gratefulness

Hi Friends of Kloe,

I've had clean-up of "Kloe Among the Turks" on my to-do list for ages. Lots of spam found me, and I've never wanted to use a spam blocker or review each comment before publishing. So I'm restricting comments on this blog. You know where to reach me if you want to chat.

It was the right decision to end Kloe--have been swamped with other obligations. I miss the daily ritual of writing, though. My new blog and website are stalled (sigh), but I'll write when they go up. It's about drawing, but you know me--I can rarely be totally serious or stick to the point.

My painting career continues to progress. I now have a dealer and agent who are pushing to get my work out there. Am even on Artnet! I had a solo show in LA and am in studio every day.

Teaching is not so good. California continues to cut education and I'll be back on the dole soon. Students can't get classes they need to graduate. Californians don't want to pay taxes to support education, so they'll support jails and highways carrying smart people out of the state instead.

If you've been perusing the toy aisles lately, you'll notice there are no Bratz for sale. Legal battles with Barbie hurt production, but new Bratz will be unveiled in Summer 2010. Let's hope they haven't de-sassed us.

Finally, my chef and little artist are fantastic. We have a new hamster, Mickey, because Biscuit departed to Hamster Heaven.

That's it for my Christmas letter in April.
kisses to all.
K

Spreading Pain

As you know, I’ve been complaining loudly about how college students and adjunct professors are faring in California’s disastrous economy. One dean called upper-division courses “boutique,” as in, “we are eliminating our boutique classes” such as life drawing, printmaking, advanced anything, and art history that doesn’t cover at least 500 years.
That’s not college, that’s high school continued.
I haven’t considered the tenured faculty much. After all, they can’t be fired. Yes, they’re on furlough, getting 10% less pay while working at least 20% harder. I’ve still thought I’d trade with them, any day.
But I’m starting to hear about how devastated many full-profs are. Some have spent entire careers building up fields of study that have been axed totally. They can’t teach their specialty or anything near it. They have to fire their friends, and deal with furious students and parents.
At least we out-of-work adjuncts can use our “free” time to consider our next career moves, and get the hell out of academia.
I’m starting to sympathize.

Another Californian on Higher Ed

I was sent a link to this blog and thought my readers might like more insight into what’s happening to higher education in California. It’s not just the arts that are so badly slashed. I predict it will soon take the average student eight to ten years to get a “four-year” degree (currently it takes about six years to get through the Cal State system). The crazy thing is, it will be cheaper to go to private schools at this rate.
Parents and students, revolt!
Strange painting by Edouard Vuillard at the Met.

Considering Mesopotamia

As I prep to teach my one remaining college course, an Ancient Art History Survey (aka “Caves to Cathedrals”), I got this note from my former department chair, who was very sorry to have to cancel my life-drawing class a few weeks ago:

Teacher meetings start Monday, and due to the state Budget crisis - we will be canceling all classes that have less then 20 students enrolled by the close of business Monday night. To complicate matters - the college district dropped all students who had not paid their fees last Thursday - changing classes that were once filled to now under-enrolled sections.
Academic Armageddon is coming next week....

This is particularly crazy because many community college students are not used to registering until the last minute, and classes are still a week away from beginning. For those who did register, some may not realize they need to pay the extra $6 per unit fee increase.
Are the community college districts web sites screaming, enroll now? Pay your fees? Classes are being canceled? They are not. Wait and see what happens when all the out-of-work Californians and returning GIs try to go back to school this fall…
(image from The Citadel, an outlet mall off the 5 Freeway in Commerce)

Make Love, not War

Student work, Kloe style.

