Art Education in Saskatchewan – Panel Discussion at AKA Gallery

Image from AKA Gallery website.

On Saturday February 28th, AKA Gallery in Saskatoon held a panel as a follow up to it’s exhibition, The Bachelor (of Fine Arts) Party. The juried exhibition featured four students from the University of Regina (UofR) and four students from the University of Saskatchewan (UofS). The panel discussion was on the topic of BFA pedagogy in Saskatchewan and its place within fine arts education. The panel featured a representative from the UofR, Prof. David Garneau, a representative from the UofS, Bart Gazzola, two UofR students and one UofS student.

I have posted a transcript of the panel below. It is a shortened transcript that touches on the main points in the discussion. Prompted by Canadian Art’s “art schools” issue, my hope is to start a comparative examination of pedagogy across the country.

Panelists:

David Garneau, Associate Professor of Painting, Drawing and Critical Theory at the University of Regina. He is also a painter, critic and a curator.

Bart Gazzola, artist and writer, new media instructor at the University of Saskatchewan

Rachel Ludlow, fourth year painting student at the University of Regina, director of student-run gallery The Fifth Parallel

Amber Reed, new graduate of the bachelor of fine arts program at the University of Saskatchewan

Erin Gee, fourth year inter-media student at the University of Regina.

Facilitator:

Tod Emel, Artistic Director, AKA Gallery

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Tod: What do you think is the situation of BFA education in this province?

David: I attended a panel that went on for four hours in Toronto in November on the topic of new PhD programs… PhD students, it struck me, were from all different backgrounds. There were senior artists like Risa Horowitz, who did her masters here about 8 or 9 years ago, who are just fed up with not having a job and are attempting to connect in some way with the system…

For me the BFA though, is a place for naïveté. For two years it should be like boot camp, just starting your trade. And I’m certainly against the kind of 70s school which I was kind of brought up in where the craft is not important. Nothing is more depressing to me than graduating without having some sort of skill—thinking skills, public speaking skills, drawing, photography, whatever it doesn’t matter. Then the second two years should be trying to find your way and maybe starting to connect with the art world.

This place, Saskatchewan, tends to be a bit provincial that way…and I like it! Which means you get to spend a lot of time thinking about your own work in context of yourself and your community. But if you have higher ambitions you need to start thinking about plugging into a larger system. That’s why this kind of show totally thrills me. It thrills me that Jeff and Tod came to my school and made the students feel like maybe they had something going on that was more than what was just happening in their studio.

.  .  .

Bart: It’s good that you talk about the PhD in context of getting jobs because I have to admit, I do see the PhD in studio as a bit of a joke. I’m not entirely sure what you do in terms of improving your work or making it any better… In terms of looking at a studio PhD program… I can’t help looking at it in context of what was happening at York in terms of universities increasingly relying on part-time staff. I think that will just exacerbate the problem.

. . . Art schools, more often than not, turn out to be dogma. I’m thinking back to the panel discussion about Flatlanders at the Mendel where Lee Henderson talked about art as dogma. What struck me was that those who were most offended where those who preached this dogma that Henderson was describing. When David and I were talking about this panel I thought it would be fun to do karaoke. I say this because art schools are to art making the way karaoke is to music.

Erin: Well there some really creative things you can do with karaoke…. <laughter>

. . . The thought of a PhD kind of does put me off a bit. But then I think about all the really exciting partnerships that are possible in a university environment between artists and scientists right now. And while that’s definitely above my level right now I can see practical reasons for wanting to do a PhD. There are artists playing with nano-technology right now. You’d probably need a PhD if you want to do things like that.

Audience member 1: I was at Concordia doing my MFA a few years ago and there was an institution that formed around the time I arrived called Hexagram. It was really disturbing to me as someone who is a materials-based artist. I don’t work with technology. There was a really strong push from the university to work through hexagram, to focus your work in a way in which you could receive funding from this agency. It seemed the message they were giving that if you do anything related with technology, anything that’s digital, any kind of spin on it, you could get some money. And my problem with this wasn’t that artists are using technology to make art but that the distinction between artist and researcher is disappearing. So artists are thinking of themselves as researchers and not as artists. The reason they’re doing this is for funding because the government seems to like research. I find this disturbing because I think what the artist does is just as valuable as what any scientist does. I think if we move away from that title [of artist] and move into the realm of research then we’re really doing something different [from art]. And I think this is what the PhD does. I’ve known a few people who have a PhD in studio work and what happens is that they become experts on the theory of it. If that work sits in the gallery and doesn’t have 100 of pages of text beside it then its horrible.

