In the beginning

For those who frequent classes at Kresge Art Center, the careers, disciplines and specializations students went looking for seemed to end up choosing them.

With courses spanning from the more hands-on and traditional skills such as sculpting, painting and printmaking, to newer technologies working primarily with computers, students will tell you that although they may have a preference, it is clear which medium is right for them.

“Last semester, I took ceramics and I was pretty much convinced that I would be terrible at it, and prior to this semester I had never really picked up a paintbrush … but I took to the graphic end with Photoshop really quickly,” studio art junior Christina Grenhart.

While Grenhart found her calling a little later, some students such as Boonstra say they have known from the start that the lifestyle and career path was the right one for them.

“When I was in elementary school, we went on a field trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts,” Boonstra said. “I couldn’t read or write all that well, I was still learning, and I saw this painting called ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ by (Théodore) Géricault, and I could read that painting a lot better than I could read or write. I understood it and it was very powerful.”

From that visit, Boonstra said his calling became clear.

“It took my breath away and I think that was one of the defining moments of my life where I knew something was going to happen in my life with the arts. It was kind of a prompt for me to investigate that type of language — the visual language,” Boonstra said.

Roadblocks and rest stops

While every art student acknowledges the harsh reality of the job market in their field, many find ways to use resources to make their marketability appeal to a grander market. Students take all sorts of roads to what they hope will lead to stability, with a common rest stop being education.

After earning a degree in hospitality business, art education senior Elizabeth Wilson said when she switched her major back to an arts-related field, stability in the future was definitely something she thought about.

“It’s not stable. It’s just not,” Wilson said. “But I was kind of thinking I had had that experience of ‘this is not really what I want to do’ with business and I need to do something that I actually love.”

Taking a cue from her past experiences, Wilson went into art education in an effort to combine her love of spreading knowledge and love for art with the ability to do her own art privately.

“Honestly, being in a classroom and teaching kids art and then being able to do my own art outside of that,” Wilson said. “Really, that’s all I want.”

Boonstra shares the penchant for education with Wilson. He said one of his goals for the future is to teach, if only to seek shelter under the “educational umbrella.”

Grenhart said the technical skills she picks up working with computers in classes reassures her that graphic design is more than relevant.

“There will always be a need for graphic designers,” Grenhart said.

Finding their passion

For students, the fact is that it isn’t just sheer talent that is needed to achieve a career, but passion for their art that is necessary for success.

“I actually ran into someone who was in art education and he is living, like, the ‘starving artist’ lifestyle, but he absolutely loves it,” Wilson said. “He’s found connections that dropped my jaw and is doing things with kids where he ends up getting commissions and really puts himself out there.”

Those who are successful make a full lifestyle change.

“You just learn to live cheaply and I think you just have a real passion for it,” Wilson said. “I think the really amazing thing alive in many of the ‘starving artists’ is their passion and what they are willing to sacrifice to create their art and be able to support themselves.”

Grenhart said the enthusiasm she saw in the teachers she encountered in Kresge was like nothing she’d seen before.

“You get here and they’re excited about the f-stops on a camera, or how when you mix green and yellow you get this yellow-green color and they really want to tell you about this color,” she said.

Personal satisfaction vs. professional success

While most students agree that in the modern day, the life of an exclusive artist may be possible, they don’t see it as something that would be right for them.

Wilson and Grenhart both said that many artists they are familiar with have a “day job” that allows them to pursue their own passions outside on their own time.

Boonstra said he believes that sort of pressure on an artist would go as far as to influence what they create.

“If my choice was to be just solely an artist and survive off that then I would be worried,” he said. “If I did that it would change my art. It would change me. What I make I wouldn’t really think people would want to buy, to tell you the truth. What I’m doing right now is important to what I want to communicate, not necessarily how I’m going to get money out of someone’s pocket.”

Keeping that in mind, personal satisfaction with their work is a value that runs deep with most students. Many artists just want the art to be good, Grenhart said, so offering helping hands to each other isn’t a foreign occurrence at Kresge.

“We’re willing to help each other out, give each other suggestions and while we are competing against each other, especially in something like graphic design, it is a bit more relaxed,” Grenhart said.

Marketing yourself

Though Kresge offers its students a plethora of help to get them on their feet and down the path they plan on pursuing, there are other things for up-and-coming artists to consider when looking toward the future.

Perspective2 Studio founder and CEO Lynne Brown said social networking is huge for young artists to get their foot into the art world’s door.

“It’s all about being visible and being visible is all about social networking,” Brown said. “A young person needs to have a vision as to what they want and continually be sharing that with the public.”

Grenhart said she sees the Internet as a valuable and fairly new resource to the art world and the actual artist, making it much easier for them to not only get their name out, but also their work.

“With the Internet, people can get their stuff out there. It’s kind of like iTunes; they can sell that one song that two people want to buy and listen to because they don’t have to put it in stock somewhere,” Grenhart said. “Wal-Mart couldn’t sell it, but they can. I think with the Internet, people are able to put their art online for others to see and offer prints of it.”

As for other ways to burst onto the scene, Brown offers some other advice to those artists who are still confused about how to get things going.

“I strongly suggest teaming up with a mentor, someone who is already in the field,” Brown said. “Be a part of galleries … start volunteering time.”

All’s well that ends well

While all students may have different disciplines and interests, there is a mentality and a drive they have in common.

“If you’re going into the arts, you better love it,” Boonstra said. “Because you’re not going to make a lot of money typically.”

For some students, it all comes to some pretty simple advice. For Grenhart, this advice is what her father has always told her while she grew up.

“His biggest saying to me has always been ‘Do something you love. If this is something you love than do that,’” Grenhart said. “No matter how crappy of an income it gives you or the opinion that other people have about it, if it’s what you love than you should do it.”