Saturday, June 21, 2008

College-Educated Manual Laboror

You’d think after spending the time and money to get an undergraduate degree that avoiding manual labor would be the whole point. I’m sort of finding myself in a strange place. As an artist, manual labor can actually be avoided, truth be told. One can be an artist and get very academic. If you are teaching art, promoting art, managing art, critiquing art, etc, you may have just found yourself at the end of the academic road to becoming an artist.

An artist with a Phd. Hmmm. Hammer? Nails?

The fact is that making art means manual labor. Unless you mainly talk about art, which the farther up the academic chain you are the more likely it is that you can just do that. Or another fortunate artist may be able to sell his concepts but not actually make them into anything himself.

I like my manual labor. It’s interactive. Is a Phd overkill? No seriously, I’m asking.