Taisha Carrington on Post Graduation Adjustment
I’ve gone back and forth several times on how to say what is written below. On one hand I feel many of these realizations I’m about to share were revolutionary in my growth after completing my BFA in 2018. Yet, as I type them out, they feel sillily simple - almost too simple to be worthy of sharing. Hindsight is 20/20, and similarly to crossing bridges from teenagehood to adulthood in a slow, gradual fashion, the process of graduating or ‘completing our education’ is just as much gray area. Challenges with access to making, support systems, the demands of social media, and the reality of non-making periods are expected but their nuances aren’t that obvious until experienced.
On that note, first tip! Graduation is not the end of your education. Crossing into the professional world is tricky. You must learn to acquire all the things you had easy access to as a student, but in a much more convoluted fashion. By this I mean that you must now find new ‘teachers’ among your peers, new ways of learning - by tuning into artist lectures or visiting galleries, or find new ways of taking a break that might not be as convenient as going to your friend’s nearby dorm for 15 minutes. Personally, this realization freed me from feeling that I need to know it all, and from needing to be ‘perfect’ from the jump when starting projects simply because I now hold a degree. The line you cross on grad day isn’t as clear cut as some might think.
There’s a good chance there will be a period of not making work after graduating- this is standard in any art practice but I found myself feeling guilty or as though I was ‘falling off’. Time showed me that this is perfectly legitimate. You don’t have to be that person who ‘figures out’ a way to keep making work in less than ideal conditions or with bare minimum resources. Some artists are phenomenal at making do with whatever they have available, but not all of us are. I certainly can’t say that I always am. What really puts the pressure on is the need to keep up with the demands of social media; creating new posts about new work with all the bells and whistles. I eventually realized that an Instagram year is way shorter than a year in my reality. That curator probably hasn’t noticed 4 months have passed since you posted anything new - think about the amount of times you probably said ‘that felt like it was barely a few months ago’ when a friend posts a birthday picture every year!
RIDE OUT YOUR THESIS WORK! This tip might speak more to those in their final year of school, but it buys time and keeps those feelings of ‘falling off’ or guilt at bay. If you maximize the resources, facilities and time you have in your institution and produce a strong thesis, that collection can fill the post graduation non-making gap until you are able to assess and reorganize yourself. That may mean securing finances to make new work, finding a studio space, or ironing out all the other aspects of life that aren’t directly related to your art, like relocating to a new country, taking care of family matters, or finding a new apartment. While all of this plays out, getting a new set of high quality product shots and photographs of your work on a model is a key way to maximize your thesis work. Strong images are your best representation when applying to exhibitions, grants, magazine features, fostering collaborations etc. Keep in mind that every feature will expose a new set of people to your work. Personally, high quality images of my work helped me gain about 90% of the opportunities I secured after graduating. The remaining 10% were the few occasions I shipped pieces to be exhibited.
Don’t get frustrated with just how little time you have to actually make work. You have to make things happen for yourself and be on the prowl for opportunity, it's no longer the responsibility of your school or professors. Gone are the days of simply overhearing classmates chatting about some grant you never heard of that sounds perfect for you. When you find opportunities you have to then write the proposal, mail the work, get headshots of yourself and a plethora of nitty gritty tasks that can become quite time consuming. You can ease this burden some. Join networks and follow curators, fellow artists, and organizations on Instagram- this will help filter the right opportunities your way. ‘Stalk’ resumes of others in your field if you like their progress, and research all the grants, residencies, etc that they have gotten. That’s a pro tip! This stuff takes up time. In reality, you will probably spend an 1/8th of your time actually making anything, and again, you won't be alone.
Don’t bite the comparison bait! Maybe the most obvious of the things said here but sometimes we need reminders. We can probably plan for not having access to the $167,000-dollar studio on campus with the nice lil’ desk and locker just for us, but what’s probably not so obvious is that seeing a classmate’s work evolve from looking like trash to a glorious final piece when neither you nor that classmate thought it would amount to anything, subconsciously gives you hope and confidence to keep on going. Instead, when you see another artist’s pristinely photographed final piece online without seeing the process, it looks like they had no challenges at all getting to the final piece. Try not to distort your own grasp on reality when you no longer have behind-the-scenes-access to other artists processes. Comparison can take a few forms, including comparing what we feel compelled to make after graduation with what we made during school. For me, I felt I invested so much time crafting a voice and style during my final year that logically I should continue working in that vein. Trying to achieve this actually stagnated me. I had to learn to identify and adapt the most important element of my previous work to the new work I wanted to make- that came down to me understanding my love and commitment to materials more than to aesthetic.
There’s a fair chance that a combination of all these factors will and has caused many of us to feel lost after graduating. ‘Lost’ can look like working for a prestigious jewelry house although it was never your desire to be a bench jeweller, or making your own jewelry and selling it well but being dissatisfied with your theme. That feeling of being ‘lost’ isn’t only exemplified by a lack of producing work. With that said, your ‘lost’ might be another person’s ideal and vice versa, so stay focused on you. Remain committed to your vision for your life and your career- how far out of reach that vision seems will fluctuate frequently- close one day and seemingly out of your grasp on another.
This isn’t meant to be overwhelming. In fact, I hope it is a relief to hear someone mention these seemingly little but crucial changes we go through after graduating. Redefine the concept of education and graduation- it does not end with the institution. It helps to realize that what we acquired from institutions isn't just the skills and knowledge that can be applied at our will, we had access to a carefully curated system of resources and routine in a fully immersive environment as well. Recreating these in our own individual worlds takes careful crafting, time, determination, and most importantly a huge commitment to ourselves.
