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Show S ome students believe the stereotype that art students have easier lives than people studying the "practical" majors. However, art students at the U do not have easy workloads. With extensive critiques from classmates, professors, and themselves, art students spend the majority of their time facing judgment. Their projects take countless hours and an immeasurable amount of work and creativity. There is definitely no half-in or half-out path as an art student. These students are pursuing what they love in an incredibly time-intensive, and often emotionally draining course load. Art is their love — they eat, breathe, and live art. JD MacDonald, a junior in fine arts with an emphasis in printmaking, is one of these students. MacDonald sat down with me this week to give me a peek into the life of a typical art student on campus. Why did you decide to be an art major? When I transferred to the school, I decided to be an art major. I started at Utah State in their engineering department, and I had this weird happenstance where I saw some art and it just blew me away, and I wanted to do that. I've always been interested in art, but I didn't think I could make a living in it. But it became apparent that money wasn't the most important thing to me anymore, and I just decided to do it. What did your parents think? My dad was bizarrely supportive. My mom was, too. I called my dad and told him I was switching to art and he said, 'Well, it's about time: And I was really confused about that because he had always emphasized to me, while growing up, that I needed to do something that I could live off of. But he told me later that he'd always known I'd end up in art, and that he wanted me to try new things. My parents are very supportive and very happy for me. Did you do art as a hobby before? Yes, I always did art. I was always drawing. I never paid attention in school. I was always drawing in my notebooks. If I didn't have my notebook, I'd draw on my hand. If my hands were full, I'd be drawing on the desk. I also started doing spray painting and I'd always be doing that too. I have some friends that are heavy into stencils and I started doing that. Art was always a big thing in my life as a child. How would you describe your work? I like to deal with things that people tend to brush away, tend to not want to observe. I like to highlight things that are marginalized and removed from media, like war images, child injuries, the affect of wartime on children, and entire populations of people, struggles with greed inherent in the system, struggles with providing food for your family. What I like to deal with is commonly referred to as the "human condition:' I find that people think it's easier to ignore it and they certainly dehumanize themselves. I just want to engage people and force them to question what's going on around them, confront them with these things. We have a very biased media machine in this country. Popular culture is very tuned in to keep you occupied and keep you complacent. What is it like being an art student? It's tougher than what people would generally assume. I have a lot of people that think it's easy, and it's really not. With printmaking, all the equipment is here.You have to do all your work on campus. And then comes the emotional aspect of it. You're literally putting pieces of yourself out there — you're letting people see a piece of you. Sometimes you get a bad critique, and things don't turn out right. When they do, it hurts. It's hard to deal with. Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing this. It's also just a very time intensive thing. I spend 20-30 hours out of class a week dealing with things in my print classes, and it's always in the back of my mind. It's a full-time gig. You never stop thinking about it and sketching and finding inspiration from things around you. Sometimes I like to people watch and draw strangers. It gives you this sense of connection to them that's really quite interesting. What is your plan after graduating? I really want to be a self-employed artist. I don't want to have to do an art job. It kind of takes the life out of it. I will probably go to grad school, and ultimately I wouldn't mind teaching at a college level and working in a print shop. That's about the only conventional job I think I could handle right now as a printmaker. Is there a good art community here? The printmaking community in general is really open and nonjudgmental. It's very friendly and warm. The art community at large is awesome too. We're all in this together. It's like this little corner of campus that's like a little village. We're all working off of each other. Everybody has to dabble in everything. The photographers, the drawers, the printmakers, we all like to see what each other are doing. It's so great, and especially when I have other people supporting me through the tougher times, I know I'm supposed to be doing this. m I was always drawing. I never paid attention in school. I was always drawing in my notebooks. If I didn't have my notebook, I'd draw on my hand. If my hands were full, I'd be drawing on the desk. I also started doing spray painting and I'd always be doing that too. I have some friends that are heavy into stencils and I started doing that.Art was always a big thing in my life as a child. JD MacDonald |