Coping

Over a year ago I realized teaching as a career wasn’t going to work out for me. I started to look into other options. But really, there’s nothing to compare to teaching at the college level for autonomy, creativity, and compensation. Not to mention the respect other people have for college professors.
Earlier this year my private college let me go, along with most of their other part-time teachers. Now the State of California is finishing us off. My normal teaching load was 4-5 classes per semester/quarter, or about 250 students. This fall I’m down to a three-hour-per-week art history lecture. Possibly one other short course through an adult ed program.
Those 200 students I won’t have in my classroom will be out of luck, because we adjuncts are not being replaced. I’m hoping this is where the public will be outraged, because these are not the poor or elderly who are affected, but the average taxpayer and his kid. I have an art historian friend who lost both of her upper division Renaissance classes. That means anyone trying to finish an art history degree won’t be able to, as the classes required no longer exist.
Anyway, it’s amazing that, though I knew the destruction of my career in education would happen, I’m still shell shocked. It’s like when you expect someone you love to die, you prepare for it, but when they do, you still can’t believe it, and your mourning is no less intense.
Well, life is short, we shouldn’t waste it, right?
A fitting masterwork, and one that continues to disturb: Giacometti’s “Woman with her Throat Cut,” 1932 at MOMA

Bad News

Lost my main teaching job for fall, my only studio cancelled. Can't even pretend it's OK anymore.

Swallow the Fish Hook, My Friend

I took my advanced students to a lecture on “How to approach a gallery with your fine artwork,” in which a colleague shared her knowledge about the multiple gallery systems. Obviously, it was an optimistic topic.
It’s been 12 years since I seriously embarked on my career, starting with my MFA. By now I know, it’s who you know. Pure and simple. There are so many artists making good/fascinating/complex/deserving work. Only a handful will be seen. Everyone else will give their work away, give up, or keep toiling on in obscurity.
My colleague was honest. Degrees do count, and the better the school, the better your chances. Your famous professors are probably your ticket into the gallery system. You must spend 10% of your time creating the work, 90% marketing. My little-big town has a permanent inferiority complex, so artists from here are ignored for those to the north or south.
Blah blah blah. Doesn’t mean people don’t want to learn to draw. Although come fall there will be precious few classes to help them learn how.
It’s all just too depressing.

Next

I am facing the prospect of little to no teaching income in the near future. California is about to go off a cliff. Classes and staff at public colleges are being slashed. Doesn’t matter how many students are signed up for your class, or how good a teacher you are. Just when so many people want to retrain, they will be out of luck.
Over a year ago I wrote here about wanting to leave teaching. I've been trying, but can't seem to find something that pays. And so teaching has been my fall-back.
Is now the time to go into industry? Compete against the thousands of commercial artists who are already in the job market, who have experience and portfolios, when I have little to none? The ivory tower has seduced me, and left me with nothing.
Am considering private lessons and critique sessions. Breathe.

Obsessed

It’s finals time, so I’m looking at a lot of projects. Sometimes a student with mediocre skills and a less that stellar concept can impress us with obsessive workmanship. Why are we so fascinated by repetitive behavior? By minute detail? Do we so empathize with the artist who agonizes over a piece, evidencing sweat and patience?
Personally I find repetitive actions in art making extremely relaxing. Today I painted tiny little plaids for several hours, and lessened the stress headache that’s been building for days.
Beaded sculptures by LA artist Mary Bonic (not a student!)

Make my Stressful Day

It’s been a pretty incredible week. Good for dieting, as I can’t eat. Breathing is hard…
So to top it off, the student I suspended, and reinstituted, and had been relatively well-behaved last week, came into my class two hours late, totally high. I mean crazed. He seemed to think he was fine. He yelled at me, so I told him to leave or I was calling the police. That is IT. I will cancel my class for safety reasons rather than have him there again.

Fun with Trash

Going through my backup hard drive, I came across a video I made in Turkey that I never uploaded to my Kloeamongtheturks YouTube channel. It’s sort of fun. Most of the students are Turkish, except for two women, one of whom ended up marrying a Turk and now lives over there!
Happy Earth Day this weekend...

I’m Under a Dark Star

Last week I had to suspend a student for continued disruption of my class. Today, at a different school, I caught a student cheating on a test. Not only do these issues cause me tremendous stress, they also involve meetings and paperwork and officials.
And of course, one worries about getting shot…
What are these students thinking, that they can just run me over and I won’t mind?!?
Do they know they are ruining the course for their fellow students?
Are they just high on drugs?
Simply incredible.

