As director of LSU’s School of Art, Rod Parker has spoken to many skeptical parents about their child’s decision to become an art student.
“I understand your fear is that in 10 years time, they’ll be pushing a supermarket trolley around and barking at lampposts,” Parker said. “I say that routinely, and they go ‘oh yeah, that’s exactly what our fear is.’”
That simply isn’t the case for art students, Parker said.
“These are professional programs,” he said. “I mean, LSU is a research-minded institution, but all the faculty who are teaching here are practitioners in their field and they will have to maintain a practice to be hired, for tenure and promotion.”
Despite art students taking a less-traditional path compared to programs like engineering or pre-medicine, Parker believes that art programs are more comparable to more traditional college disciplines than the conventional knowledge and stereotypes about art students imply.
Professors and students within the School of Art describe their academic experiences as one of the most unique on campus.
One of the earliest distinctions is the direct admission into the College of Art and Design, bypassing the University College Center for Freshman Year many majors require.
It’s unlike the typical American university in the way it’s structured, Parker said. Within the College of Art and Design, he said, coursework is narrow, deep and intense with minimal general education.
Undergraduate art students have two main curriculum directions once they get started: the bachelor of fine arts and the bachelor of art.
The bachelor of fine arts is designed to seven key disciplines of art, including ceramics, digital art, graphic design, painting and drawing, photography, printmaking and sculpture before students choose a concentration of one discipline.
The degree is approximately 65% studio-based, according to the College of Art and Design’s website.
The Bachelor of Art is designed to be more generalized. No single concentration will be selected, allowing for a wider application of interests.
In contrast to the bachelor of fine arts, only 30 to 40% of this degree’s classes are studio-based.
Studio classes are where students’ skills are applied and curated and art is created. Students described these classes as irregular, describing the environment as casual and instructors as coaches allowing for experimentation.
They count as three hour credits but meet for six weekly; though Parker believes that a disciplined and inspired art student will spend additional time on their work separate from the classroom.
Parker believes that while possibly overlooked, most art students have a significant workload comparable to other programs with class time amounting to well above the number of credit hours they’re earning.
“I really do want to make something I’m proud of when I’m done with it,” digital art sophomore Madison Slaton said. “It’s not just for a grade, it’s something I’m creating and want to be proud of in the end.”
Slaton described working on some projects for days on end. It’s pretty standard, she said, to work on a project twice as much outside of class as inside, finding it hard to decide when to finalize a project.
In a nine-square-foot project imitating Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” Slaton said that she spent over 30 hours on that piece alone.
This was for a nude model class, a figure drawing studio class that, Slaton said, many are surprised to hear about. It’s a staple to an art student’s fundamentals, she said, adding that there’s nothing quite like it.
“That’s definitely something that I know a lot of other majors can’t relate to,” graphic design junior Emme Ryland said.
Ryland had similar experiences to Slaton describing the nature of the figure drawing class with nude models to her friends in STEM majors.
She found a similar amount of difficulty describing her film photography class. Compared to labs and lectures, developing film was exceptionally different, said Ryland, who, for her first year, was a pre-vet major.
Art students also have access to many facilities, like a printmaking workshop, ceramics wheels, kilns and photography darkrooms.
Exposure to these different methods and mediums is very intuitive in developing an artist, graphic design sophomore Jacob Chastant said. He feels it’s more effective and cheaper in the long-term to learn these by going through college than to start independently out of high school without mentors or equipment.
“You don’t really get that experience without this,” Chastant said. “I feel like, overall, it’s definitely worth it.”
Chastant rebuts the idea that going to college for art isn’t worth it. He described most of his skeptics as people who just weren’t knowledgeable or aware of the commitment and work that although different, likewise goes into a college arts curriculum.
The art field, Parker added, is not only competitive but is also shrinking.
College is as valuable here as anywhere, he said. It’s certainly possible to skip college and still succeed, just like in many other careers, Parker said.
In the School of Art, experimentation is encouraged and fostered, Chastant said. According to him, it’s possible to turn in a “bad sketch,” for example, and still receive good grades on the assignment, adding that grading could be tailored to a student’s growth or could be based upon the journey the work took to end up that way.
“You can fail completely,” Parker said. “We’re interested in how ambitious were you? What risks did you take creatively? If it didn’t work out, do you understand what happened?”
Associate professor of Art Scott Andresen said it’s possible to succeed at a project by failing at some aspects of it. It’s hard to quantify art, he said, and there are many aspects to focus on; failing one might not be detrimental, especially if something interesting happened along the way.
Andresen has noticed the School of Art has received lots of STEM programs reaching out to supplement more creativity in those students’ viewpoints.
Art promotes many skills that are complementary to but not emphasized by standardized tests, which he believes has been a sole metric of many STEM students’ career success, Andresen said.
Andresen called this “STEAM,” or science, technology, engineering, art and math.
“[STEM programs] are looking to get their own students to approach problem solving from a creative standpoint, rather than just numbers and calculations,” Andresen said. “We’re asking them to come at a problem from a unique viewpoint and stand up for that idea and articulate why it’s an interesting solution.”