 Thank you for joining us for the alumni career pathway series. I'm really excited to announce our panelists this evening. So first, I'd like to just acknowledge that we're doing this panel on the unsuited territories of the Muscovim, Squalemesh, and St. Latouth Nations. And I am very honored to be able to present this in the school. So on our far left, some of you may recognize, we have Annie Breard. Annie is a Canadian artist known for her practice in expanded photography and digital media. Her work challenges how we make sense of the world through visual perception. Creating lens-based and light-focused work, she explores the intersections between perception, paradigms in psychology, neuroscience, and existentialism. Her moving images, media installations, expanded and print photography have been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, recently including Staring at the Sun at Laban Video for the Quebec Biennale and within the Eclipse at the Breard Arts Foundation, as well as group shows, festivals, and fairs internationally. Recently, she presented monumental-scale photographic and moving image public art projects for a number of commissions in Canada. She has been artist in residence at the BAMP Center for Arts, East Side Los Angeles, and others. Annie's work has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and it's found in the collections of Microsoft, Scotiabank, Polygon, and others. Annie is currently a lecturer in photography and media arts right here at ECU. On the right-hand side, we have Trista Seliger. Trista is a Vancouver artist and high school teacher. Her active art practice includes collages, murals, paintings, and sculptures created in her arts factory studio. Trista's predominantly explores ideas and metaphors around mapping as a tool of perception and orientation. In her newest abstract painting, she explores shape, color, and form influenced by the pathways water and creatures create on the land. These artworks are color-filled paintings that explore movement, transparency, and opaque layers shifting across a plane. Trista's hosts the YouTube artist talk and assignment series called Studio to Studio. In this series, she interviews talented artists who give us insights into their practices and assigns a creative project. This series started during the pandemic and has kept going. And in the middle, we have Jessen Ogilvy. Jessen's practice examines various riffs between traditional and contemporary modes of painting, weaving together pictorial explorations that hover between figuration and abstraction. He received an MFA from the University of Alberta and a BFA from Emily Carr University, a devoted instructor since 2000. Jessen teaches privately and publicly. In 2019, he co-founded Canvas Method, a contemporary atelier, a Vancouver-based art school with in-person and online classes, as well as mentoring programs for aspiring artists. Jessen exhibits nationally and internationally within commercial, municipal, and artist-run center galleries, is part of private and public art collections, and is the recipient of numerous awards. I'm very excited to have all three of these panelists here. And I'm going to start by allowing these panelists to talk a little bit more about their practices, starting with Annie. Thank you. Oh, I can probably project loud, but I guess for... It's for Zoom. For Zoom. Hi, Zoomers. Thanks, everyone, for being here. It's always nice to have the opportunity to talk about these things, professional opportunities or careers as an artist is something that I feel like, because there's no real straight path, it becomes kind of complicated to figure out what you're going to do, which direction you're going to take. And so I think these conversations are really important, and I'm glad to be here part of it. Sarah already gave a bio. Thank you, Sarah. So I don't know how much I'll add on my own practice. I can kind of inflect other points as we go, but maybe I'll tell you a little bit how I came into teaching and how that's working out. And then we can kind of follow up on that. You'll tell from my accent probably soon, if not already. I'm from Teotiaque, Montreal in Quebec and moved here just over a decade ago to pursue an MFA. I had done a BFA at Concordia University. I was working in nonprofit organizations, festivals, running a magazine that I had started called Le Fleur du Mal, bilingual international magazine. Anyway, doing basically everything, working in commercial galleries too, just trying to do all the things so that I could figure out my place, I guess, in the art world and what that would look like. Montreal was awesome because, well, many reasons. It's a great city, but also rent was super cheap. And so I was finishing my BFA and I already had two studios, and I thought, it's not so bad. And then I stupidly moved. I know I'm joking, but it was very different. But I did all of these things and then I got to a certain point where I thought, okay, my work is not necessarily saying what I wanted to say. So let's go do an MFA. I came here. My work completely exploded into a million pieces and I put it all back together. And it was really, really helpful. It kind of, yeah, really sort of zeroed in on what I was trying to say and was finally actually expressing it to people. So that was really nice. And then I never really thought about teaching. My mother was a elementary school teacher. So I guess I had already seen how kind of all-encompassing and stressful it was. I don't know how they do it, running around kids all day and then taking that home and then they have their own homework to do. I wanted no part of that. But I had the opportunity to TA for somebody, I guess just after my master's. And I realized how much I loved it. It was a cultural theory course and I could see the change sort of happen real time in my students' kind of perspectives on the world, society, politics. And that was just so hugely inspiring to me and I remember thinking what a privilege to be able to have these conversations and to be able to kind of learn what everybody's goals and dreams and visions were for the world and for their future. So that's kind of it. I got into teaching. I've been teaching at Emily Carr, I guess, ever since I also taught at Quantlin University for a couple of years. And yeah, I'm a lecturer here. I'm going to talk about what that means later. It's a hierarchical tiered structure in academia and so we can go into that because I know some of you were kind of curious about how that might look. Yeah, I teach photo, video, sometimes professional practice and lots of other things that I'm excited and passionate about. I think maybe that's a good start, hopefully. Thank you so much, Annie. Up next is Tristess. So what question am I at? You are just going to talk a little bit more about your practice. You can address the images on the screen if you'd like. Okay. Hi, I'm Tristess Seliger and I have been a high school teacher for 23 years. I graduated from Emily Carr and at the time that I graduated, I had a big student loan and I couldn't imagine being an artist at that time. I don't really come from, didn't have much support. I basically paid for my way through school and I'm one of the first people in my family to ever have gotten a degree. So I quickly felt like I had to make some very practical decisions about money and supporting myself. So I grew up with teachers and so I could really see... Well, I was adopted by teachers so I could see what teaching was like from the inside out, living with these really great people and I felt like it was something I could do. I've always really been interested in being with people and I got energized by people and I think that was a good start so practically I just headed in that direction. I took some time off and taught English in Seoul, Korea for a year and then I realized I could do it and came back and then did my professional development year at SFU and also a minor in English. So I had two teachable subjects and then I did my professional development year and then I basically started teaching about a year after I graduated and taught for about 12 years and then I had a major life change that happened that kind of woke me up to the fact that life ends and that I needed to live my life the way that I wanted to and my husband and I decided that I should go part time and then devote a lot more time to being an artist, practicing art and so actually the life thing that happened to me was that I was diagnosed with cancer and went through cancer treatment so it was like a real shock and a real wake up call but in a lot of ways it really pushed me into having enough courage to make art because I think making art is and calling yourself an artist is really challenging like making that leap for me it was so I mustered up the courage to do that and I have a very supportive husband and I found art making was incredibly important to going through that experience and I developed a whole set of map collages like a series of map collages during that and then they started to get some attention and then ever since then I got a studio I called myself an artist I made myself a website I practiced art regularly like I work part time and then I go to my studio so my practice is very current and it's just a part of my routine and then just things kind of just rolled from there like I started to get a lot of galleries asked me to be a part of shows and I was asked to be a part of the mural festival and it just kind of rolled along and so my experience with art has been a lot less or being an artist has been a