Right in the Kisser

Kids today have a healthy sense of what’s important and what’s not. Most seem not to sweat stuff much. When younger, I gave equal importance to just about everything, aka perfectionism. Which gives one ulcers.
I just watched a kid type an essay, and he’s got the bad-speller gene. So what does he do? In 15 seconds flat completes spellcheck for the entire essay. It took me ages to proofread my childish writings, first trying to weasel the correct spelling out of an elder, then forced to look in the dictionary or thesaurus.
I was in class recently walking around helping students with two-point. A talented student had done a mediocre job with mistakes, which I pointed out. His response? “I don’t like perspective.” And he just sat there. On a certain level, I think, wow, he’s really strong. But then I get outraged at the lack of respect when I go out of my way to help her.
This is not to mention my really big discipline problem, a student who is so disrespectful other students have finally spoken to me about it. Now I have to do something. It’s my way or the highway, I guess…

Ides of March

Busy weekend. Am emptying out my house of art junk, and filling up my studio. Both things feel great! Also setting up a special area in the studio where my kids can make stuff, although today they just wanted to have target practice in there (with easels…)
A new friend dropped by with a painting she was working on and we talked about what was right and what felt off. I think I was able to help. And in turn she looked at my work, picking out what caught her eye—very helpful to me.
I’m thinking about starting a figurative drawing group for women only, where we can model for each other. My other drawing group couldn’t meet last month, and am anxious for them to see my new space.
If you want to join either, please contact me!
Here’s a funny photo of my Art Orientation class. We studied sculpture, and for a break, made bugs out of candy.

Today was full of contradictions.

I got called into talk with one of my bosses cause I got a “less that favorable” student evaluation. I almost laughed. She may have sensed I didn’t take it seriously, but really, a few failing students say I’m a bad teacher, should I care?
I graded my art history test. Several students got perfect scores, but many more got less that 20% correct. Does that mean I’m a bad teacher?
Anyway, what I really want to say is that my studio floor is in! And the landlady paid for it!!! Yeah! Tomorrow I’m going to paint it, then I can move in.

Student Work on Steroids

Sometimes a student goes so far beyond what I ask for I am stunned into silence. The other students aren’t even jealous, they just stand in awe.
One-point perspective “Retail Space” assignment.

I promised I wouldn’t complain.

I did.
My legislators are locked up trying to cut thousands of state jobs, and it’s very real I might soon have time on my hands.
But today I was stressed. I taught four hours of linear perspective, hopped in my car for a half hour drive to my next school, eating en route, to teach another three hours on the same subject. Which, if you’ve ever tried it, is hard to learn, let alone teach. Vanishing points, cast shadows (did you know that sun and artificial light function differently when rendered in 2D?)…
So I’m taking roll in my afternoon class, and notice a student absent for a second day. Maybe he’s dropped. I call his name to make sure he’s not there. A moment later another student comes and whispers in my ear that the absent student died last week. Some kind of accident. He was 18.
And then I had to continue to teach the class in a shock at the loss. Sort of put things into perspective.

Why Teach

I just love it when I reach a student. Sometimes it takes most of a semester, but gradually I can tell they are INTO what they are creating. They hang after class an extra minute, they make eye-contact, and say, “have a great weekend.” I hope I give them something that will stay with them, a passion for making or thinking, or maybe the confidence to do what they want to do in life, in spite of what others want or expect.
Drawing by a student, based on a Bouguereau and “Princess Mononoke.”

Cult of the Stupid

I went to public schools: elementary, junior high, and my sophomore year of high school. It got progressively worse for me. Finally, my siblings and I were pulled out.
What was the turning point that made my mom, a single schoolteacher with little money, send us to an exclusive private school (on scholarship)? I came home one day from 10th grade saying all my friends advised me to act stupid in high school because I was an unpopular “smack.” I remember that in honors English I was the only one in the entire class to turn in a paper on time, and I was laughed at, even by the teacher.
I am praying that times have changed. We’ve had eight years of a president who was elected because he was the type of guy with whom the voter would like to “have a beer.” The danger of an unintelligent, uninvolved president was that his vice president took such awful power.
I’m waiting for a return to intelligence valued.
Oh yeah, and I was completely prepared for college by my prep school, and if I’d been only a few years older, might have been Barack Obama’s friend…
Paintings by Gerrit Greve