Meeting with Alex (my advisor) yesterday, I received the first ever written feedback and direct discussion on my written thesis development to date. While I was very happy for constructive criticism and several pointed questions that will help me move forward and clarify my ideas, there were 2 very disturbing things that arose from this discussion.

The first was that it took until May 31st to get any specific feedback on my paper, even though we have submitted 3 development papers so far. I can’t help thinking that I would be further along right now if this had happened in January, if not sooner. This is not specific to Alex, but something that needs to be changed within the MFA program in general.

The second is much more disturbing to me. Alex insists that I need to begin with a hypothesis and specific questions. While I have the direction of the thesis and questions in mind, the specifics are still somewhat vague, since I haven’t got any of the actual material in hand yet. Like most of us, we have been kept too busy with readings and course-work to even think about our thesis development or work yet. Art occurs in the MAKING of it.

Art is not linear, but often lateral. Where is the place for ART to happen in this MFA? One year into the program and I haven’t made, or been encouraged to make, much art.

Art-making, for me, and others (see quotes below) is often intuitive, emotional, experimental, and even accidental. It is often what happens IN BETWEEN what you PLAN to do. None of this means it is not informed, intelligent, and a valid way of knowing. It is a “human science”, not a physical one.

“ I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research in connection with modern painting [ART]. In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find, is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man who, with his eyes fixed on the ground, spends his life looking for the pocketbook that fortune should put in his path. The one who finds something no matter what it might be, even if his intention were not to search for it, at least arouses our curiosity, if not our admiration.”

- Pablo Picasso (1923) “Picasso Speaks”

and

“. . . at certain stages in making the piece, the artist may deliberately work with unclarified intentions, allowing meaning and form to emerge from a vague sense of direction, accidents or opportunities of material process, and constant intuitive corrections.

In withdrawing from specific intentions and given meanings, from the apparatus of subjectivity and rational action, the artist seeks to give the piece a life of its own.”

- Ian Heywood

and

“Ultimately, the most sophisticated of research methodologies can be no substitute for the chemistry of art.

- Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton (2000), Director of Visual Arts, Arts Council of England

We need some practicing artists teaching within this program! Martin was great, and understands the creative process too.

I realize that institutional requirements must be met, but I think Ryerson might consider some other definitions for their approach to an MFA:

Master of Formal Approaches
Master of Fixed Attitudes
Master of Finite Associations
Master of Formulated Aesthetics
Master of Forgotten Anarchy
Master of (one size) Fits All