{"id":109150,"date":"2016-02-19T09:14:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T14:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=109150"},"modified":"2016-02-19T09:14:18","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T14:14:18","slug":"making-a-career-in-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/02\/making-a-career-in-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a Career in Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

The opening in late January of the third Alumni Biennial exhibition at the Contemporary Art Galleries<\/a> served not only as a display of recent juried art by UConn MFA graduates, but also as a forum for students to learn about what it takes to pursue a successful career in the world of art.<\/p>\n

Judith Thorpe, professor of photography and director of the MFA program, says many\u00a0UConn MFA graduates are still making art, despite statistics showing a large fall-off nationally for fine\u00a0arts graduates\u00a0after leaving school.\u00a0\u201cWe have a good network of alums. Almost 80 percent were still exhibiting,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019ve done it through nonprofit galleries, teaching, in museums, and galleries. There\u2019s been a whole way of having a life in the arts that doesn\u2019t deter art-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Pittsburgh<\/a>
‘Pittsburgh left,’ oil on canvas (2014), Deborah Zlotsky ’89 MFA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The four alumni whose works are exhibited include printmaker Jennifer Dierdorf \u201908 MFA, installation artist and sculptor Jared Holt \u201914 MFA, video artist Siobhan Landry \u201911 MFA, and painter Deborah Zlotsky \u201989 MFA.<\/p>\n

Barry Rosenberg, director of Contemporary Art Galleries and associate professor of art, says the alumni exhibit is the one show he does not curate. Instead he recruits an outside curator, which for this exhibition was Jay Lehman, co-owner of Morgan Lehman Gallery<\/a> in New York City, who reviewed an artist\u2019s statement, resume, art images, press clippings, and work submitted by more than 20 MFA alumni.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach artist [selected] makes a strong and thoughtful work about seemingly contradictory ideas and emotions, such as hope and longing, distance and intimacy, and sorrow and joy,\u201d Lehman says.<\/p>\n

The alumni works include Dierdorf\u2019s series of flower portraits that burst forth from a solid background of color; Holt\u2019s interactive installation, \u201cThe Typewriter;\u201d Landry\u2019s dream-like video, \u201cA Place to Put Her,\u201d a dream-like engagement with narrative; and Zlotsky\u2019s colorful abstracts, as well as a chalk wall installation, \u201cHomage to D and K,\u201d created at the gallery in January and inspired by her painting professors Deborah Dancy and Kathryn Myers.<\/p>\n

During a discussion at the opening that was also attended by faculty in the Department of Art and Art History, the four alumni artists reminisced about their time in Storrs and the challenges of launching a career in art.<\/p>\n

\"'I<\/a>
‘I Want,’ mixed media (2014), Jared Holt ’14 MFA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s taken me a long time to find my footing,\u201d said Zlotsky, a member of the first MFA class at UConn, who majored in art history as an undergraduate at Yale and today is an associate professor of art at Rhode Island School of Design. \u201cI think you have to be persistent. I was always wanting to make my own work. I start teaching right after graduate school. Because I had so little studio background it actually made me a good teacher. I was constantly trying figure out and deconstruct how to tell my students how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holt, who earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Arlington, said he was inspired\u00a0to do\u00a0graduate work in art by the enthusiasm of the small group of students he met in Texas, which was just starting its graduate program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was around a starting-up MFA and I kind of put myself near them,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir studios were close to the art building. I could see the energy and the amount of thought that went into their work. It just fueled me to think about my art work in a serious way. When you start really being critical of yourself is when you want to push yourself further. I\u2019m still trying to juggle life and art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Excerpt<\/a>
Excerpt from ‘A Place to Put Her’ (2015), Siobhan Landry ’11 MFA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Landry said she was not making art after earning a degree in art and art history at the University of Michigan, and arrived in Storrs uncertain of her path; but in time, she found her direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was always scared of being an artist. I left college and missed making art because I always had,\u201d says Landry, who now lives in Boston. \u201cSomewhere between the two years I spent here and leaving, it flipped in my head. I realized that it was a priority in my life. It was what I was going to be doing. Making so much work here, I got into the high from making work and how happy it can make you. I realized that\u2019s why people do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'October<\/a>
‘October Study #1,’ acrylic on paper (2015), Jennifer Dierdorf ’11 MFA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dierdorf, who earned a degree in sculpture at the University of Kansas, wanted a graduate program with small classes and access to faculty. Her time in Storrs included working with Rosenberg learning about the curatorial and gallery side of the art world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really lucky because I\u2019ve managed to work out a schedule with work and studio practice that allows me a lot of time in the studio,\u201d said Dierdorf, who is the director of A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y.<\/a> \u201cRight now I have one foot in my own practice and another in administration and helping other artists. I spend a lot of time helping artists to find money. A lot of my work is all about finding options and letting artists know it\u2019s just not teaching or finding a gallery to represent you, that there\u2019s tons of things you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlumni Biennial\u201d at the Contemporary Art Galleries, 830 Bolton Road, Storrs, continues through March 13. For more information go to the Galleries’ website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An exhibition of juried alumni art at Contemporary Art Galleries illustrates the successful careers of four graduates of the MFA program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":109377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1711,1914,2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-109150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-arts-culture","category-sfa","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 12:49:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109150"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109379,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109150\/revisions\/109379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/109377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109150"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=109150"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=109150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}