10 Lessons I Learned in Art School

2) Accepting criticism that isn't always constructive. Listening to others' reactions to your work.

3) You do the work and that's only half of it. You have no control over what someone makes your artwork mean. You don't know their life story, what emotional resonance you have attracted from the depths of their psyches and souls.

4) Successful art pulls a reaction out of someone. Anger, fear, discomfort, joy, beauty, levity, etc. Dull art sparks next to nothing inside the souls of the masses.

5) I'm awkward. Professor: some artists style is awkward. Silver lining, man.

6) I'm not the best at anything, I'm really bad at some things, but the joy I feel when creating is worth everything. That sense of play, color, and freedom is everything. I am an artist. These labels are everything and nothing. What is it that I am comfortable claiming to be? A teacher. An artist. An intellectual. These all typecast ideas about the label, but the label does not suffice or matter. I just am. All and nothing.

7) All first drafts are shit.

8) Who gives a shit? Make art to make art. Half of it will look appalling to your soul. You have a vision inside and your first serval attempts at bringing that vision to life is hilarious if you let it be. For example: the beginning. YIKES.

9) Let yourself fail. Failure ain't SHIT. For real. "Failing" is absolutely what you need the most. Don't be so uptight, clinging to this IDEA of perfect that DOES NOT and CAN NOT exist. Perfection is accepting every single present moment you encounter. Perfection is EMBRACING ALL THAT IS and DOING YOUR BEST EACH AND EVERY MOMENT. Intelligently adjusting to the flow of life and trusting your most intuitive instincts which might insist you write many books and essays and produce many bodies of work that may end up being completely useless

10) Emily Dickinson. Von Gogh. You might live your entire lifetime an absolutely hated outcast: awkawrd, weird AF, rebelled against, rejected, typecast as strange and freakish and unneccessary. You might be Van Gogh. Emily Dickinson. You might be a fucking genius just the way you are, amazing and incredulous and miraculous as you are and never once be accepted in the era you were born. Or you might sprinkle in the flavors of Andy Warhol and Walt Whitman and manifest your greatness and ordinariness into a legendary life lived out loud. But regardless: you can't for five seconds attach fear to what-if scenarios. You cannot allow yourself to worry about what others will think about you or you will be paralyzed in fear, unable to move forward.

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