The times have changed since 2008 when Harvard Business Review first published this blog article, but the short article – the author studied fiction writing – makes some good points. Here they are, but still, check out the article.

Things learned in an MFA program:
1. How to take criticism.
2. What motivates people.
3. How to engage your audience.
4. When to let go of good ideas.

Now that the semester is over (for less than twelve hours, no less, and I’m back in the saddle?!) I’m working on sketches for a piece that’s been on my mind for awhile. To undertake it represents a significant investment of time and some new challenges, so I don’t want to rush into anything. Because this will be a real sculpture in real space, I wanted to work out my vague idea in more detail. While I sketch frequently, I’m usually only seeking to describe the sense of a thing, rather than the thing itself. (I guess one could say that they’re abstractions; I wasn’t taught to think that way, though, and developed that representational style by asking, what is essential?) But I haven’t really drawn in awhile.

After hours searching for images that somehow expressed my nebulous thought, eventually found a stash. It wasn’t on the Internet but on my hard drive. Now that I’ve spent a couple hours drawing from them the things that attract me for this piece, I have a few observations:

First is a sense of intimacy with the form in the photos that comes from looking so closely at it.

Second, I am remembering that I do know how to draw. That I did learn that I can trust my hand. And silly things like pressing an eraser on a line that’s drawing too much attention.

Third, and with guarded excitement: I like my own quality of line. A lot. It has a quality that I find seductive in others’ drawings: here too. Tonight I’m using pencil,  and the line quality becomes even more sensitive and beautiful than the starkness of black pen on white paper. (My usual weapon is a Uniball Vision Razor, the 0.5mm… best pen I’ve ever used, and we architects are fussy.) Oh, right, tonight… just a plain ol’ clicky Bic pencil. Classic.

Fourth: some of that sense of intimacy maps onto the actual person represented in the photographs. It’s more or less limited to “I have studied with great care the way your clothes take form in this particular photographically-indexed moment.” The photograph has the effect of freezing time, of putting me into that moment, of letting me see through the perfectible camera-eye (which happens, because I took the photograph, to correspond with my own eyes), and to see it with greater clarity and in greater detail than my human eyes’ natural capacity. Kind of amazing, really. But – it maps, nonetheless.

It went well. And deservedly so. It amazes me to look back at the leap I’ve made in five weeks.

Pics here: on Facebook, but you don’t have to sign in.

Installation view. I showed eleven pieces. A bit much, but worthwhile.

Five of the pieces were abstract tableau/landscapes.

This one is my favorite of them.

And the others involve figures. This is a favorite detail shot. Take a look.

It amazes me to look at these pieces against what I’ve made in the last few days. Expect big things going forward.

Caught this one just over a month ago. Still love it.

Paul wrote about consumerism over on TAE, and seeing his post touched off a flurry of thoughts, so I’m catching them here.

A meditation, part fictional. Not every “I” is me – and not every “I” is you.

Consumerism and technology. Russian constructivists seeing machines as comrades and co-workers, able to shape themselves to meet every need of the individual. Machines as being vulnerable and human through their changeability. How machines were supposed to serve us. Questioning the reversal that so often happens, how we are enslaved to machines and technology. I have to check my email, my facebook, the internet, I have to maintain all these connections of convenience and data, I have to keep my computer charged, my phone charged, my iPod charged, my car fueled. I have to download the latest convenience in software. Is there anything new on the Internet yet? Have any of the many blogs that I am following (oh, Benjamin, you were right in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Now we are all experts. Everyone is producer and publisher, artist and distributor, all technologically enabled.) said anything new? Is there too much available to us? Does the mass availability force us to look faster, read faster, consume faster? Does it disable us from looking slowly, reading slowly, consuming slowly?

When is the last time you spent twenty minutes looking at a single piece of art? I spent four hours going through a set of fifty drawings. It was all I could take; now I am familiar, I have scratched the surface. The language is familiar. Another look and I might start to pick up the story, another read through and the narrative may rise. Another read through and the small marks and smudges and water stains that I saw and admired on the first go through might start to imprint themselves on me, I might start to know them and know where they are, just as I know where to go on my bookshelves for “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.” I spent a half hour, maybe an hour, on another drawing, a complex one; maybe I knew it at the time, maybe I know it enough now that I can look at it and start noticing new things.

Consumerism and technology. In the prosperity following WWII, all our industrialization suddenly lost its purpose as part of the war machine. Suddenly there is prosperity. Machines reduce work; leisure enters the picture more than ever. What will we do with our spare time? Fill it. Fill it with things – emblems of the new age, things we’ve never seen before. Marvels of the perfection of machines – the ability of machines to be perfect beyond our hands – a wonder! Parts of the world are still industrializing. I wonder if we are happier with less. I am happier with less. The way our stuff becomes an albatross. The way possessions cease to serve. Soviet propaganda – rubber state-produced pacifiers – let the state fill your every need – the state will comfort you, it will be your new mother, it will be your new provider. See – contentment *can* be bought, and all at the state-run store! Is that how we ended up this way?

Somehow we learned to value the cheap and the mass-produced. The tide is turning back toward the handmade, but has yet to understand what it means to take something out of the industrial processes. The $8 cup becomes a $30 cup or a $40 cup. The $20 poster-print becomes the $200 painting, the $2000 drawing. What does it mean to bring into your life the product of someone else’s hands? Ah! Aura – the presence of the original – the sense of authenticity. (Walter Benjamin, again!) Is that aura just a bunch of romanticism? (Asks the owner of several thousand dollars’ worth of other peoples’ pots.) If so, is there anything wrong with romanticism? The meal as aesthetic experience. I am an advocate for the lived aesthetic, for beauty in everyday life. Don’t save the good china for special occasions.

Consumerism – quantity or quality? What, really, is necessary? How much? And what is in the service of what?

Moving to the prairie has changed my life in a way I did not anticipate. Our internet connection is via satellite. How slow is that? It’s usually too slow to watch a Youtube video. It’s often as slow as dialup. Web pages have become heavier than I realized – my gmail runs on basic HTML, these days; regular doesn’t even load, sometimes. The valuation of time against the real necessity of reading the contents of my inbox. I delete three quarters of what I receive, without opening it. If I need to look up an artist, I do it from school. Consumption depends upon ease of availability. It’s not so available, and I don’t really miss it. Instead, the ability to have information instantaneously (as at school) is something of a wonder.