Bart: It’s a common problem to have work that is poorly executed, just badly done, channeling the work of previous generations but has a statement that could charm the birds from trees.

Audience member 1: Well that’s the thing about graduating from a BFA and entering into the real art world. You have to make real art that can stand in real galleries and sells for real money. You can’t sell your words, your theory-based art.

David: That’s not true. I make way more money off my art “words” than I do on my art “works.”

Audience member 1: Yeah sure but I’m talking about people like Jean-Pierre Gauthier who has his work set up at the Mendel right now. He’s internationally shown, he’s won the Sobey award. I was talking to him and said, “So you’re making a living doing art.” He said, “No, actually last year I worked for my assistant. My art doesn’t sell. Very few people have the resources to buy it or house it…

David: There are many types of art worlds. There’s the romantic art world for someone who likes to make things or they’re a crafts-based kind of person. There’s a world of biennales, a world of artists as researchers. They’re all different worlds and it’s very difficult to compare and contrast. And you as a student have to negotiate whether you’re going to be part of a faculty member’s SSHRC grant just like a scientist. And it’s a difficult thing to negotiate.

Amber: The UofS is a very science-centric school and is moving even further that way. It seems you’re stuck in the position of having to validate what you do.

David: Art and science are completely incompatible. <laughter> Science knows exactly what it is. It’s about measurement. There’s no one in this room who has a definition of art that anyone else would agree with. We’re meta-people. We do work about science but we don’t do science.

Bart: Alan Bloom talked about this… how science hasn’t suffered from the “canon wars.” This is because it’s completely quantifiable. There are rules that are agreed to but we were talking about the “real artworld.” Well what is that? I would be inclined to say there isn’t one…

Audience member 2: That’s something that’s shifting in science too. Possibly with the advent of humanities coming into the sciences. For example, in physics with landscape theories and string theories, they’re losing that hard definition of science. There’s a real conflict within science because of that.

David: . . . But even those scientists are on the borders of science proper. It’s the same in the art world. There’s a crafts world that is very quantifiable. There’s a certain size that sells for so much, and so on.

Erin: Is there an aversion to the artist as researcher? Since we’re talking about post-secondary education, it seems we probably have to research something otherwise we’re just going to technical school.

Bart: And this is where I go back to this notion of dogma. Perhaps you are just reciting what has been recited to you and has been recited to them. There’s this notion that it’s not genuine research.

Audience member 1: Anyone who does anything could then be considered a researcher. Everyone has to research their craft. The link that I was exposed to was artist as scientist. The issue with Hexagram too was that they were looking for patents. Artists would develop something and then they would patent it. If you came upon some sort of convergence of technology and art that was somehow marketable, it was theirs.

Bart: A lot of media art is just R&D. It tends to talk about how something is done rather than any actual idea.

Tod: There’s pressure on the institution to have to justify its existence, especially in programs not as easy to define. Unlike science art can’t say “we’re here to do this and here’s the end product.”

David: I’m just thinking about Lee’s comment about art as dogma. It certainly gives profs too much credit. We’re constantly shocked by our students. Those PhD students that I met, for example. One was from India and the other from Pakistan and they were into business. They wanted to market things. That’s going to change the way you work with students. It won’t be simply about the theory, but how do we sell this, how do we market this…. How do we make this relevant to human beings other than just the art academy? There are so many little revolutions happening I don’t know which one is going to break through. But if that’s what’s happening at the PhD level, it can trickle down very fast.

Bart: The issue of relevance is very important. You have to ask if its relevant to someone who doesn’t depend on the institution for a paycheque or to someone who hasn’t invested a huge amount of money and therefore might fear that’s it’s really not relevant.

Audience member 3: Then there’s also the question of whether visual arts departments should exist in universities. If it is essentially a type of training does it necessarily warrant existing in an institution devoted something quite different?

