Let me tell you a bit about myself:
All my life I've been an aspiring and practicing artist. I was encouraged to be creative and draw and paint and act and make movies ever since I was a kid.
However, Minnesota is full of some awful "normal" public schools and some amazing experimental public schools. The first school I ever went to was not equipped to handle the arts and it didn't want to be (unless hockey could be considered an art), so when I was ten years old my parents pulled me out of the local school and found a very special public art and science school. I'll admit that I was totally lucky, but there's something in this story that we all can learn:
- You have to take your education into your own hands and fight for what you need, because not all educators are thinking hard about your best interest. Look elsewhere than you are, don't accept "normal."
From that point on, I had a great art education and eventually I went to the Perpich Arts High School in Minnesota, which is arguably a miniature art college. There I studied Visual Arts, but I also had a passion for filmmaking, which was part of a different department in the school (called media arts). Eventually I was able to run around, pull strings, make friends, and do other gregarious, proactive things so that I could make movies if I wanted to, and by the end of senior year I was given a $100 grant to make a movie *within* the visual arts department.
- Never tell yourself, "I can't." Never take "no" for an answer.
- Just because you aren't enrolled in something, that doesn't mean you can't do it.
- You will find people who want to help you, and you may even make friends out of foes.
After I graduated High School I went off to New York City to study at certain a famous film school that will remain unnamed. For the first year, I studied liberal arts and had no art classes at all.
- There are people who would practically kill to take art classes, but don't get them.
Then summer rolled around, and I finally began to take film classes. I learned BOATLOADS during a crammed summer session that almost killed me. Then when the next semester of school rolled around, normal-paced film school seemed almost boring by comparison, and after spending two years in high school fighting to squeeze film into a visual art setting, I found that the film setting was pretty much devoid of satisfactory visual arts classes. The irony is palpable, hipsters rejoice, c'est la vie. I decided to suck it up and do what I did last time - be proactive, pull strings, snoop around and fight for what I want.
- If you have a LOT of artistic interests, you're NEVER going to be satisfied with a single course of action (especially if most people find your interests to be eclectic or conflicted in some way).
- The only way you can get what you want is by looking for it on your own.
I made it halfway through Sophomore year when the rug was pulled out from under me and my family's entire financial situation fell through. Now I'm stuck taking a leave of absence and if I can't get a mysterious briefcase full of glowing currency by next fall I won't be going back to that school at all —for Visual art, Liberal Art, Media Art or otherwise.
- You can blame capitalism, socialism, the government, the American post-secondary education system, the Bavarian Illuminati, your racial/ethnic out-group of choice, New York City itself, other countries, God, the Devil, or even the goddess Fortuna or Grand Ol' Discordia for your problems; but the fact is s*it happens and you gotta carry on.
- If you don't carry on, then you're letting "them" win, and the blame rests on your own shoulders.
So then I went back to Minnesota to celebrate Christmas and plan my exit strategy. At this point I had taken up a pair of generally uncreative projects because I needed cash. I was web-chatting with a friend and moping about my situation. I figured that I'd probably never take another film class again, and I knew that even if I did, I'd just be sending myself down a path that leads away from the lifestyle I want (which is filled, for some reason, with history, puppetry, animation, graphic novels, philosophy, painting, and a bunch of other creative, educational, poetic things) in favor of a lifestyle that leaves me editing trident gum commercials and drawing pigeons with capes forever —doing it all "for the money."
I thought, "wouldn't it be great if there were a way to take real, well thought-out illustration courses in my free time, while studying a different discipline elsewhere and/or working for a living?"
Then it hit me.
It WOULD be great, and it can happen
Q: Why don't people educate themselves?
A: Because one can't know what one doesn't know. You always need a teacher!
Q: Why can't we be each other's teachers?
A: We can!
I can say from experience that art college is expensive, often too expensive. I can also say from experience that a lot of the courses you take in college are comprised of activities that you could have done at home with a few friends for critique and a small investment for materials.
Q: So why DON'T people just do all this "art school" stuff at home? Why do we pay lots of money for it?
A: Because until today it's never been easy to take the experience and wisdom of teachers —the organization and insight of their lesson plans— and distribute it to students for free.
But shucks, it's 2011 now. The age of the internet has already arrived. It's time to get busy.
And those who are looking to open the world of education can do better than the vague instructions of WikiHow. There are platforms available for posting art, holding meetings, giving demonstrations, combining text, images, video and sound into one place... and networking it all together.
That's what this project is about: taking the capabilities that have existed for years online and combining them into a network that allows us as self-driven students to take the capabilities that have existed for years IN US and nurturing them so that we can become better educated, more practiced artists.
For those of you who read all this, thank you for listening to my story. I hope you stick around and make the Open Art School a part of yours.
—Thomas Boguszewski