lot less sort of planned out it's just how things have kind of rolled out for me but I love it and I continue to want to grow and it's just been a really important decision for me to make as a person, as a human so my practice is Erin is actually that person right there is at the school but she was my student last year anyways yeah so I don't know thank you Tristis and Justin alright thank you thanks for having me here it's an honor to be here with these two great people and great artists so my journey I graduated from Emily Carr in 1999 1999 2000 wow time flies really soon after graduating I was approached by this local artist she had like an art studio she ran workshops for hobby artists and she was like I'll pay 20 bucks an hour if you come in and teach a figure drawing class and I'm like oh yeah yes that was my first and that was a lot of money at the time for me and it probably still is anyway so I took that opportunity and once I got in there I discovered that not only that I enjoyed teaching I didn't know that either I didn't know I was going to enjoy teaching and when I got in there it was like a little entrepreneurial side of me came out where I'm like well I can also teach abstract painting I can also teach abstract background or collage classes or portfolio development and within six months I was teaching five different courses at this little cute design shop this lady marine and that was the beginning of my teaching career and I used to serve tables in the summer you know make money so that I could help fund my time while I was in school and teaching became a better version of that that was a better job than serving tables and so teaching for me doing these kind of private classes outside of the school context was just a means of income and allowed me more time and freedom to be in the studio to paint because that's what's all about maximizing the amount of time you don't have to think about groceries and taxes and insurance and all the stuff that I'm currently thinking a lot about today actually so anyway so teaching became part of my path to make money and it was integrated it integrated its way into the way I thought about making art so it informed my art practice which was surprising and I'm sure everyone here can relate to that you want to learn something teach it or write a book on a topic you don't know about you learn everything about it so where do I go I mean there's so many things to talk about it's just like oh yeah canvas method yeah there's that anyway before I do that so once I was doing this private stuff with this little place eventually I was like well I should apply to teach it I'm like rejected until you have a master's degree and so I just did the continuing studies and then eventually I got my master's so I could teach at Emily Carr taught at Emily Carr for a while and that was great I loved it it's kind of like the dream right you got all these students that are ready to go for it and you can mold all of our minds together and yeah and then eventually I taught at Vancouver Film School and when you do your master's you teach I taught at University of Alberta and there was something I liked about the freedom of the independent classes that wasn't available within the university context which is to say for me to simplify it I found that at university there was a very big focus on conceptual practices and it was a little bit missing as far as the technical side of say drawing and painting I have a master's degree in painting but I've never been taught technically how to draw or paint and that's great I actually like that but I do think I'm one of the lucky few who had the kind of tenacity to figure that stuff out a lot of people they kind of quit that and do other things and become a dental surgeon or something I don't know so I became very interested with independent classes where I could bring technical into the focus as well as conceptual and then as my career advanced as an artist I came from kind of a love of the old like traditional kind of old master's renaissance stuff I have a my first muse was the human body life drawing class changed my life that first class and first day of art school was like wow I just want to draw the body and then eventually that ship sailed and it became more quote-unquote contemporary right and conceptual practices and creative practices bringing all those together so technical creative and conceptual I wanted to weave that all into one class not have them so segregated so I created in 2019 this private little school called canvas method has anybody heard of canvas method the marketing's got to improve I see so it's just it's the we offer classes seven days a week kind of like small classes 10 students at a time and the idea initially was for me to have all my dream students and we could just go on a journey together but now I'm not even teaching that much I hire teachers I bring in local talent to come in and teach classes and they're sharing their gifts with the students which is really amazing so my life now is more like a businessman I'm sitting on the computer like hiring people dealing with customer complaints and it's a it's not great that part of the business but but talk about a learning curve and like or not it's informing the way I think about art and it's informing the way I think about life and it's all very valuable so anyway I think that's the business side all that aside I love painting and I love drawing and that's all there is to it so that's simple thank you so much Dustin so we'll begin with some questions and you've touched a little bit on like the basics that you took in school but I'd like you to expand on what the programs offered you in terms of additional education or training that was required for you to either operate your business to teach in a university you've all touched on the MFA but maybe sharing a little bit more about that and Trista sharing more about the program you took at SFU it's asking me um yeah what did I learn in school I have I have feelings about that no I I I was really lucky in at Concordia I received you know very good education at least with regards to like all of the critical you know what Justin was just talking about like that kind of conceptual and critical sort of pathways um in Quebec there's a weird system it's not well it's different from here instead of having foundation year you basically finish high school at like 16 and then you go as a 16 year old um to college and it's like a two year program but it's it's by and large it's it's like a university it's called SAJEP the idea is you stay two years but sometimes people stay there for a really long time because it's um it's exciting and it's free um so it's kind of easy to stay there anyway um I had essentially done I guess the equivalent of like foundation and first year there I was focusing mostly on painting and drawing um and then uh finished up in performance somehow I don't know why but anyway that happened and then when I applied to go for my BFA um they like wouldn't recognize the credits that I had in painting and drawing and so I thought well I don't want to do all this all over again and hindsight it probably would have been fine and I would have just continued to get better um I'm not an amazing painter but um anyway I ended up saying well if I have to redo this then I'm just gonna go into video art and that's when it kind of really things really shifted for me I started doing lots of handmade animation, weird experimental video stuff um and that was great uh but I was always a little bit anxious as to how it would work when I got out of school like how was I going to pay the bills even though they weren't that expensive in Montreal they were still bills um you know how how was I gonna do that I was um I was bartending uh quite a bit and so that was that was fun but I could see that I was gonna crash and burn pretty rapidly I think that it was not something I could have done long term and so I started yeah I guess the the education that I received that was really helpful for me in terms of like how to be an artist and how to yeah like operate a career um was the kind of extracurricular stuff that I did on my own like launching a magazine um volunteering for absolutely everything I could possibly volunteer for I curated a festival there I curated uh many shows um I was like the arts editor for the school paper like all of these weird things that I had no experience or real necessarily like desire to get into but just to kind of figure it out and I remember we had no professional practice class and that's part of why I was teaching that um for quite some time here at Emily Carr because I really believe in that like just let people understand what some of the opportunities are and how to get there and I remember we were selling like raffle tickets um for like bottles of whiskey to like faculty members so that we could fundraise to afford bringing in artists to have these kinds of conversations with us um so so that was kind of I guess the education then I came I did my MFA um lovely people really helped me center my practice critically but in terms of teaching um the education that I received was by yeah for um this incredible theorist and session instructor Magnolia Parker just really yeah I can see some clapping and some smiles yeah just a beautiful person and such a generous teacher and in a way she kind of mentored me um through sort of teaching and how to go about it so yeah okay so um the question is like what kind of education do you need to get into teaching is that and then what the experiences okay so um