It’s 2009 in New Zealand. I wish you all a happy, healthy year. I also hope you look this good when the clock strikes midnight:

2009: It’s ON!

Dawoud Bey recently made a great post with the kind of direct, insightful advice all early career artists are hungry for. Certainly worth a read.

“Don’t be afraid to create new paradigms for how you can exist and function as an artist. A lot of the old paradigms were never meant to serve artists well in the first place. I don’t know any other field in which you can bear the full expense of production, then give someone 50% to sell the object or product, then pay the IRS the requisite 33% tax rate, and say you are doing “good business.” This is the “normal” paradigm of the commercial art world, and at a certain level it does work, particularly at the mid to upper levels. It doesn’t mean its the only way, and in the early stages your work will not be priced high enough to cover your costs of production, let alone pay your rent every month, under this structure at any rate. Other paradigms and strategies are possible. Much the way that musicians are finding ways to profitably get their work into the hands of their audiences without label support, so should other artists be devising ways of getting their work out there and truly supporting themselves. There are artists doing this with real success. Find out what they are doing and how they are doing it.”

Advice to a Young Artist

(via Personism)

With my return to the U.S. looming, I can’t help but consider what the next phase of my life may bring. Certainly, over the next year or two I’ll be making some major decisions, one of which I feel will involve going back to school. I don’t expect that decision to be as simple as I would like it to be, particularly in these difficult times.

Lately I’ve been going back and forth in my mind about the paths that interest me, and so I’ve been researching and pondering MFA programs and whether or not that possibility is right for me. When looking into photo grad schools, the U.S. News “Best of” list inevitably pops up. I always thought the ranking criteria seemed a bit flimsy, so I was interested to find this article, Assessing the MFA in Photography. Here are some lines of thought which echo my own concerns:

At a time when the career prospects of graduates are especially dismal and desultory — according to CAA data, last year there were only 46 teaching vacancies in “film, video, or photography — why are hundreds of young people applying to M.F.A. programs in photography?

…

At RISD, Fessler has observed significant changes in student expectations: “Up until three or four years ago most graduate students thought they could get a teaching job. Now students have fewer illusions about getting such a job; they’re coming in with their eyes open. This year only two of the six students requested a teaching assistantship.”

…

Because the traditional occupational tracks have withered away, the main benefits of graduate photography education appear to be cognitive, such as “art making,” “critical thinking” and “personal development.” If graduate photography education has become an expensive consumer good with significant cognitive rewards — a good like psychotherapy or trekking in Nepal — then we need to change the way we rank, evaluate and otherwise assess the M.F.A. in photography.

At the moment, I have no set “career path” for myself in terms of becoming a photo editor, teacher, etc. As I said recently, what I want is simple: to make work I care about and share it, and find a way for that to be sustainable as part of my everyday. For now and the foreseeable future, this must include some sort of day job. This is the part that I’m striving to work out. While my current gig has been a great fit, I’m concerned about how to support myself in the long run. The dismal economic climate makes this seem all the more timely, though in terms of the big picture what I want is to make a life for myself that is meaningful to me, not just in my aspirations or what I do on the weekends, but what I am involved in and putting energy towards day to day. I do feel that teaching photography could be a possibility, but for the reasons above, I’ve been considering going back to school for something other than photography. Preferably something that interests and challenges me, and something I would be able to balance with making and exhibiting photography work.

Clearly, I don’t know what I’ll end up choosing. I am consciously waiting until I’m back in the States and can get a feel for things, see what kind of connections I make, and which way the wind is blows. Still, it’s hard not to think about.

I’m very happy to have my work selected by George Slade for the upcoming New Directions 2009 juried show at Wall Space Gallery in Seattle. I don’t know all the details just yet, but here is the full list of the 13 artists chosen:

Katharyn Addcox
Christa Bowden
Shawne Brown
Lane Collins
Rachelle Fox
Priya Kambli
Maja Georgiou
David Ondrik
Dalton Rooney
Christy Speakman
Zach Stadel
Bill Vaccaro
Bahar Yurukoglu

You can find more info via the Wall Space blog, and you can also check out a sampling from last year’s show.

Four images from Alchemy will be included. It’s going to be mighty hectic getting my work to Seattle by early next month with Christmas and New Year’s slowing things down. Here’s hoping the stars align.

“Makes me wonder why the hell I went digital instead of sticking to film like Stalin!” Glad I’m a Hasselblad/Canon girl.

(video via Erin)