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This page is just a write-up from 2018 about my experience as a complete art world outsider entering the Post-Bacc program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Painting & Drawing without knowing what I was getting myself into. The experience was so interesting that I wished I could write a book about it. In my head, it would have been more in-depth and fun to read than Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World. But years have passed, and I still haven’t written a word. It kind of shows you how slow and lazy I am. -(Nov 2024)

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Preface

I applied to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Post-Baccalaureate Program in Painting and Drawing, thinking it was a vacational program I can take during my gap year from my tech job (I worked a full-stack developer in Taiwan). I did not realize this decision would actaully ruin the rest of my life (well, in a sense).

Until this day, my dearest grandma still cries about me “throwing away a good life” and went downhill with this “artist-wannabe nonsense.” Low-key I agree with her.

Enough of a melancholy opening, I here present you: Seven Months In The Art School Project. 

I arrived the school and found myself in shock that it is not a leisure kind of program, but a rather serious program for professional artists (mostly). I was given a huge studio space just to make art (what’s that?), and my neighbors were all artists who’ve had several exhibitions prior coming to the program already.

I arrived without knowing any other artists beside Pablo Picasso, and did not know about this whole obsession with an MFA degree in the Art World. While I was super intimidated by the enviornment I was in, I realized from Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days In The Art World that I might have the strength of being a complete art wrold outsider suddenly in the front of an emerging artists community, observing all the strange things that artists and art institutions seen as normal.

MFA Open Studios

One of the first major event of the academic year was the Open Studios. Apparently, galleriests and art critics of the city really do go to scout new rising stars. Hence, the unspoken competition for spotlights between graduate students in the studio floors are at its all time high. I was so scared about the event but also didn’t want to upset my neighbors by closing my studio curtain. As a solution, I decided to make my studio a zero stress, break room for tired visitors to take a seat and play Play-doh in. 

Fine Art Might Be Home After All 

Few months in, I suddenly have never felt so at home in my whole life. I’ve always feel that there’s nowhere I belong, not Taiwan, not America, not California, not tech industry, not non-profits, not home home, nothing. But then, after having all these new artist friends, I was amazed by the kind of stuff we get to share and talk about within the community. I guess one can almost say that I decided to become an artist because of the people I met. 

Names, Names, Names!

While watching critique itself is fascinating along - so often it gets so intense that artists cry for days afterwards.However, what stood out to me the most during my 7 months in the art school was that whether it was during critique, advising hours, artist studio visit or librarian studio visit, the “do you know/have you heard of [artist name]?” question is probably being asked more than a thousand times.

I did not realize artists nowdays all have the obligation to constantly looking up other artists and making reference and comparsion all the time.

Sometimes the names really are helpful, to give one a reference point and guidance in their own practice. But most of the time it felt like a weapon, a token of “I am more knowledgable than you” kind of vibe. Sometimes the artist that was mentioned doesn’t even relate to the critique or one’s own work that much. Anyway, I was truly fascinated by this phenomenon. Of course, as a person who even have trouble remember my 10 year-neighbor’s name, this normal practice of memorizing many names really gives me big headache. I often feel like a fool, just because I don’t know enough names.

We Are Petty

While I appreciate how artists notice and find beauty in the smallest things and are sharp critic of our society, sometimes I do find them being too petty (myself included). But who says works emerge from being petty can’t have the power of turing into a great discussion on important socitial topics that lack a safe space to exchange ideas?



Take my “We all turn Asian at night“ painting as an example, it was based on an old classmate’s same one-liner joke posted on facebook. What was so interesting about it was that I did not realize the classmate was trying to say “because Asians all have small eyes, as if they never open their eyes. Hence, ‘we all turn Asian when we sleep at night’” until she revealed the answer herself. I thought she meant we are all little philisophers at night (how cute), and what she wrote was somewhat a strange compliment of Asian people. Like, maybe she’s a big fan of Confucius or something, who knows?

Some of my mutual friends who saw the post were furious, thinking it’s pure racism. I was bothered by it as well, but I felt like there’s something more complicated I was feeling, not pure anger, so I decided to make a painting of it. After generated this vague text painting, and hold a cold read and discussion panel during a formal critique, I found myself closer to understanding the feeling I had.

Somehow, me, an Asian, presenting a painting like this during a critique without explaination, people really went into some philosophical paths of assumptions. Some thought it has to do with a poet with the same last name; some immediately realized the potential of it being racist and was having fun seeing what was going on in the cold read panel discussion; some did not approve that I turned a serious racist joke into a “foolish” project like this; some thought it was about Sailor Moon, the Japanese anime.

When I finally revealed the orgin of the painting, many smile on woke people’s faces disappeared. I think people were confused and scared about how they had reacted about it suddenly. People started feeling really bad, or felt like a fool for the guesses they made. By making others just a little bit uncomfortable, not too uncomfortable, I’ve successfully lure people into wearing my shoes and see things from my perspective in an honest way. It’s easily to condemn racism, but very few people are willing to get invovled in an honest conversation to define racism and the spectrum of it. 



Maybe one day I will finally milk to tuition I paid for the post-bacc program by writing a best selling book about 7 months as a tourist in top fine arts program. I really think it would be a fun read for most.