I did my bachelor of fine art here at Emily Carr and then um I did a minor at SFU in English and if you're interested at all in going into secondary education so being a high school teacher which is what I do um it's so so important if you want to teach art to have another teachable subject so I just feel like I really need to pass that piece of information on to you um you often will apply for jobs where they have like multiple subject areas attached to art so it's very important if you speak another language or um if you have skills if you love English as well as I mean we have multiple or multi passionate subjects in lots of areas film studies photography like all these areas um it's so important to to um continue to learn about those things as well and also think about you know multiple subjects that you might want to teach if you're interested in going into secondary so um I did English um but I also actually did a film degree here and I'm I'm self taught in terms of painting um and as well in a lot of ways um uh and I also like think the whole professional practices of being an artist um is something that I didn't get at all when I was at Emily Carr but um really really dove into uh in terms of like entrepreneurial skills um so I don't know what they're offering here right now in regards to that stuff but um it's super important to to understand that like art there's a business aspect to being an artist and having those skills is super important and as a as a teacher um how if you wanted to go into high school teaching it's super important to probably have more than one teachable subject um also I want to say that you really really need to get in front of if you're interested in being a teacher in any shape way or form and any of the ways that you see up here then you need to get in front of some people and teach them and see how that makes you feel because um it is not for everybody um I I have taught many many student teachers over the years and I have watched people fall apart um and it's because mostly um that they had you know or I think it's in multiple things but I think people get into teaching because it's a it's a profession that uh is like a doctor, a teacher you know people talk about it it's understood what it is being an artist is totally misunderstood like people just don't know what artists do like how is that a thing really like how is that a job and so that's the professional practices aspect that you have to really like um try to uh you know teach yourself about but um uh yeah so I think a lot of people choose to go into teaching because it's just something that they understand as a profession but you need to embody it a little bit before you you really go into it because it is it is no joke especially at the high school level you know it's it puts the fear into people the high school level but it's actually like I really love it and it's amazing and my students are totally amazing and I and I and I'm honored to do it but but I have watched a lot of people crumble um very quickly that's great so we have like high school teacher university and teaching independent private classes it's a nice spread well selected well thought yeah um I always think of a painting teacher at least in the context that I teach is like I'm a psychologist with a brush and um I'm sure you guys can relate to that sometimes you feel like you're having a bit of a breakdown and your teacher is kind of helping you along the way or vice versa maybe but um have you funny teachers breaking down it's okay um yeah you know you'll learn on the job that's the best lesson for sure um I you know in doing my master's part of the master's program how many of you guys are thinking of doing master's programs yeah and is there anybody here that already knows or at least is questioning if teaching is a thing for you guys and then how many know for sure teaching is a thing oh good yeah yeah so uh yeah it's it's definitely like I like what you're saying Tristus about just it's one thing in your mind and then you go do it it's another it's a little that's tough and if you're naturally empathic it's okay and um I discovered early on that I love people and I actually believe in people and I actually believe that I can teach people and I can help guide people you know like I have that in me it's like natural eldest brother probably it's part of that dynamic who knows but so that helped a lot and then as a result of that we get in people's faces when it mattered and take a stand when it mattered and then or I would back off and let them take the path when it mattered you know so and I've heard people I've had people yell at me and people leave class and say people cry I've cried you know so it's not always like on the couch you know in class you're like you're in a psychology thing but but it's always there in the background and when you're dealing with people's creativity you're dealing with people's egos and so part of my training as a teacher has been I guess learning about myself as a human being overcoming my own problems and challenges within my family and doing personal development I've done you know in my early 20s I did a bunch of that self help you know you read those self help books I was like addicted to that stuff my language was like laden with that annoying you know I gotta maximize myself you know I have an elderly friend who used to tell me to shut up all the time and and then that ship sailed and then I got quiet and just lived life and then I got into more spirituality and as an artist I was interested in the human body so I got into yoga and had a background in playing sports a lot so you know you start learning about all these things and you bring that into your teaching so you know in the middle of class I noticed the energies low I'm like everybody outside we're gonna do some stretches you know stuff like that practices that I can suggest that exercises I can give to them to help them warm up before they do their real work I have this whole thing called I'm allowed to swear her buckets so I have this practice called buckets and it's like a warm up before you get down to do the real work and I did that because I'm a recovering perfectionist you know I'm the opposite of loose so I spent my whole career as an artist learning how to loosen up and so all those little exercises they actually became my serious work and all the serious work disappeared so now I'm committed to play and let loose that's like everything for me and then so that's where I teach from so I think as a teacher the students teach you and what you teach and the word teach too much it's like it's just it informs your practice and watching light bulbs go off in people's eyes and that's the cool thing about teaching is you can change people's direction and path in life. I had a friend who was a lawyer he became painter he just left it all and he moved to Europe and that's a whole other story and I'm like I'm sorry or you're welcome I'm not sure which one it is I used to do a lot of like almost like field work I used to go to the morgue to study human bodies for anatomy and I thought it was going to be a long kind of experience and I got there and it was a totally different experience soaked it in and I went back multiple times and then I used to explore like topics like because we're visual artists like the subject of blindness and how does imagery exist in the minds of the blind for example so I started exploring blindness and I started exploring all these topics but I would put myself into it kind of like intensely and then I would come out of it and then I would teach from that place so I would do these tests all the time I'm not too crazy I don't do like crazy awesome performative work too much but so those experiences teach me a lot about how to teach but I don't know how to answer the question other than life teaches you everything you need to know and the students teach you how to teach and trial and error and then yeah but you know that's a great thing about when you teach in high school you have to go learn about pedagogy and my brother teaches in high school and he's one of the most committed teachers I've ever seen he did his master's in education and they learn all these various models of pedagogy and it's incredible listening to him talk and like wow you're really committed to like teaching people you know it's a whole other level so but I'm just trying to show people how to paint and have a good time so it's pretty simple yeah so anyway is that good? I think I talked to him sorry about that so the next question I have is how do you keep your practice alive during your major job and how do you ensure you have enough creative energy to maintain that art practice when you're also sharing it with all of your students? Yes um thanks Sarah I feel like you and I have maybe talked about that as well in the past um energy right now I have a two year old toddler so energy is a whole other situation he did not let me sleep much last night um that's okay he's cute and sweet so it's all right yeah day job well I think for me part of the um okay so it's sort of I think I'm this person that kind of um how do I say it in a non-negative I almost had like two faced or two sided but that's not true no um I don't know thank you I think it's more with regards to energies right like I can be extremely um extroverted and recently I've been uh going there's so many more openings now and they're so huge and so many people and it's a party and I'm like yes I'm there for it I love it I'm just feeding up like I feel like a vampire I'm just going and I'm