Written by writer and current program coordinator, Olivia Speier.
Notes on the Spring 2020 MFA Intensive
In artmaking, what does it take to tell the truth? This question was at the core of our MFA Spring intensive.
At the de Young Museum’s exhibit Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963–1983 we saw how truth-telling takes defiance, it takes empowering a collective voice. We entered the show through a room of paintings, photographs, and multimedia pieces by the Spiral group, a collective of Black artists in the 1960s who worked in a uniformly striking black and white palette. With extremely limited opportunities for Black art to be acknowledged by the white mainstream, they used art to speak the truth of the Black experience — the truth of life in a black and white world.
Our workshop with visiting artist, author Kate Walbert began with the question: what feels satisfying as a story? And unfolded into a discussion about how we can allow truth to come through our work.
Walbert said, “If you’re too concerned with your own self-consciousness and imposing meaning on your work, you won’t be able to make the leaps.”
She shared with us that if we learn to listen closely to our work, we will find that truth will come from the piece itself. It will say something we never could have thought of.
During a panel conversation with Kate Walbert, performance artist Debórah Eliezer, screenwriter Alex Burger, and MFA core faculty member and writer Carolyn Cooke, the artists discussed how collaboration enables artmaking to flourish, allowing it to reach places it otherwise couldn’t have.
As Eliezer said, “Collaboration can build bridges between perceived divides. We need all the stories: the authentic THING that happens, where our hearts connect, our breath stops, because THAT is where truth lives.”
When artwork affects me, it is because something pure and piercing about the human experience emerges from the piece. When I experience something true, it makes me hungry. Hungry to speak, inspired to sing, too. Truth is about something larger than ourselves. This intensive reminded me that we as artists can consciously allow it to emerge from our work.
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