BYE- BYE BOHEMIA

At this weekend’s sale, students of the Alberta College of Art + Design will be displaying their creative talents and their business acumen. The emerging painters, jewellers, potters and photographers are blowing the cliché of the starving artist out of t

At this weekend’s sale, students of the Alberta College of Art + Design will be displaying their creative talents and their business acumen. The emerging painters, jewellers, potters and photographers are blowing the cliché of the starving artist out of the water. Bring your chequebook.

Nobody signs up for art college to become an expert in marketing and self- promotion ( if that were the case, where would the

schadenfreude be in telling your parents you’re planning to etch for a living?). Still, turning out graduates with skills that may help them savvily strive for careers as working artists and curators has become an increasingly urgent priority for art schools.

In his new book The Killing of the Creative Class ( Yale, 2015), culture journalist Scott Timberg blames persistent economic recession, social shifts and technological change for making life as a visual artist a tougher row to hoe than ever. He believes that the rise of “blockbuster culture” ( the Taylor Swifts and Katy Perrys of the world), combined with the Internet- and reality- TV- fuelled delusion that “everybody is an artist,” has led to the devaluation of art. And if nobody’s buying serious art, he writes, it follows that serious artists are at risk of extinction. Unless— you could add a little more cheerfully— they manage to adapt.

The Alberta College of Art + Design, which bestows diplomas as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in fine arts and design, is definitely helping students adapt. It now offers four “professional related” courses: the mandatory Professional Practices for Artists, two ethics and business practices courses for photography majors, and a second- year Fundamentals of Advertising and Marketing course. By all accounts, there is also an informal push for professionalization by a growing number of ACAD instructors, who are teaching students how to present their work, apply for grants and scholarships, and generally elude the starving- artist cliché.

One artist who is determined not just to avoid starving but to prosper, is Arkatyiis Miller, a fifth- year drawing student at ACAD. While otherwise deeply satisfied with the high- level education in critical thinking and studio production she’s received at her soon- to- be alma mater, Miller admits that she looked beyond the college curriculum to become more proficient at branding and marketing herself. “There’s an expectation at ACAD that students will become excellent at getting other people to pay us for what we’re doing, in terms of grants and scholarships,” she says. “But that’s very competitive, and not everyone can get that money. I wanted to learn exactly how to approach a gallery, and how to be a professional.” Enter the 16- year- old “Show + Sale,” curated by ACAD’s student association, ACADSA.

Over the past few years, perennial Show + Sale attendees will probably have noticed that the number of framed paintings and photo by

graphs shown at the twice- annual event has risen, and that the glass, ceramic and jewelry collections are more heavily curated. The change had been a result of a major overhaul by ACADSA project manager Jenn Jackson and her colleagues ( several of the students I talked to referred to the “before- Jenn” Show + Sale versus the more robust and professional “after- Jenn” Show + Sale). Whereas in the past any student who filled out the correct forms could man a table stacked high with a pile of their favourite photos or a clutter of mugs and jugs, would- be exhibitors are now required to complete ACADSA- organized workshops on pricing, branding, and marketing before being invited to show their wares. As a result, not only are prices more consistent within each department, but, says Miller, the event is now “more like a gallery and less like a garage sale.” The effect of putting a greater emphasis on the “Show,” has been a 150 per cent increase in “Sales” since 2013.

No one’s suggesting that artists become full- on suits. Rather, ACAD and its student association are looking to strike a balance between the romantic notion that the artist should utterly disdain the marketplace— an ideal that hasn’t been serving art graduates very well of late— and a vision of artists as mass- market panderers, competing purveyors of matchymatchy living- room decor. It’s not the easiest line to walk, but then the graduates of ACAD are becoming a pretty nimblefooted species.