Help Desk: Extracurricular (!) Activities

Welcome to Help Desk, step into my office! Each week I’ll be answering your queries about making, finding, marketing, buying, selling — or any other activity related to — contemporary art. Together, we’ll sort through some of art’s thornier issues. Email helpdesk@dailyserving.com with your questions, or use a free anonymizer like Anonymouse.org to send an email to the same address. Comments are enabled, but be good or be gone! All submissions will be treated as anonymous and become the property of Daily Serving.

What advice would you have for artists who are separated from the university realm to keep themselves sharp (in terms of criticism and general growth)? Have you found specific groups or events that have helped keep you on track beyond academic circles?

Good for you for wanting to stay sharp! The instantaneous peer network and programming that a school provides helps to keep you on your toes, and once school is over it’s hard to maintain that momentum outside of an institutional setting. Groups and events do different things, so you’ll definitely want both in your life: a group will keep you connected and supported, and events will keep you informed and thinking. For groups, the network you’ve already established is a good start: with any luck, you still have the contact information for some of your old classmates. Why not email them to suggest a get-together? I recommend keeping it short and informal at first if you haven’t seen them in a while — maybe just a one-beer meetup at a bar or even an email list — because too much pressure to commit will drive shyer folks away. When you settle in with some like-minded people you could start a crit group or a reading club, go to openings together, or even just host a few fun, gossipy dinner parties.

First, find a group of people who share your interests.

If that’s no good (you hated everyone, you moved to another state, etc.) and you don’t already have a circle of art friends, you can make one by going to the events in your area and meeting other artists and curators. It will take time and effort, but it can be done. Start by listing the institutional networks that are available to you. If there’s an art school or a university art program in your area, they probably have a lecture series. Ditto for the local art museum and the galleries. Don’t forget to do an internet search for medium-specific groups like Dorkbot, and if you don’t know the name of a particular group try googling search terms in your field (I tried “painters art group Seattle” and got a great list of links to follow). Go to their websites and put yourself on their mailing lists, and then go to every lecture and opening you can possibly muster the energy for, where you will simultaneously look at a lot of art and see the same people over and over again. Put some energy into it, and within three months you’ll be a familiar face to a lot of people and have a good handle on your local art scene. If you feel extra stuck right now, consider taking a class. Most institutions offer noncredit classes where you can get in some studio time and meet other artists. And good luck! Build yourself a network of thoughtful, hard-working people and make sure to get in — and out! — of the studio regularly, and you’ll never have to worry about staying on track.

Go to museums, galleries, lectures, and medium-specific group meetings.

I have a strange question involving an incident I witnessed two years ago when I moved to a new city. Some friends set up a welcome dinner for me at a trendy restaurant. Upon entering the bathroom I came upon a woman in her late-30s sobbing hysterically. She begged me to help her and revealed that her husband was cheating on her and she was absolutely going to do something desperate if I didn’t help her at that moment. I called a cab and helped her outside and waited until she was picked up. I never knew her name, but I do have a remarkable memory for faces. Fast forward, two years: I am a recent grad of an MFA program and I’ve had a close relationship with my adviser all along. I knew he was married and had children, but it wasn’t until our MFA show that I met his family. Imagine my shock when I saw that his wife was that drunk lady I had helped. My real issue lies in my relationship with my adviser. He has helped me greatly and until this revelation, I would have continued our communications, which are still frequent. This information has severely altered my impression of him, and I’m just not sure how to proceed. Any advice?

Can you trust this man, or not? I’ll accept your avowal that the weeping restaurant inebriate and the advisor’s wife are truly the same woman, but before you un-friend this man on Facebook and delete his name from your phone, let’s look at another possibility. How do you know she was telling the truth? She may be bipolar, delusional, or simply mistaken. She may be a pathological liar, desperately needy for attention from strangers. Let’s remember that the world is full of broken people who say and do aberrant things — just look at reality TV. Perhaps the only way to know the veracity of this story would be to ask him, which you are not going to do. My rule is that you can only inquire about a person’s sex life if you are currently sleeping with him or her; and if you are now sleeping with your ex-advisor, you’ve asked me the wrong question. But I digress.

If you haven’t seen Hitchcock’s masterpiece about an affair, revenge, and redemption, you really should. Also, it was his only film made for 3D! Keep an eye out for staging that specifically creates depth.

Even if you do have all your facts straight (same woman, definitely an affair), the matter of another person’s extracurricular nookie is really none of your business. I understand why you’re in a muddle and why your view of this man is shaken. Of necessity, when you are in school you must put your faith in your relationship with your advisors. After all, these men and women are charged with nothing less than overseeing the personal, intellectual and artistic growth of the students that they work with. You probably looked up to this man for some good reasons: he is wise and has been generous with his time and energy. He helped you focus on your work to make it better, and if you’re still in touch it means that you had a good personality match. While you may not have articulated it to yourself, you probably assumed that because his professional behavior was congenial, all his actions were above reproach. And now you’re also in the unsteady transition period from graduate school to real life, one in which very good mentors slowly develop into friends. Your trust in this person has been altered by the revelation that he is, or at least was, weak and unreliable to an important person in his family. The higher your former regard for this man, the more profound your disappointment is now.

Yet his marital iniquity doesn’t have anything to do with his ability to act as a friend and mentor. Yes, the moral transgression of adultery is ugly and wounding, but it doesn’t mean that he is completely evil. If you have other, undivulged, reasons for cutting this person out of your life, then do so. But consider that a person who has been kind to you but who has issues in other parts of his life may need a little compassion. A marriage is a complicated and private alliance and this incident with his wife occurred two years ago. If they are still together, then perhaps she has forgiven him and he has become a better husband. Why should you condemn what his own wife would absolve? An advisor-advisee relationship that evolves into a true friendship is a rare thing. If he hasn’t done anything vexatious to you personally, then don’t throw your advisor out with his dirty bathwater.

Help Desk is a collaboration between KQED and Daily Serving, an international forum for the contemporary visual arts. Please use the comments section below to ask for help and to tell us what you think.