another Student:

I was overlooking a lliberal arts class from the computer lab one day (they were having class in the outdoor square next to the lab) and saw a skinny boy wearing a very see-through mesh bodysuit and a dish towel hurriedly building an enclosure around himself, composed of 2-inch high, pinched plasticine walls. I think he was supposed to make something resembling a cross around him but he ran out of clay. So, as his class stared fixedly at his scampering and pinching ways, he came to an abrupt halt and laid down in the middle of the blobby enclosure, folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.

The class took this as the cue that he was done, so they sort of golf clapped and looked at eachother all confused. The teacher seemed quite pleased though...

My Most Bullshit Assignment:

I was frustrated with this drawing teacher I had Freshman year; she had won all these teaching awards and everyone though she was genius except me. She relied heavily on abstract artwork and experimentation, but didn't teach the methods in a way that made any sense to me. (I was totally a stubborn biotch freshman year anyway...)

So for my final project, I stretched a 5 foot canvas (because bigger canvases = better art by defualt, doncha know!), threw mostly black paint on it, stuck on a smaller circular canvas for good measure and added some toothpaste and cornflakes to the mix.

...out of a semester of figure drawings, tree studies and portraits, she said my final project was my best piece and showed considerable growth. I am SO not proud of that moment.

I know this sounds very cynical, and I'm certain it isn't like this consciously, but there has to be some element in the larger schools, where the teachers are fighting to keep their jobs. This may also be a factor with Maria and her art cliques

Can ABSOLUTELY vouch for that, especially in the illustration department. We had one teacher who had her own publishing company and would either steer her students' assignments to meet her own needs or flat out steal pieces to publish. Why compete if you can steal?

[N D Hill]

hehe, your funny man.

We had plenty of people like this at SCAD. Its funny how the whole art school thing works. You basically enroll to put yourself in an environment where you can flourish best artistically. The degree itself isnt really worth anything at all unless you want to do something outside of art (like be the manager at many retail places, a degree of any kind is usually enough. this doesnt really apply to people who want to teach art later.... then a degree is handy, although many of the teachers I had at school seemed like they were teaching cause they gave up on trying to get a job in the industry.)

man, i totally forgot where i was going with this post..... :blahblah:

Yeah. I'm not trying to be mean or anything. The problem at my school is simple. My school disguises it's lack of standards by saying it's modern/conceptually minded. Everyone's a winner, plain and simple. We have only two good drawing/painting professors here who try to teach something but in the end, they end up getting walked on all over by students who take advantage of the fact that the department has no money and will not fail them for sloppy work or even not showing up. You can literally go your entire four years here without hearing a single good critique. If it were not for the few self motivated students here who simply can't afford to be anywhere more expensive, my education would be a complete loss. We have students who do nothing but shitty anime fanart, I'm talking DBZ sketches on LINED PAPER, and they get defensive if you try to offer constructive feedback. The guy whose work I showed you was critiqued very harshly at his BFA critique by a new professor and the visiting artists. people were literally so shocked by this that the faculty had noticeably toned down for the second half. I'm not by any means trying to insult people here. I'm simply stating an unfortunate truth that there are art programs where obtaining a degree is a simply matter of time and money. God forbid one might actually be required to think of aesthetic issues and view their work objectively.

[Ilaekae]

I'll insert a note here that IS bizzarre, but for a purpose...

I taught a class that we really couldn't come up with a name for, so we called it Theoretical Design for the catalog. It was aimed at the Ad people more than the fine arts crew, but it had apps to both.

Basically, you take two things for granted when most of your students are in their late teens-early 20s: (1) They think they know everything, and (2) they actually don't know anything. This causes them to get into a standardized way of working so they can finish their projects faster. They start out in a rut. My job was to prevent/change this. As an example, if you asked for an ad promoting some product of "Alcoa Aluminum," you knew in advance you were going to get back a stereotypical "industrial" look. The same would happen if you asked for something promoting a "soft" field like Ballet. They would jump almost automatically into "industrial" or "ballet" mode to execute their projects, which in reality was cutting off their thought process before they had a chance to get started.