David: I don’t think we really know what we are in those first couple of years. At that point it really is skills training. There is a lot of internal anxiety amongst professors who don’t have PhDs and their colleagues do. You have full departments of people with masters degrees. That’s why the PhD program exists and you’ll see people like us going back to get one. My personal story is even more anxious. I don’t even have an MFA and I’m teaching painters. My masters is in English Lit. When in my BFA I looked at where MFAs were going across Canada I wasn’t interested in that direction. I wanted something else. And I think the schools are filled with people like that. Everyone has their own story. We’re not all made the same way.

I would like to see, however, more sessionals keeping the place fresh and unknowing to itself. That would be a benefit for students. I mean it’s anti-dogma. We don’t agree about anything. It’s the formalist days where that was true but now it’s gone…everywhere.

Audience member 3: …and colleges becoming universities… is this is a wise move to be making?

David: I think it’s inevitable. Artists will find their way regardless of crappy institutions funded to function in a certain way.

Audience member 4: I have to disagree with the idea of [the art school] being a technical college. I think criticality and theory are very important parts of the education. Quite often, the opposite is true where there isn’t enough material or craft in art. There’s really good theory, really good idea and quite often I don’t understand it at all unless I read an artist statement. I find I don’t enjoy it even on an aesthetic level.

Amber: Doing my BFA taught me more than technical skills. I’ve gained in critical thinking—understanding the why and the what. How you’re saying something, why you’re saying it.

Tod: I also found it helpful to take courses outside my degree. I found there was an overlap between other disciplines and what was happening in the studio.

Bart: You have to be careful about this warm, romantic self-congratulatory evaluations of the institution. There’s no sexy factor, to put it crudely. There’s no aesthetics anymore. I think a lot of that is directly tied with that foundation, that ability to make a work that is actually well-made. I agree with David’s point that in the first two years they should beat a foundation into you. That’s something every program should have. If that’s lost you can’t fix it later on.

.  .  .

Audience member 6: I’d like to hear from the students on the panel. I’d like to hear what’s next. What’s next for you guys and why is that the choice?

Rachel: I don’t think I’ll go directly into my MFA. It’s something that I see potentially five or six years down the road. I agree with David that those first two years should be technical and the last two years should be spent finding what you want to do with those techniques. It’s a little exhausting and I want to keep making work coming out of school where I’m not influenced by seven different professors whose classes I cycle through. I want to get a greater sense of my work outside the BFA program.

Amber: I see myself doing an MFA or equally, I see myself doing a masters in linguistics. I see myself taking those skills developed during my BFA into whatever else I might be going into.

Erin: I don’t know when I would get my masters although it’s something I want to do. I see it as a chance to gain more of those technical skills that I would just otherwise be getting on my laptop googling things and plugging things together in hope that it works.

I’m really excited to be in Saskatchewan over the next couple of years. I really think it’s going to be an exciting place to be. I feel I’ve been spoiled in my last few years at the UofR because I’m in the intermedia program and it’s really theory based. Our classes are structured so that we just sit down and talk and talk and talk. We don’t get assignments. We’re just told to make some art and present it.

Audience 4: Losing that critical group around you, after finishing your degree, becomes a large void. It’s what’s good about artist-run centres. They comprise that community outside the institution.

Audience 3: There is statistically a loss even in other faculties. A program might graduate 800 engineering students but 5 years down the line only 6 of them are actual engineers. Should that program be looked at successful or unsuccessful in regards to how much government funding they receive?

David: It’s very rare that artists survive going through the BFA. It’s only 2 or 3% of people who are creating work and showing in a serious way after the BFA. Occasionally I spot an artist, writer or curator and then I go on to work with them long afterwards.

Audience 6: You don’t think that the institution would have a responsibility to their students to train them to be practicing artists?

David: At the start of a class I’ll ask what the students want to do. If someone says they’re interested in being an artist, I’ll put the gears to them to show them what being an artist is really like. But many people are Art Ed. students. Why would I want to push them into the shoe that’s the art thing? And even aside from that, the definition of art and artist is so unsettled, how am I to decide what they should be going into?

Audience 6: But you graduate people who call themselves professional artists in their career.