like give me your energy um so that's been really great but then on revenge like the other side is is you know this intro version that I think a lot of us have as artists as well of just needing to have that time and space and quiet so that you can actually um think and and make right and so when I when I had finished my BFA um I was I was like I said quite fortunate um I got gallery representation right away and so and and a couple of grants and things so I was able actually to just take a year as a full-time artist in the studio I wasn't selling anything didn't you know um didn't didn't work out that well but um but I could have um I could have kind of kept kept going that way I was just um I was miserable just being in the studio full time all the time I was miserable uh because I think I was lacking that energy right of the people and the interaction um and so then I kind of went the absolute opposite way I started running um festivals and nonprofits and being on all these boards and then it was the total opposite life of just you know you're hired for 30 hours a week and it's really 50 hours a week but you're just paid for 30 hours a week like that kind of thing if any of you have done the nonprofit stuff you know um but then I realized oh I'm like this I'm really miserable too like working um and so for me what works best is this sort of um a little bit like what Troustes was saying I think like this kind of part time um approach with the teaching so that I have more time and energy uh in the studio and then when I do go to the studio it's um you know it's full on and I'm 100% there and I'm 100% present as opposed to that year where I was just kind of I mean I was doing stuff I was doing shows and you know I had I had all kinds of um uh shows like internationally I was traveling it was fun but but there was a lot of wasted time there was a lot of TV watching there was a lot of just like having existential crises um and uh yeah it was uh you know was was not the best um but now every time I mean especially because I have a toddler now so every minute counts but but the teaching of um allows me to be able to undertake that kind of um mentor role that's really important to me and that energizes me and that I get so much value out of while also offering a kind of structure so that then uh on my studio days I do have a lot of energy and focus um so I typically only teach two or three classes a term uh out of choice so that I have that time for the studio every now and then I'll do a term where I'm teaching like a full on you know five courses uh and then it's really hard I have to hire studio assistants I have to do all this other stuff I don't get to do any of the fun work in the studio I have to kind of pay other people to do it because I don't have time and then I realize my energies are not yeah that that kind of creeping like I'm not feeling so happy and energetic starts coming back so yeah it's a it's a balancing act I guess so it's really interesting to hear your stories because I think there's a lot of crossover in a lot of ways um so I think that life uh often you'll you'll get into something you'll get a teaching job I I you know for me I I worked full time for 12 years and and for me teaching full time in a high school was like you know I was the department head I had um you know a course load I was running clubs but it was um I wasn't happy like um and then you know this event happened and I um then had the courage to really sort of follow my art career so I think we all have personal experiences that and you're gonna have your own kind of path to follow but I've had kind of a similar experience in that then I was able to kind of work with art and and dive into art and it actually kind of exploded for me in the first couple years that I was making art sort of and calling myself an artist I got a lot of like attention and um and then I sort of realized like that was that felt um it was a bit a bit overwhelming and now I feel like I'm getting to a point after like being an artist or practicing art for about 12 or no 10 years now I feel like I'm getting into a rhythm that is good for me so I think we all have our um you know you kind of dive deep into something and then you'll realize where your boundary is in terms of like um how to make it work for you and that's and and I think there's something really wise about the introvert extrovert thing is that for me personally too I think teaching really grounds me it's I go I'm dealing with you know great you know great people young people that um represent a lot of hope and the future and it's very it's just like a grounding kind of um um state to be in and then going to the studio can be very open it's like when you are responsible to um set your own criteria and come up with work that can be very overwhelming and it's also isolating so for me it's like a really nice balance to have those two things in my life and I'm fortunate that I am in a circumstance where I can do that um so uh maintaining a practice is actually really easy for me because it's kind of almost like um my wellness routine like I go into the studio and and just fooling around and working and being with artists like I love being around artists it's like I wear those you know I love you know like it is my it is my people so teaching in my sphere at uh at the secondary level is quite conservative and so I have always you know or it tends to be more conservative and so I've always um you know not quite identified with that tribe and so having artists and and being creative and being around people that are doing interesting things has been really important for me so um yeah for me it's like I just go in the way I maintain my practices I practice and I when I've read about other people's uh creative practices you know other you know you've there's lots of books about how other people have you know writers filmmakers um artists visual artists and so on it's usually that they just go in and just do the work even if they don't feel like it so it's like really a practice that was awesome um if for me this question relates to artist block or what happens when you know you're you're having a hard time to use the phrase drink to keep drinking the cool idea or you lose faith or you're like you know what I mean like am I making pictures to hang above rich people's coaches or a lot of times for example or or is this idea of you know I'm exploring squares right now and just blocking squares with color it's like the stupidest idea and I'm totally into it but then sometimes I'm like is it stupid I think it's still stuff you know so and then keeping your energy while you're teaching you know you put all this energy out how to keep your energy in right so that whole life work balance thing um so it relates for me anyway this question to artist block or how do you deal with the psychological tools to keep you physically present you know that famous saying from Chuck Close uh something something to the effect about inspiration it's like it starts every morning at 9am be there um or inspiration is for beginners you know so in other words it's just uh don't wait for the inspiration it's all about just showing up and being there you can heroize the whole work hard thing but it's really just being there you know it's a relationship and um so for me as an artist I recognized and I want to throw something also there um when I was an undergrad in school I was super committed to becoming technically good at drawing the human figure for whatever reason it was a bad idea when I look back at um 47 now when I was 24 the difference between my talent level then and where I'm at now is actually like this but I spent the last 30 years trying to get better and what I didn't know then which I wish I knew now then is that I was good enough back then and I could have focused on more conceptual practices but I was so technically I had a weird hang up I did say I was a recovering perfectionist uh yeah for me I had a certain vision and I was miles away from it but now looking back I was actually good enough to participate in contemporary figurative painting because contemporary figurative painting now it's it's more about not traditional approaches is to representation but coming up with your own problems and coming up with your own solutions right uh Dana Schutz you guys know Dana Schutz for example anybody come on you guys you gotta know Dana Schutz anyway um so it's in that's what art school taught me that's what Emily Carr taught me it's like the most talented people are sometimes like visibly the less talented you know they're creative in other ways and um getting a little bit off track here oh yeah so I came out of school having this technical skill and that's what got me the job to be able to teach so if I had any kind of advice if you guys are interested in like maybe not teaching in the university context but you want to survive in teaching independently is to become really damn good at some technical thing so that people pay you money to do it so for example if I teach a workshop this is going but I've been doing this for the last 20 years I would teach a two-day workshop to 10 people and I'd make about three thousand dollars in two days and then I would only have to teach one weekend per month so that I could guess what I could do for the rest of the month I live with roommates I keep all my expenses down I haven't bought clothes in years and um and then you just it's not the same clothes for 20 years but my wife keeps me in check anyway and then and then so it was this really beautiful life work balance