How do you plan to make a living as a social practice artist?
This question was originally posed like this: How do you make a living as a social practice artist?
But with the way and rate that institutions have been adopting MFA programs in socially engaged art in the last couple of years, a slightly altered form of this question seemed fitting to pose to students from a variety of those programs across America. Particularly as The Socially Engaged Art Student Summit, formed in 2013, is already coming together in conversation to shed light into who is leading the next wave of socially engaged art; Who are socially engaged art students? What are they doing? Why? What besides debt are they getting from their education?
The answers to this re-imagined blog question gives a small insight into what the next wave of socially engaged art looks like (just check out the expansive and diverse range of practices and projects in each of the links to student works) but also how the students investing in an education of socially engaged art envision their future fiscal lives.
Image by Guestwork, Portland State University Art and Social Practice (PSU)
Right now I’m in school, so I don’t really make a living, I just try to not spend money. I do some freelance design things here and there. I live in my uncle’s basement. I ride a bike, I have financial aid, I cut my own hair, and I try and eat leftovers from tupperware for lunch.
How will I make a living when I graduate?
Adjunct teaching, probably. I like teaching. I’ll do some freelance graphic design projects, probably for other artists as has been my experience in the past. (Artists, need a graphic designer? I like to work with you.) I will hunt for funding and write killer grants.
I’ll hope that I won’t have to go to an office every day, unless it is an office of someone/something that I am really, really into. There are few of those potential offices, but not very many. –– Nicole Lavelle, California College of the Arts Social Practice (CCA)
When I left my office job for art school I decided I wanted “to be the same person all day.” I wouldn’t build walls around certain parts of my brain anymore. Sometimes art will be a source of income and sometimes it won’t. I will pitch ideas to businesses and arts organizations, and get paid to manage other people’s projects and events. I will probably not apply for many grants, but yes, some grants. I might fall back on film production skills. I will write content for online magazines. I will buy and sell real estate. I will work in a bar. I will work with people who I respect and who respect me. I will not work for free. And as I am an artist all day, not just during certain times, anything I do––paid or unpaid––I will do as an artist. –– Erica Thomas, PSU
Professional Development has really come to prominence lately, as evidenced by the growing numbers of professional development workshops around the country: Creative Capital, Bronx AIM, LMCC, PFPCA, amongst others. The goal of professional development programs such as these, is to empower artists to advantageously position themselves within the financial structures that surround them. However, if something is gained in this process, then surely something is lost as well…after all, a move towards something is always a move away from something else. With that said, I don’t mean to say “what is its antithesis?” Just what is lost. Not to say that we should move towards anarchism (antithesis), but by speaking rigidly in terms of “making a living” and professional development, we often don’t ask ourselves certain other questions. Sure, making money allows you to live, and living is “good”. In fact, living is a must, if any of this is to matter at all. With that said, the language of professional development often doesn’t consider questions such as: what if this model of professionalization is in fact, detrimental to my art practice? In a world where making a living can be so difficult, specially as an artist, the rewards of money and success can deter us from exploring alternatives that may prove to be more productive and sustainable. –– Rafael Abreu-Canedo, Carnegie Mellon Contextual Practices (CM)
I plan to make a living by:
I REALLY HOPE THIS WORKS! ––Eliza Gregory, PSU
Right now and for many years I have approached this question with a Renaissance type mentality. I do many things, among them teaching, developing curriculum, facilitating programs for youth and adults, taking photographs, applying for grants, administrative work for non-profits and working on small paid projects. I am currently working as an environmental educator on an urban farm, doing freelance photography, developing curriculum for an arts organization and relying on loans and grants. In the future I hope to make a living and repay my loans by having the privilege of a consistent stream of engaging, exciting and well paid projects. –– Emily Fitzgerald, PSU
It seems to me, that to make a living as a social practice artist, or as any kind of artist for that matter, you have to know a lot of people. Or rather, they have to know of you. If they know you’re out there, and think you’re doing interesting things, then they will come to you when an opportunity becomes available. Our world is a nepotistic one. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. This is an important point in the conversation about making a living as a social practice artist. ––Zachary Gough, PSU
I don’t know how I will make a living. I do know that graduate school has put me in a difficult financial situation, precisely as I am embarking on my career as a professional artist. The system of lending and the cost of a public education, or any education for that matter is unfair and needs to be fixed. Education should be free. I am lucky to have experience in other fields like educational nonprofits, which at least give me an outlet so am I not only competing for the scarce number of opportunities that exist in art world. –– Betty Marin, PSU
As a former admission counselor and academic advisor I saw my role as a guide for students pursuing higher education as an art form. There was outreach, getting to know community and their needs, education on the process of pursuing an education as well as guidance once admitted. It was all in the connection of getting to know someone and viewing the journey as a collaboration. –– Mario Mesquita, Otis College of Art and Design Public Practice
I don’t expect my projects to make my living, but I do intend to inject my practice into my livelihood.
If I’m lucky, I will continue to work in the field of Education given my experience and interests, however I hope to expand how my time is commodified from tasks that are instrumentalizing to work that is liberating.
Meanwhile, I am:
– Earnestly seeking to understand my embeddedness in complex systems of power, oppression and privilege.
– Mindfully practicing actions that are large and small (or sometimes still) that rupture, reveal (or sometimes submit) to these systems.
– Interdependently in dialogue with the communities I’m embedded in.
– Precariously aware of how my labor is valued by institutions and how I value the labor of the people I work with.
– Delightfully celebrating and supporting the work of my peers.
– Playfully moving between the center and the periphery of the disciplines of art.
––Grace Hwang, PSU
I am not interested in making a living as a “social practice artist”. I see social practice as a field to which I am contributing to in order to shape, grow, critique, tear down and build again. Some of the things I have enjoyed most about my program are our discussions about professionalization amongst the arts, which is something I have only had in decidedly anti-institutional spaces. Personally, I don’t think Social Practice is something that has been fully realized yet, this is a pathway to something else… ––Irina Contreras, CCA
Video by Sharita Towne, PSU
About the contributors: The Socially Engaged Art Student Summit, a group of students from Portland State University Art and Social Practice, Social Practice Queens, Carnegie Mellon Contextual Practice, and Otis Public Practice, started organizing in December 2013. As artists they come from a diverse set of backgrounds and practices and are genuinely interested in collectively supporting each other’s work. You can view each of their work through their names, which are hyperlinked to their personal website. They are holding several events over the course of Open Engagement, which you can find more detail about in the program.