David: No. They may or may not be artists. They graduate with a BFA. I graduated with a masters in English Literature and I have only read about five novels since I left school. Did they succeed or not? Yes they did. I once had a student that graduated from ACAD and I asked, “Are you still making paintings?” “No I’m a corporate lawyer now.”

Bart: The basis of any institution is its own survival. In some ways the last thing you want to do if you want to be an artist is go to art school.

Audience member 1: I don’t agree with that. For me it was a way of figuring things out. It gave me the time and the tools to apply my practice. It also legitimized the time I was spending working on this stuff. I come from a rural community where people are suspicious of those making “weird things.” And so going to university made it a legitimate endeavour as a young person to spend the time to make these things.

Bart: Sure but how many other people did you do a degree with you are actually making art now?

Audience 1: We had a student in one of the art classes in Concordia who wasn’t interested in being an artist, wasn’t contributing much but he’s going to go get his degree in medicine and become a doctor who has an appreciation for art. We’re not teaching everyone to be an artist. These are the people who are going to be supporting the arts.

David: You’re right from a sociological point of view that the institution is up for its own survival. But, especially in this economic crisis, you have to starting asking what makes it relevant. There’s a movement in making institutions more student-centered. That’s not such a bad idea. We can’t decide to take the “very best.” Who are we to determine that? The graduate level is a different thing again. It shakes everything up.

.  .  .

Erin: It was said by someone in the audience how all engineers don’t go on to be engineers… My first degree was in music education which, at the UofR, is basically a performance degree with just as much education as you can squeeze in there. I don’t know who’s making music now. I don’t know how many are going on to be teachers. Do they want to be? I think it’s a bad attitude to say there’s some moral impetus to become what you went to school for. I’m really glad I went to art school, it opened a lot of doors I didn’t know existed.

David: My friends went into the arts five years before me and then quickly evaporated. I wondered why. I realized back then they really beat it into you that you have to be an artist. Five or ten years later people are having breakdowns because they weren’t artists. That’s just morally wrong! That’s the dogma problem.

.  .  .

Troy: I know from having worked in artist-run centres (ARCs) that it’s been a perennial struggle trying to engage the students. Whose responsibility is that? The student’s, the gallery’s or the institution’s?

Bart: I think, in terms of AKA, there was a period of time where it became a little to insular. It’s something a lot of artist-run centres suffer from in this country. This is why this exhibition is important because it gives a chance for the ARC to look beyond itself and the ARC network. But some blame has to be put on the art department itself. In reference to the professional development class at the UofS, this is only the first year that it has been taught. There’s not as much connection here between the art department and the wider community.

Audience member 3: Is the MFA always the next logical step after the BFA?

David: I don’t think there is any question, if you’re serious. Just look around and try to find the success stories of people who didn’t do a BFA or MFA. It’s teeny weeny. We follow-up on all our MFA students and they’re all successful. All of them are working in the arts. But that’s not because of us. They came to the school. The wasteland happens between the BFA and the MFA. The real education is in the MFA. That’s where we are working with potential colleagues and the education is personally tailored. The PhD is not superfluous but it’s just more of the same with the MFA.

Let’s be realistic. How many intermedia jobs crop up a year? Two? Maybe one? There’s a whole lot of people applying for that. A PhD makes the top of the pyramid smaller. Who am I going to hire then? Well, the PhD.

Bart: I don’t think a PhD is necessarily going to help. It just seems like another way of supporting the institution in this cyclical manner that doesn’t make anything better.

.  .  .

Audience 4: There’s also that boy’s club that protects their jobs preventing younger people from ascending the ranks. It keeps talent out.

David: If students voted with their seats and didn’t attend those classes then things would change. When I went did my MA I made sure I only took classes form people who had graduated in the last five years. But the again, I think I missed out on a lot of good profs who had a lot to offer.

What’s sad is when people are very serious about becoming artist, who don’t figure out the system and suffer defeat. And that’s why you have to find some ways of talking about art after school. That’s the hardest thing because we all have egos. Once we’re showing and have a dealer, critique is very hard to take. If you can set up a critique then you’re miles ahead. Personally I don’t think Saskatchewan is mature enough for it. When I was in Calgary there were multiple critics battling it out in locals like Planet S. We can’t sustain that yet. We have to have more than one critic.