where I could teach for two days and then I could live for the rest of the month and then just paint full-time and then once in a while I would teach two classes and then it's like oh I have enough money maybe go to Seattle go see some art museums or something so in other words get paid too much money for the time that you're spending working like how can you do that $16 an hour is what I made when I served tables um that was fine it was great at the time and then and then and then I decided one time to start commercial fishing in the summers which that thickly has a lot of problems but it paid the bills and I did that for five years I spent the whole year on the sea doing commercial fishing and I come back from that very kind of blue-collared lumberjack mode of thinking to like high-minded you know art my hands are all blistered and stuff and um so the live work balance um the energy yeah it's too much to answer I don't even know where to begin I think I think you did great so my final question before we open this up to the floor for any questions among the audience including our zoom attendees is what is something you wish you knew about teaching that you would tell your younger self and what advice would you give to somebody looking to pursue teaching yeah all right um so I actually canvassed all of the teachers in Vancouver the art teachers about like what do I need to tell you people and um here's the list yeah so teaching is really a service job you are in the service of your students and are responsible in part for getting them through you can't pick and choose your students everyone is allowed to go to school and you should ask yourself if you like people hope is a discipline um I got that from my principal today and I love her she's an amazing person and I do believe that it is our responsibility as teachers to give hope to people um teaching is incredibly rewarding it is a long game in that you affect people and might not find out how much for years you can change the course of a person's life and that and that's one of the reasons why I actually think that you know gives you strength when you're having a really difficult time to get up in the morning um because of that that you can actually affect people um develop a self-care routine as teaching demands a lot of energy and the need can be endless this is going to us party sparks might ease for you guys too um we have a responsibility to fill in the areas of history that have been ignored give teaching space to indigenous ways of learning BIPOC artists and their histories and there's probably stuff I'm leaving out there um you really need to be honest with yourself about your disposition and energy are you comfortable being in front of people and leading do you have patience I have taught many students and I told you this already that many student teachers that have really had a hard time and you don't want to spend too much time putting energy into this profession if it's not for you and you'll figure it out pretty quickly um the best way to control a class is to know your stuff and feel or energized and excited by the subject matter if you continue to teach a subject for a long time you need to constantly adapt and change in high school there's a lot of people that are just calling it in and we've all had teachers and if it's boring for you that translates into the students my principal also said it's all about relationships relationships I highly recommend that you teach a few classes before you go into teaching like teach your parents how to do something get feedback from them like give it a try um sorry you guys I just wrote down all this stuff um okay when you do the professional development year for secondary teaching or elementary teaching don't do anything else it is demanding it is important to follow codes of conduct the community is small and gossip and behaviors are noticed so treat your colleagues with respect even if you don't like them um make friends with the custodians and the office staff they are very powerful that's awesome do you want to come in please? thank you so much Sarah kindly sent us these questions ahead of time but I guess we were all I don't know how to tunnel vision in the studio I shouldn't say all myself thank you Tristess so a couple of things I'd love to just um yeah respond to one of the one of the things that you brought up especially within higher ed um we talk about decolonization so much now it's become you know a big kind of buzz word which is great because it's something that we need to think about but it's rare that it's sort of enacted within the curriculum it's one thing to sort of disrupt the canon and bring in voices that have been maybe kind of cast aside or obfuscated or just not kind of given that central space that's super super important but in terms of teaching practices beyond that I think it also extends to how we expect people to learn and the kinds of activities we expect them to do and the deliverables that we ask of them so this is you know I don't know if this extends to all areas of teaching but certainly within higher ed for myself something that I've done is give students numerous different options in terms of how they do the work I've let students turn in comic books animated videos now zooms a thing so everybody's doing video lectures but we weren't doing that when I started and kind of letting them turn in a paper that way if that's something that's more comfortable to them and so I think that if we keep sort of trying to move into that direction so that the institution isn't just kind of pressing everybody into a mold and then letting them go and say great now you all sort of speak the same language and are doing the exact same thing or working in the same style and so I think that that's something maybe to think about right are you are you willing to kind of have that diligence and be creative with regards to sort of yeah disrupting maybe the system a little bit and changing things up but also seeing students as as individuals and kind of thinking that through a little bit then the other part of it I don't know maybe I'll get in trouble for saying some of these things should I do it I'm going to do it this is again with regards to higher ed in particular I've also done I think Tristess was saying teach like start you can do some trial kind of teaching and so I think many community centers and municipal galleries are always looking for artists to do some kind of a workshop or facilitate something so those can be really great places to try you don't need an MFA for that you don't even need a BFA but if you have the BFA it certainly helps you know give that extra oomph and credence when you're when you're kind of applying but those are all great opportunities I've done that as well I've had like I said before there's really like a hierarchy structure and for me it wasn't really made clear I guess like the economics of it now that I think of it I'm like what were you thinking we graduate about 450 students from the BFA programs every year at Emily Carr I know that because I used to manage the grad show and it was not so many people so much it was great but then if you think of that let's say 10% of those people or a quarter of those people go and take an MFA because they want to teach and I'm saying this because I teach in the grad program and a lot of my students that's when you ask them why they're doing an MFA that's why they're like oh I want to go teach like it's a golden ticket kind of thing and unfortunately the economics don't make sense if you think of how many people are graduating from a master's program and want to teach right it's like okay but then wait like then the teacher to student ratio has to be what like one to one or one to three it just doesn't make sense and obviously I'm not math minded because I would have realized that I don't know that I even thought about that it just people were encouraging me so much to go into teaching once I realized that I liked it that I didn't quite understand those complexities it's really hard to get in right and then once you're in to get more than a class here and there is super difficult as well it's extremely competitive it is not based on how hard you work or how badly you want it or even who you know there's just so much else at play there as well and so I guess it's just a little bit of a real talk because that's what I'm about yes if you're excited to go into teaching higher ed do it I'm not trying to reign on your parade I love it I'm loving my life everything's great I love my students it's you know it's a happy happy time but just be aware that it's not because you get that masters right that that's naturally going to kind of occur or take place academia is more and more relying on part of the program contract workers as opposed to hiring professors and we see that I won't give you the stats for Emily Carr because that's not what I'm here for but but it's just something to kind of yeah keep keep in mind be aware of I think that it used to be a golden goose MFA graduates were so limited but now MFAs have become away for universities to make money I'm from the program I thought it was great and every you know I think the few people I've spoken to tonight that did MFA seem to love it too but it's not the only way exactly it's not the only way and yeah it's yeah I don't know does that make sense I hope I didn't like yeah my level if you want to know what teachers make online but yeah but in terms of like the economics of it like what everything that I like is your salary getting to more than well like you're