The way I did it was to have them advertise, package, or promote in some way an abstract concept in exactly the same way the Ad world would promote a product. The hardest to cope with for many of them ws to sell WAR, based on the premise that if there was so much of it, it must be in demand by a major share of the consumer market. So...sell it...and sell it hard. The same way you sell toothpaste or refrigerators. Don't give me your personal opinion, don't preach for or against, just sell to your market.

I'm thinking a great many of the horror stories that come out of art schools are a result of something similar to this that's been badly explained or handled by an idiot teacher, or not properly grasped by a student.

[Steph Laberis]

Ilaekae, do you have any of their assignments on file? I'm really interested to see what they came up with!

[DavePalumbo]

I'm simply stating an unfortunate truth that there are art programs where obtaining a degree is a simply matter of time and money

too bad nobody told them that having a degree isn't worth dick to a practicing artist.

Ilaekae - sounds like a fun class actually. My first thoughts on selling war bring to mind the WWI and WWII propaganda posters which were doing exactly that, though I suppose that's my rut thinking.

[Shamagim]

Ilaekae- Selling war?, man that´s a fun assigment, I guess I would researched some ads for toys and then make something out of that idea :).

dogfood- Actually everyone watching the excersise gave him a big applause, plus some giggles, even me....and i ussualy don´t clap my hands for anyone :).

[waronmars]

war, unh, what is it good for?

This isn't really an assignment, but in a life drawing class at uni, one of the fine arts students actually started crying and had to be consoled by the teacher because she couldn't draw for nuts... The room that we take life drawing in is used by a fine arts class...all over the walls is shitty shitty collages made of magazine clippings, people's names written on paper and for some reason outlines of shoes coloured in with weird patterns. I am glad i had the foresight to stay the fuck away from that course <_<.

[Cercie]

The art department at my uni drives me crazy. If I have to hear one more lecture about "The Human Condition" I'll hurt somebody.

I think the worst thing I saw in the student art gallery was a bfa or mfa installation which i'm going to assume was about the decay of life, but in actuality it was a wooden box on the ground that was painted funny colors and then a rotting pumpkin was inside with all its guts hanging out and other assorted decomposing items and visitors to the gallery were invited to spit upon the rotting corpse of a pumkin to aid in the process. The gallery is open for a week on each exhibit so by the end of the week the stench was quite horrific. I'm sure they got their degree with praise, but I'll never understand it.

I guess I just don't want to think outside the box.

I agree with you Exo, there are a few good teachers at my school but I can't seem to get past the crap to reach them. I think for my last year I'm going to try a bit harder to get something real out of it and maybe have a jumping off point to getting a job. Here's hoping.

[Mirana]

One of my fiancee's best friends graduated from art schooland set up a portfolio website that he showed us. The layout was suspiously similar to my own, but I wasn't too concerned. A few months later we went to pay it a visit and discovered that he had ripped off one of my gun designs, put a fin on the top, and used it in a character design he submitted to a company.

I'm not even that good at designing props in the first place. I'm also not sure how he expected me to NOT find out.

He took it down a week later (before I said anything). Then he put up a card design that he'd done for another company which incorporated a stolen background--that he ADMITTED to on his site--from a well-known children's book illustrator.

He's not an idiot...so I still cannot fathom how he got through school without realizing that stealing artwork is BAD.

[egerie]

Some kid had done an animation (a really awful digital animation) of a man (?) that seemed to be made of lava lamp blobs or something. I don't know, it looked like a mess. Anyhow, the whole animation was just this stupid fucking blob man looping the same 10 seconds of jiggling all through the song "I like big butts" by Sir Mixalot. I remember everyone thinking it was hilarious. A part of me died that night.
Ungh.. I saw a few demos that the kids thought they were shit hot that made me want to leave the room. It's one thing to have a reel that sucks like a tornado but sometimes the attitude that goes with it just takes the cake.
I kept one or two of these...

As for bad alumni art, there was this girl who totally seduced the sculpting teacher who MADE her final piece to be judged at the provincial art venue. It won. And she got a 100% in sculpture. Now THAT's talent ;)

Exo : That is enough to bring tears to my eye.