As some of you may know I am now employed as a Graphic Designer for Eastern Michigan University for their advertisement, websites, and social media.  My job involves creating, designing, printing, cutting, delivering, laminating and matting amongst other things for Eastern Michigan Universities Residence Life, Dining Services, Website, Facebook, Twitter, as well as any events happening on the campus.  Its all a lot of work and new to me, but I am learning a lot at a very fast pace.

I have my own desk, my own dual-monitors, and the power to pick my own work schedule to accommodate my needs and more.  The perks seem endless and range from a free Meal Plan so I can eat every day (including summers and weekends!) and free prints every month in our awesome printing lab for my personal work, to the massive amount of work experience on a professional level in a professional setting that will empower my portfolio and resume.

Now I know all this sounds nice, but it didn't come to me easily.  I had to learn typography, graphic design and illustration aspects I didn't have any knowledge of before this summer, work my ass off all summer making a portfolio with Illustrator (which I had never used before), I had to go through an extensive interview unlike anything I had experienced, and I had to make some connections and network myself around campus to get my foot in the door.  I feel pretty lucky in all honestly to have this job, but I guess I made my own luck.

I just started working here but the assignments are already rolling in rapidly.  I will be sure to update a portfolio once I have a new body of work ready and continue to post progress with my job and new experiences as a graphic designer.  I honestly never really saw my self being a graphic designer, but if this is where the money is at it might need to be where I continue to focus my time.

As well as working professionally as an artist for a multimillion dollar corporation(I just like the sound of that and I cant get enough of it), I have been active on campus designing things for different student organizations that provide a heartbeat to the life and spirit of campus life.  I am the creator of the current official Inter-Fraternity Council logo on campus, and have designed a lot of shirts and flyers for other orgs. Its such a cool feeling walking around campus and seeing stuff and being like "oh I made that, and that, and that one too". Its insane. I love walking around seeing people I dont even know in shirts I designed.  I plan on continually being involved both socially and artistically in student affairs and will also keep documenting my progress on work I make on the side.  Drawing was my first passion, but graphic design has recently been extremely rewarding to me so I really need to continue to pursue this direction.

At my interview they asked me why I wanted this job, and I just told them I wanted to leave my mark here at EMU.  They told me afterwords that was all they really needed to hear after seeing my portfolio. So to any highschoolers questioning their likeliness to find employment as a young artist, just know that its possible if you bust your ass and go for it. read more

     My first year at EMU studying art I wanted to just work outside of my comfort zone.  My goal was to try new things with art, ignore artistic insecurities, and realize that if a piece is making me uncomfortable or stressed, its probably a good idea to keep working on it.  This goal became really important during my last assignment of my drawing 2 foundations course, the final exam.  Our final was a non-representational piece; it needed no form or subject, just experimentation documented artistically. It was simply, "Make a mark, and push it to the limit".
      Now there were many ways my classmates went about doing this, from eating berries and spitting them on a canvas for 3 weeks,  to sitting in the building's restroom covering their nipples with paint and stamping them hundreds of times, to covering an empty studio upstairs with paper and dipping a yoyo in paint just to play with it for a few hours.
     I felt all those things were a bit too overcomplicated for my tastes, I wanted to make something complex with something simple, or at least that is what I got out of the point of the assignment.  I also wanted to stay true to my goal of working out of my comfort zone, and I wanted to do something giant.  With those goals in mind Lateralization just kind of came to be.  After a week thumbnailing, planning, measuring, testing patterns, testing compositions, testing sizes, testing the muscular endurance of my non-dominant right hand, my final plan finally came together.  I wanted to take a risk, and I figured what is more risky than doing your final exam in your college drawing class with the hand you have no idea how to write with.
    Before starting this experimental project, I made myself some rules. First, I would not be allowed to fix any mistake in the pattern, start over, go back or change things. Second, once I started a panel, I had to stick to only that panel until it was done. Third, I had to use the same cheap, $0.20 ball point pens (which I ended up using over 20 in the end). Fourth, I had to make it giant -- no giving up halfway and cropping it down.  If I was going to do this it would only work if I did it big. Fifth, no cheating.  I set these rules up and followed them so the art project would be a true experiment and a proper representation of what I wanted to show.
     In the end I got my A, although I was pretty nervous going into the critique. After all, drawing lines over and over isnt nearly as radical as nipple-stamping,  but the one thing I knew i had on my classmates was difficulty of process (who honestly wants to use their bad writing hand that much?) and time put into it, I put in three times the work hours anyone else did. I think my final product was immense enough to draw attention from afar, intricate and detailed enough to draw people close, and experimental and scientific enough to make it stand out for this assignment.  I have never learned more about risk taking, experimentation, pushing yourself through frustrating work, and concept in any other assignment, and I left that class feeling much more equipped.  Over 20 shitty ball point pens, over 120 hours of monotonous and carpel-tunnel inducing work (that I brought upon myself), and about  a million questions of "what are you doing and why are you drawing that many lines over and over" from all my non artistic friends all came together to teach me a lot and make me really happy to be studying art.