saying that it costs a lot of money to get your MFA but and it you want to be a teacher it's very competitive to get into the post-secondary world right that's that's super important that's important to think about because so I we can talk about if anybody needs help with scholarships just come see me I did get like a paid ride for my MFA so that was fine but I have a friend who went I won't say where it's not in Canada it's in the States she graduated with $350,000 US of debt from her MFA and now she's been out five years still has not been able to get even a sessional teaching role so that's really yeah okay you have to approach it like with I think you can approach these things with different like my I have a son that's 19 and he's thinking about getting his welding ticket but he also is that wants to be an artist as well and so he can hear in a year from now and then be able to like probably afford to do so different ways to get where you're going you know yeah okay yeah it was perfect everything you guys said that was really great I was actually wanting to say a lot of that stuff but because I don't teach her currently I was like maybe I shouldn't go there so thank you for saying it for me it's okay nobody saw it hi yeah one piece of advice I'd give to people is to go speak to people who are currently in that industry like don't live in your imagination there's going to be this and that just go speak to the people so when I was doing my masters in Edmonton at the University of Alberta I spoke to a bunch of higher ups like so tell me the truth what's it like in a full-time teaching position and they're like it's one third one third one third you get one third for teaching one third for your own practice and then one third for all the extra community based things to service and such for the university itself I'm like what the hell's that what's service and then I'm like how much do you actually get to do your own work so you start you know when I interviewed a few instructors it was like oh I'm not going to actually get to do my own work that much you get fairly good pay good you know benefits and security that's the real issue here how many of you are freaking out because of the issues of security not you guys but in general so your relationship to security and your relationship to insecurity is usually what's the issue that's what it's about and being an artist you have to be comfortable in that insecurity position not to the point of self-collapse but so that's a different conversation so when I discovered through my interviews of teachers that it was not an alignment with how I want to live my life I want to be with a bottle of wine in my studio making money passively while I'm in Mexico painting on a freaking mirror or something like that you're all welcome to come yeah like I just I just just want to paint it's that old it's just simple that way paint you know that's the dream right anyway for me so talk to the people who are already doing it have a lot of experience and ask them the hard questions the ones that you're afraid to ask those are the ones you want to ask and yeah yeah it's really great and then you hear things you don't want to hear bubbles pop it's reality check okay so that would be that and then as far as that so that's institutional teaching and the question was like advice yeah what would you tell your younger self about teaching that you wish you knew yeah yeah well I would say when I was young the dream of having my own class was what it was all about like that kind of like you know you get to all work together and that ship sailed after about two years of teaching and then all these people became a pain in the ass I'm joking but it became a real job like we had to really service these people it was a service thing it was a service thing and then I was like oh this isn't about you Justin this isn't about me and my dream it's about giving something to these people and I felt exhausted after a three hour class I'm like how many more of these classes do I have to do so the fitness the wellness balance thing yeah yeah yeah so it's like any job it's exhausting if you don't handle it the right way so thank you guys so much so we do have one question on zoom and then I'm gonna open it up to the rest of the room and this question is for Justin for teaching independently is there a preferred platform for teaching online that's a big question obviously now right post pandemic online education a preferred platform no there's so many competing ones and it's the question is there a preferred platform for yeah I mean there's just and what's the topic what's the discipline do we know painting drawing sculpture yeah whatever I would say canvas method online art school we are creating an online school but I'm not plugging my PC yeah I don't know there's just so many it's impossible to answer it but like new masters academy there's all these institutions it's drawing right yeah I mean I hate to say it but it's probably the best one out there it's proko p-r-o-k-o if you want to learn how to draw things that look like things it's probably the best cheapest most affordable thing out there and if you wanted to teach what about teach your own classes like what would you use if he wants to do what I do yeah oh and the advice I'd give him yes oh get good at something and get really good at it like technically because that's what people are going to pay you for they're not going to pay you for conceptual stuff unfortunately it's the technical you know green assault right but yeah the portfolio development so yeah in blunt but it's kind of true and like what online how do you teach online is it just oh yeah well we have you know with all these platforms that are out there now you know you I have a camera room where we have four cameras and they're filming me while I'm painting and talking to the camera mixing my colors and close up camera and it's all simultaneous and and then I look at the camera I'm like hey everyone I'm going to show you guys how to paint the face today we're going to start with gray colors and put color on it and then we're going to slap a bunch of drips on it and so all digital it's just you know hire someone who knows how to set it up and just get in front of the camera and go but then that oh man getting in front of the camera that's scary hearing your own voice not good it's the worst yeah yeah and you upload those on YouTube or do you have a yeah so we're in the beginning phases at canvas method of creating the online school and we're going to be hiring teachers abroad like around the world to do their own lessons from their own studios as well as we have an in-house studio where we're going to bring teachers in it's again my vision is to not make it about me at all it's to get it into the hands of people who like I don't do watercolors I don't know how to do still lives get it to the pros hire the plumber to do the plumbing yeah yeah yeah it's it's what's fascinating what online classes to is that you have those videos forever so we know when I do a demonstration to a live class a lot of those students are going to miss what I'm doing or they're going to forget about it with the online you have it for life those videos you can always learn those things and I think that's an advantage with the online plus you're also close to the painting when I'm demonstrating how to do a tiny thing in an eye for example that gets lost when you're six feet ten feet behind me but if you're there with the the film right incredible those are some advantages but nothing like the real thing you know being in class of course and for the room are there any questions what would you say are some of the factors that helped you break into post secondary breaking into it in terms of like teaching in terms of getting the MFA teaching yeah I think I think just passion right passion just just a deep sort of yeah passion or like commitment to making art and to teaching right like I think that an MFA can be problematic if you're taking it strictly because you want to teach because your work may not evolve very much and you may get you know very limited learning from it but if you take it because you're just super passionate about it then I think that the rest will kind of come out through that I think that it can be I mean it's been tremendously important for my practice and then in terms of teaching or breaking into it kind of just being yeah doing being visible a lot doing a lot of volunteering offering to take on maybe some of the things that other people don't necessarily want to do like that you know TAing or leading seminars like those things are always kind of they're definitely like a little bit rougher to sort of take on but doing that being visible when I when I started teaching I was teaching a lot within like I said I was kind of teaching everywhere like I was doing a class or two here then a quant land people knew that I was teaching the things that I was teaching and so I was getting calls from community centers galleries and then I was doing that because that then really helps you to build up your CV as well so I think that showing this is what I always tell my students when they're kind of building CVs or thinking about those opportunities is like nobody's expecting you when you're starting out to be to be a pro or to be a master of anything right but they are expecting you to be passionate and so how do you show that passion it's by yeah teaching and mentoring kind of as much as you can putting yourself in those situations as much as you can and then when you do then apply you've