How do I know I'm an artist? Well, I just know. I create things for the sheer joy of creating them. I paint, draw, sketch, make prints, and collage like mad. It's just what I do, and I couldn't do anything else. Ten years ago, though, I'd guess that no one would've thought I was an artist, least of all me.
Ten years ago, I was a senior in highschool. Like many other fellow students, I was busily contemplating college. I asked myself the same questions many others did: where should I go? What should I do? What tests do I need to take? What if I fail the tests? I went to countless college preparation seminars, took a number of college aptitude tests, practiced writing essays, brushed up on my application-filling skills. The only thing that I really knew was that I needed to apply to an art school, because I wanted to be trained as an artist.
One day, lo and behold, amid the flurry of information on art schools and colleges both near and far, there came word through a school counselor that a certain art institute in Chicago (one of the most prestigious in the nation) was going to be sending a few recruiters out to my part of the country. They were going to be presenting a lecture and information on their school, and they invited all students attending the lecture to bring their portfolios, which they promised to review afterwards.
Two dozen eager prospective recruits (myself included) showed up that spring day, ears open and portfolios in hand. We listened carefully, asked questions, and paid diligent attention to the detailed information the recruiters were giving us. Imagine being trained at the finest art institute in the country, they told us. Imagine being accepted by us. We're the best, they said. You want to be in the best, they told us. You can be, if you're good enough, they said, and we'll make you into an incredible artist. Thank you for coming, they said.
And then the portfolio shredding began.
I don't know where in the world the aforementioned Chicago art college got their recruiters, but they must all have been trained by ex-dictators of the Franco school. I also don't really know what they were actually trying to do for the college. But during the course of that afternoon, it became clear to me that if they really were representing their school accurately, then I didn't want any part of it.
The recruiters were absolutely brutal. I saw plenty of artwork that I enjoyed very much and thought was good work, but it all got panned. Criticism was heaped left and right. I don't think I heard a single good word about anyone's work. One work was too chaotic. (Obviously the recruiter had never seen any Jackson Pollack.) Another was too colorful. (Guess he'd never seen Van Gogh, either.) Yet another was too amateurish. (Never seen Grandma Moses, I suppose.) My own simple pen-and-ink line drawings of the Arthurian heroes were dismissed as being "too flat", while the portrait of Ringo Starr that I'd made was mistaken for a woman.
When it was all over I went home. I packed up my portfolio and hid it under the bed. I took down my poster from the aforementioned institute. And I gave up on being trained as an artist at all. I went to school that fall at the local university. I took some art history classes, but never any art classes. I eventually ended up with a degree in medieval history. I wrote a great deal -- poetry, research papers, and journaling -- but I didn't do much drawing or painting. The people from Chicago had informed me, in one way or another, that I couldn't be an artist, and I wasn't good enough. So I putzed around for six years, hiding my artistic talents in more practical skills like sewing.
Then I went back to art school.
I had to. I don't know what it was exactly that drove me to it, but I think the gods put creativity in me, and the gods wouldn't be satisfied unless I used it for what it was originally intended. So I just knew I had to go back and do some artwork. I didn't have to listen to some heartless recruiter from Chicago telling me that my work was horrible. So I went back to school, and took a few art classes.
One day, some of my fellow printmaking students convinced me to enter a school-affiliated art competition. So at the last minute, I got together a few pieces of mine that I liked, took slides of them, and entered the competition. Among the pieces I entered was a self-portrait, done in charcoal and conte crayon. What the hell, I thought, I may as well enter. I might win something.
I won 2nd place on the national level. And I got a cash prize for it as well. And the work I made has been hanging outside the college president's office for the past year. And interestingly enough, the person who was the adjudicator for the competition has some of his own work in the collection of the aforementioned art institute which turned me down.
So the people from Chicago can kiss my artbox, because I'm an artist no matter what they say.