Oh yea and I got asked to place it in a gallery in Ann Arbor. My first ever piece to be held to such an honor.  Here's their website link.

7.5 Feet Tall!

artist statement:

My work is 1980 sq. inches of pattern created using both of my hands and ballpoint pens that documents the way each side of my brain works as well as investigates the relationships between pattern, texture, and negative space.

I wanted to push a simple medium and process to the limit to find complex results while simultaneously forcing myself to work outside of my comfort zone.

Using ballpoint pens and simple patterns like the alphabet or vertical lines repeated over large scales I completed my first goal, and by forcing myself to complete the right-half the piece with my non-dominant right hand I vanquished any confidence and control I had in the outcome.

Through hours of monotonous repeated patterns, experimentation with relationships of negative space, and attempting to mirror my right-brain’s work with my left-brain I made some surprising discoveries; Work with my non-dominant right hand would be more horizontally linear due to increased concentration, tension, and slower work methods, and work with my left would be more skewed horizontally due to the absence of concentration required when using your dominant hand.

An obsessive and rhythmic relationship with the patterns creates a visual diagram explaining the way each side of my brain handles measured and excessive tasks. read more

For those of you who don't know, I am Jane Labowitch. I'm an alumni who graduated from FHS back in 09, and I most recently graduated from the American Academy of Art in Chicago a little more than a month ago.

For my entire life I've been a student, and now I'm not. Now I have a spiffy new BFA degree in...Illustration. That's fine and dandy, but the only problem is...I've been searching online for a job this last month in art, and it seems the only work out there is for graphic/web designers. I consider myself pretty fortunate though, because I happen to enjoy both of these things. It's kind of a catch 22, though. These jobs want you to already have experience in the field, but how can I get experience if I haven't had a job in the field yet??? Check out this doozy of a job (as quoted directly from my most recent facebook status):

Pay: This is a pro bono (volunteer) position
This is "a 3-5 hour commitment each week over the course of approximately 6 months."
Experience: At least 3 years

This legitimately angers me on multiple levels. For one, this "job" is asking for someone who has extensive experience in the design field to do consistent work for free. For FREE! Ah! Come on! I just dropped over 100k on a degree in art, and there are people out there who have the audacity to ask that I work for free???

On a related note, check out this infographic, designed by renowned designer/illustrator Jessica Hische:

What I like about this infographic is that it clearly defines when it is and when it isn't okay to work for free. As a recent graduate, I really can't afford to just do art for free. I've got some scary government officials that will be knocking on my door in a couple months demanding I start paying my loans back. I've got rent to pay and groceries to buy.

So why is it that people are okay with asking artists to do work for free, where as it's unthinkable to ask, say, a doctor to do work for free? I think it's one of those societal issues, where people think that artists jump for joy at the next opportunity to draw a pretty picture, and no real labor is involved. No one doubts that a doctor has to labor. I think pretty much everyone agrees that med school sounds like a difficult endeavor. But art school? Nah. "Don't you just draw pictures all day?" "Cool, your homework is a painting. I wish I could paint for my homework." Upon graduating, I think I can safely say I pulled the same number of all-nighters as many other students pursuing different degrees. And let me tell you--when you're working on that same piece that you've been working on all last week and it's 4am and it's due at 8am, you better believe it's work!!!

Alas, my lofty rant has run its course. By no means do I want to end this on a negative note--as a recent graduate, I know it's going to be hard to get that first job. It's probably still going to take a while. And though I am in a giant pile of debt, I don't regret my decision to go to art school. Right now I could have some degree in whatever topical employment opportunity is out there floating dollar signs in the air, but at the end of the day I just wanted to create. My bank account weeps for my loss, but I don't think I'll be weeping with it. read more

Hello, all.  First, I want to say thank you to Mr. Ro for inviting me (and probably most if not all of us at this point) to this blog.  It seems like it's going to be a great community.  Fun for all, no?

So this is going to have very little to do with art, but it's something that I've been struggling with since I graduated.  I think I may be finally starting to figure it out, so I just wanted to share it.  Here goes!