already got kind of something more robust than just saying well I got my piece I paid the money I got my piece of paper right and focusing on developing your portfolio too and I think that this is a bit of the catch 22 that we've all been kind of discussing is that if you want to teach people hire you to teach because of your practice because they find it interesting either technically proficient or you know conceptually interesting or you've shown all over the place and that's really inspiring to people so you need to have the time to develop that right so whether that means taking time between the BFA and the masters I'm a huge you know advocate for that go live your life and see what happens and unfolds yeah show your passion take some time don't worry too much about getting everything done right then and there and give your time give yourself the time to develop your practice as well then the hard thing will be they hire you because of your practice but then you're teaching so much that then well when do you do your practice and so you know in a way yeah I don't know it's all about found finding balance but I think that's I think that's kind of the case no matter what you do as an artist it's always like a balancing act right hold on okay sorry I wasn't sure if it's working this is like I guess a two-parter question the first is like you all have an MFA is that correct yes yeah okay no problem what would you say about like getting a masters in a more specific version of sort of MFA for example I'm an illustrator I am looking into getting a master's of illustration would you say that that is like a little bit riskier is it better to be more general or is it better to be more specific and then the second part of this is like not totally related but I've also heard that like you shouldn't get your master's where you want to teach would you say that that is true or would you say that that is a falsehood and a lie we got in that last one about like don't do your masters where you want to teach I think that depends on the school so at University of Alberta in Edmonton where I went a lot of the people who were teaching were graduates of the program and they had a tighter knit family feeling among the staff there I'm not sure what the culture is like here I haven't taught here for about eight years maybe do you want to crack that first question yeah yeah I think that generally speaking this again is a catch to everything I feel like I'm just everything's like black and white coming out of my mouth it's all yeah it depends but basically okay so on the one hand if you get a degree elsewhere right and then you come and apply let's say here right definitely you'll be it's not definitely it depends but okay there's there's a certain appeal right to bringing in a prof from somewhere else because then they're bringing with them a whole other body of knowledge right and other connections and other institutions that that they kind of can bring in maybe for partnerships and all of that so there's something really exciting about that that can be very helpful but the other reality is that we're humans right humans love to as much as it bothers me how nepotistic the art world is we're humans and so it's sort of like this this is kind of what happens right people people want to bring people in or learn from people that you know I don't know you're like oh you also know about I don't know the culture here the community here like there's an appeal to that the other thing is yeah but then you've you've sort of got a community there you're comfortable there you have ties so I think that I think that it depends for me it was accidental I wasn't doing a masters thinking in any way about teaching I was just I don't know what I was thinking taking a a break from being in the studio full-time or focusing on commercial stuff I don't know but it kind of then accidentally happened I got my masters here I taught a little bit and then I just kind of you know I left for a few years going going to quantum but yeah just kind of kept doing things here so I don't know there's sort of pros and cons to both I think it also depends on the university you go to maybe more so than the city if you go to some small college in the middle of nowhere that nobody's ever heard of in a city that is you know just not really a city then it's it's going to be hard then to get a job in the city right but so kind of thinking about it yeah that way there's the pros and cons you know think when when you're applying to a masters think what what are the criteria do you need do you need funding do you need connections do you need studio space do you need mentorship and sort of pick the ones that are like list them in terms of priority and then make your choices kind of that way is right is what I would say then there was another part to oh yeah the the specificity of the degree I think it's yeah I feel like I want to say it's better to be broad because right because then you have a lot more opportunities and then you know your practice can develop probably a lot more as well but a lot of universities are still working in silos where they want to hire a specialist in this very particular niche and so in that case like if you know that you want to teach illustration then yeah why not get an illustration masters it can't hurt I guess yeah my first teaching position at Emily Carr after I did my masters was anatomy and I'm like oh big surprise that's something I specialize in and I didn't do my masters in anatomy because there's no such thing that'd be funny for drawing anyway and then but what I found I wasn't getting teaching positions outside of my specialty and that was because my practice as an artist didn't engage in those really you know boundary pushing all the different disciplines sort of blurring all those edges I was like everything's inside the frame it's kind of like traditional painting right so it depends if you want to be a specialist or if you want to be a more interdisciplinary approach I would say it's like so I think that determines what you would do in your masters that's what I would think or just do a masters or just beg the masters and just become an artist and support your own another way to go about it is don't do the education teach yourself and support your creativity anyway that you can and that's like something that I think a lot of people do teach themselves how to make art or just practice art and I know a lot of artists that have done that and are doing really well with it and if you become very good they give you honorary degrees I don't know I'm just like I'm very much about like do think outside the box there isn't one way to there's no one road and I think one of the kind of scary things about right now is that we you know as like white color workers we you know we're at we hope that our kids go you know I have two 19 year olds I hope you know I was like at first I hope they would go to university but like I said my like if you go into the trades you can do very well and support your art in other ways so I don't know I just don't want to like I want to say that it's not the only way to go about this this thing and especially art if you if you become very good at something you're just good at it you know like you you have that you will always have that yeah I was just a little bit curious when just what exactly goes into getting a masters because because I've been hearing that term be thrown around but I'm still like for me personally I'm still a little bit confused what exactly a masters is or what goes into getting one to begin with I mean that's the after your bachelor's degree you would the next step forward is the master's degree so and then applying for that position is extremely competitive for a fine artist it's a lot because all these fine artists require studio spaces in the universities don't have a lot of studio spaces to offer so in the program I was offered they offered two positions per year so and I applied to ten schools that got accepted into two and I thought I was pretty good the hell I'm just joking but and it was a two year program and I stayed for three because it was so awesome the studio was bigger than any studio I'd ever had in my life and the funding was incredible so like you know when so when you're applying to do your masters essentially it means that you want to take your practice as an artist at a level in a more concentrated fashion so don't do it just because you think you should don't follow the puppy mill factory path I took ten years between I didn't even think I was going to do my masters and then I realized oh I'm not trying to sell art I had exhibited in galleries for years before my masters I had a pretty successful commercial thing and then that ship sailed I was like I'm not interested in putting pictures above coaches so I went into the studio and I wasn't making any money I was getting broke and I thought I should go to school because that's kind of what being a students like you know and and so that's what the masters was for me is I got to focus on my work and the comfort of the institution and they paid me to go to school for three years was awesome kind of like an escape from life anyway I keep swearing just like an extended like an extended residency yeah yeah and I met my beautiful wife there I mean hello no anyway you find your tribe yeah yeah so does that answer your question about the masters like the next it's the next level of schooling usually two years yeah I mean there might be an exception and usually the way that it's usually loosely structured is that you'll have