The fundamental basis of being successful in the visual arts is, I believe, very similar to how you achieve success in sports or music: practice. At the foundation of every student should be a daily practice of whatever it is they want to be good at, that they want to achieve success at, whether that success is measured in job title, money, work, or what. In music you must do your scales, in sports you need to run sprints and drills. You do these things over and over so that when the whistle blows and the game is on, or the curtain rises and the performance begins, you are ready. You make decisions quickly because you’ve practiced making those decisions a thousand times, ten thousand times. In his 2008 book, “The Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell puts forth the theory that 10,000 hours of practice is what makes an elite performer, not the myth of natural in-born talent. Though popular culture has oversimplified this assertion, during a reddit.com AMA (Ask Me Anything) he wrote, “…practice isn’t a SUFFICIENT condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I’ll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest.”
In my own work and life, when I was going through a time when I was not drawing or creating much of my own work, I would cherish every doodle I made. Because there were so few of them, and because I didn’t know when the next one would be made, each tiny drawing, no matter how good or bad, became an artifact too precious to throw away. When I was in undergrad, I took an intensive 8-week sumi-e drawing course with Fred Harris, the only non-Japanese to ever be recognized as a master in the craft. While demonstrating a technique for painting landscapes one of my classmates exclaimed at his nonchalant skill and wondered aloud how he could do what he was doing with such ease. Mr. Harris’ answer: “Miles of Paper.”
I believe that the work students make should be a mix of style and underlying structure. The structure is the foundational design principles and technical skills they learn, and the style is the manner of execution. It is my job to demystify the world outside of academia for the students, to show them there is a place for them if they are willing to put in the work.
I believe that in my job as an educator and mentor I need to create a continuum, a pipeline that reaches out into industry and back into the classroom. I do my best to bring my peers into the classroom or the school (through the Meet the Pros lecture series), and to send my students out into the working world to work with my peers. If I am successful in this the students become peers, and the network I already had continues to grow and be fertile. The professionals I have brought into the school have often remarked to me that it is almost a life-changing experience to see the “real Brooklyn”. Hard-working immigrants and children of immigrants who are at City Tech to give them an opportunity to grab hold of the American Dream.