My name is Zach and I'm an illustrator.  At least, that's what my degree says.  I say that because I recently stepped out of the student world and landed square on the doorstep of full adult-hood.  It's exciting, it's scary, it's nerve-wracking as hell, but mostly it's pretty darn awesome.  Haha, I'm not a student any more!  When was the last time I could say that?  Certainly before I was old enough to really know what the difference was.  I mean, I'm not a student!

It means I can do stuff like this all the time!

So... What does that mean?  Yeah, I've graduated.  I have that little piece of paper in a fancy leather-bound folder that says I did something and that I now know something about stuff.  I don't have to wake up every morning and drive to school just to listen to someone who's been around the block tell me how things are.  Heck, now some people think I'm that person who's been around the block and can tell them how things are... I'm not quite sure I can agree with them on that.

You see, even though so much has changed, I feel like everything is the same.  I still stare amazed at the creations of my favorite artists, trying to figure out how in god's green earth they got so damn good.  I routinely find myself in a rut with pretty much every piece I start, struggling to figure out what works best.  I still send out numerous emails to art directors, most of which go unanswered, a few being send back with a pleasant 'We'll keep you in mind'.  Hell, I even find myself getting bored with drawing and painting every once in a while, which is probably one of the scariest feelings I have ever experienced.  So what's so different?

For all intents and purposes, I feel the exact same now as I did a year ago, or even years ago.  I'm not some master who churns out gold every time I click the Photoshop icon on my task bar.  Color and composition are both still buggers who never seem to settle down and find a happy existence in my head.  What did I miss?

Then I remember what school is really about.  School was never intended to take its students to the end.  College is never going to deposit graduates into the real-world with every skill they will ever need fully honed and refined despite the fact that every institution claims that they will.  No, it could never do that and it's not meant to.  All school is meant to do is break those built-in conventions about what is right and what is wrong.  It's a block that allows one to more easily stand up and begin climbing out of the sea of confusion and on to a more solid ground.

Only then can something be built.  You won't be fully prepared.  Some of the tools needed may still be lost, only to be found later in some spark revelation or through brute repetition.  Mass failure.  Doing something over and over again, only to fall down each and every time.  Only to stand back up, dust yourself off, and give it another go.  Until, finally, with enough blood, sweat, and tears, something is left that is not a failure.  Something to be proud of and that reminds of just how much fun life is.

This is one of those moments for me.

That is what school is for.  It gives those couple more tools and a map with no destination.  Maybe it has some notes and places of interest, but for the most part it's all up to me now.  Life's final stage has only just begun and where it will end is uncertain but school imparts the ability to at least know where to start and how to look.  That is what is different. read more

I thought I'd talk a little about my experiences after college. It's been a hard adjustment having to deal with the "real" world and trying to figure out where my degree (BFA in Photography) fits into all of this. I've been a college grad for 2 years now and it hasn't been easy. I went to CCS and I really loved college, which I think is what made it harder for me to figure things out after I left.

I've always loved photographing people. In college I realized that was the direction I wanted to focus towards. My senior thesis was based on contemporary lifestyle portraits/fashion. Since graduating I've realized that although I may not be shooting models on a weekly basis but I can try to apply the same methods to photographing families, weddings, ect. And I think it's been working. Each year since I started photographing families and events my client based has doubled. I give a lot of credit to Facebook which has pretty much helped me obtain 90% of my clients, that and word of mouth.

I NEVER thought I'd be shooting weddings AND liking it. I always kind of thought photographing weddings was for amateurs but I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only is it a great money maker, it's actually a lot of fun to document. When shooting weddings I try to add my own style. I stick to what I like and what I know. I enjoy natural light, film-esk looks and interesting compositions. Just because it's a wedding doesn't mean it needs to be cliche.

Anyways, I guess to sum up my first post on this thing I want to say I'm happy now with where I'm at photography wise as a post grad. All I can do is keep pushing out work and have fun while doing it. As long as I'm photographing people and making them happy, that's what matters most! read more

This gift for me today pretty much sums up the origins of this blog idea.

1.  What a great gift from a student.  I had Allison last semester  for only Painting 1. She is going to attend Adrian College in the fall and go into Art.  I will wear the pin tomorrow at her graduation proudly. 

2.  It shows the connection to Alumni I have created since I began teaching in 1997.  Some of who are close friends now. 

3.  It represents how I want to share in your future successes. 

4.  It shows how I want to promote the arts and especially my alumni artists and their endeavors. 

5.  This post on my personal Facebook page will be buried in a couple days.  I feel on a blog I/we can access it through the archives much easier.

6.  Please comment!

read more