kind of two classes maybe three classes per term one is going to be pure studio and it's completely open and self driven and self motivated but everybody else is there just to kind of give you critiques and put a fire under your seat you know the other class is going to be more around kind of you know art theory conceptual all the conceptual kind of stuff and helping you to zero in on what your ideas are so that you can write a thesis and usually and then there may be another class that's kind of like this like showing up to lectures and you know or doing studio visits or that kind of thing and usually the output of a master's program in order to graduate is a large body of work so probably something substantial enough so that you could have a proper like solo show or one kind of really complex more complex kind of project and a thesis so here at Emily Carr we do yeah we do ask for a thesis which is I don't know I think mine was about 60 pages but that included like the bibliography I think now they've actually shortened it because they thought they were asking for too much but that's yeah that's part of it yeah you gotta do the writing too so that was the appeal for me at the university well you did it from program so some schools other research focused others are studio focused so if you know you just want to shut up and make work and talk about it later University of Alberta for the fine arts department and then I know for a fact the design department is totally different it's complete research focused exactly yeah yeah so that was the appeal to me of that school I was clear that the conceptual side of things super important but I didn't want to put them I didn't want to write a 60 page paper on I want to paint I saw somebody's CV recently we got the money exactly Hi well that's loud I guess when I think about career pathways I personally get filled with a lot of kind of doubt like the whole decision making process of it and I was kind of wondering if any of you experienced any of that kind of doubt about picking where you want to go in your in your careers and if so how did you deal with that how did you finally kind of buckle down and do it you know well so I went into teaching it for very practical reasons like I said and then self doubt oh my god self doubt can be so crippling and so honestly because I was diagnosed with cancer it just was like a total slap across the face and I hope for everybody in the room that you don't have to have that type of slap but I do think for me like as an artist I always felt like when I was at art school I felt very like I was kind of a fraud and you know I knew that I was being with this type of people and talking about artwork and I was really interested in artwork but I never felt like kind of good enough and so it took a real like intense thing to happen to me to like kind of have the strength but what I can say on the other side of that is that I really think be creative just be creative just like it's a really great term about being courageous because when you say that it's just like a platitude but when you're radically courageous it means that you don't feel courageous that you feel scared you have all the doubt and all of that stuff but you throw yourself out there like just step forward and do it like put the art on the wall try to get a show call yourself an artist a teacher whatever it is be like call yourself that own it and then do the practice and I think that that's I mean it really doesn't matter like the doubt and all of that stuff is just it just holds you back you have to like embrace it so I like that idea of radical courageousness in that you are being courageous even though you do not feel like it or you don't know where that's coming from so and then what I would say is also surround yourself with people that you admire that are giving you feedback that is really helpful and helping you grow and that support you so they're not I had shown people art of mine and they're just like I don't know they just didn't get it and it made me feel terrible but if you surround surround yourself with people that can give you great feedback that will move you along you know that's very very important I think that's a great question and an important one and in our society we kind of look at doubt and fear and failure and the wrong light those are necessary components of everything that is in life you know failure is the greatest lesson you gotta fail so don't be afraid of it lean into it I always say that if I'm not scared in my own paintings I'm comfortable and I know what that yields what kind of results that yields so I'm always putting pressure on myself to surprise myself every single painting it's that's where the tribe your crew the matters people who get it they come in they see your work and they're like well no one of my best friends comes into my studio painter who I respect a lot and he says what do you think and he goes your colors are pretty candy like they're pretty sweet like sugary that's critique I ever got totally messed me up for about six months it was so to the point so anyway you need your crew and when you leave school you're at risk of losing that and that's actually something if I could go back in time I would have maintained those relationships and I would have held on to them as much as possible the other thing I would go back in time is I'd be more vulnerable I have been so afraid of opening up and opening up and showing my work I've got a good friend who's courageous he just moved to Berlin and shows his work all the time and he's flourishing right now and I think it's because of that courage to be vulnerable and I'm just scared and because it can derail you if you get a critique in the wrong time it can really mess with you have any of you guys experienced that how long did it take you out for anybody like anybody like six months four months four months no from another two weeks and then that happens multiple times in your life so I've gone through about four massive blows four and it took a lot to get my pieces back up and then it was usually the voice of someone who knows they're familiar with what you're going through and they know how to pick you up yeah I just think don't be afraid of that stuff leaning to it because that's actually what you are subjected to determines your subjectivity so subject yourself to some interesting stuff don't be lame about it, don't be comfortable we've already seen all that stuff you got to make something new for the world that's what we're doing here right trying to shake people up I'm pumped up here yeah it's I love what you're saying we're not going into manufacturing we're going into making art and so it's going to be super uncomfortable I know artists that are in their 80s that have won all the awards that have had all the shows and all the museums that I'm just like wow if I could make it to that point in my career I'll have made it I've made something of myself but they have self doubt and they're like oh nobody likes me and nobody wants my work and they're having the exact same kind of internal dialogue that all of us have even when we're just starting out so I think keeping that in mind knowing that no level of success won't cure you of that in a way is kind of nice because you can just see it as another one of your tools and the color on your on your palette is that self doubt and it's okay you can kind of dip into it I think accepting it is really important there's an artist who's actually an alumni from here Vanessa Brown a sculptor and I invited her once to speak to my class and she said this really interesting technique that she had that she shared with us was a CV of failures and I just thought that's so interesting because you're not going to get any opportunities if you don't put yourself out there so you're not going to feel better you're not going to have anything to look back on and be like no it's okay I am kind of on the right path unless you put yourself out there but when you're emerging you have to kind of apply to 20 opportunities in order to get one yes and that's and a lot of people kind of quit or stopped doing it because of that because it's super hard and her technique of almost celebrating those rejections and having a long list and it was a long CV and she's a very successful artist so it was interesting to see but the more knows that you get just gets you closer to that yes and so I think seeing it that way it's all kind of a matter of perspective and then I'd like to echo what I'm saying too about community like build community go to openings yeah it's your job as an artist is to go and be there for other artists and be there for your community and support them we can't expect others to support us if we're not supporting them and if you go and you show up even though it's uncomfortable I know artists are not usually necessarily the most outgoing bunch of the openings in the parties yeah it was a conscious effort that I made but eventually you realize it was the same faces right and then maybe eventually they see you two three times and then they start talking to you and then you start making friends and the next thing you know you're in like the art community and you've got the people that just and Justin are talking about the people that can give you that feedback and then you know you're an artist and then that helps you to kind of recognize yourself as that as well thank you I think that's the perfect note to close this on we have a bunch of snacks over there please have them stick around talk to the panelists and let's give them a round of applause