I was very fortunate with my time at Eastern Michigan University. The year I started there (2006) was the first year they implemented a new "Symposium Undergraduate Research Fellowship" program ("SURF" for short) and before I even took my first class, I received a call from the SURF organizer inviting me to be a part of it. I did not apply, or indeed do anything but register for honors classes and take part in their Presidential Scholarship competition (where I was awarded the "Regent Gold" level scholarship, which included full tuition for four years).
I don't know how the SURF organizer got my name, or why they selected me and the other few incoming freshmen that they did - but I suspect I was one of the few considering an art major who had the academic credentials they were looking for, and perhaps that helped. Many of the other SURFs were in the sciences, or other departments with obvious research-based projects; they were paired up with a faculty member with the understanding that they would develop these research-based projects for their four years at EMU. As an art student, I was given more leeway. Instead of a "research" project, it was decreed that I would be allowed to showcase my art at the annual Undergraduate Symposium. I could choose whichever faculty member I wanted to be my "research mentor," I could essentially choose to do whatever art projects I wanted (even changing my focus every year), and to top it all off I would receive a scholarship, renewable every year.
Some of this scholarship money was roped off for me to use as "expenses" for my project - and was held at the art department office. But because I could argue that almost anything counted as an "art expense," I was able to use even that money for things I really wanted. I used the money to pay for typical art supplies (paint, brushes, pencils), but also Adobe software, mats and frames for my largest watercolors, a really nice digital camera (to help me get the "source photography" I worked from), and even to help fund part of my study abroad trip to Europe in 2008. To continue getting this allowance, all I had to do was 1) make art, and 2) display and talk about that art at the Undergraduate Symposium every March. I did this all four years that I was at EMU (who wouldn't?!).
Freshman year, I was kind of at a loss for what exactly to do for my art project. I was still in all of my intro art classes, and had not yet selected a concentration. (I would eventually go on to do a double concentration in Watercolor and Graphic Design, but Sophomore year, I was actually registered in the Drawing concentration, and as a Freshman I wasn't officially in the art department at all - but still an "undeclared" major.) "Selfies" weren't really a thing yet (this was the 2006-2007 school year), but I was living away from home for the first time and trying to figure out exactly who I was - so self-portraiture seemed like an obvious direction to explore.
I took self portraits of myself with a digital camera (my phone did not take photographs). I played around with Photoshop to alter these photos. And I used some of the photos as source material to make drawings (graphite, ink, charcoal) and paintings (acrylic). Over the course of the year, I amassed several of these self-portraits, and it was these that I displayed at my first ever Undergraduate Symposium in 2007.
Here are some photographs from that display:
The truth is, I used a variety of media and played around with a variety of lighting techniques and poses in the source photographs because I was experimenting. I didn't have a plan; my goal wasn't "to showcase a variety of emotions" or to show how one's opinion of oneself can change from one month to the next (or one day to the next, or one hour to the next) - though that is how I discussed this oeuvre at the symposium. I created a body of work - which included a lot of experiments and mistakes - and then came up with a narrative to explain the choices I made.
I feel like that often happens to artists. They go along making their art and then someone wants to understand an "overarching theme" or make an exhibition of work, and a narrative is created that might not have been conscious on the artist's part during the actual creation of the works. Art exists (people exist), and then later, that art (those people) are labeled and put into boxes.
I was encouraged by my research faculty mentor, one of my drawing teachers, to include everything - even the ones I wasn't as pleased with - because they worked together as a whole. She was a very positive person and wanted me to feel able to make mistakes. I think I grew a lot that year - in general, living away from home and trying to figure out who I was in college, but also as an artist and a self-confident person, and I credit my faculty member and the SURF program for helping me do that.
I don't know how the SURF organizer got my name, or why they selected me and the other few incoming freshmen that they did - but I suspect I was one of the few considering an art major who had the academic credentials they were looking for, and perhaps that helped. Many of the other SURFs were in the sciences, or other departments with obvious research-based projects; they were paired up with a faculty member with the understanding that they would develop these research-based projects for their four years at EMU. As an art student, I was given more leeway. Instead of a "research" project, it was decreed that I would be allowed to showcase my art at the annual Undergraduate Symposium. I could choose whichever faculty member I wanted to be my "research mentor," I could essentially choose to do whatever art projects I wanted (even changing my focus every year), and to top it all off I would receive a scholarship, renewable every year.
Some of this scholarship money was roped off for me to use as "expenses" for my project - and was held at the art department office. But because I could argue that almost anything counted as an "art expense," I was able to use even that money for things I really wanted. I used the money to pay for typical art supplies (paint, brushes, pencils), but also Adobe software, mats and frames for my largest watercolors, a really nice digital camera (to help me get the "source photography" I worked from), and even to help fund part of my study abroad trip to Europe in 2008. To continue getting this allowance, all I had to do was 1) make art, and 2) display and talk about that art at the Undergraduate Symposium every March. I did this all four years that I was at EMU (who wouldn't?!).
Freshman year, I was kind of at a loss for what exactly to do for my art project. I was still in all of my intro art classes, and had not yet selected a concentration. (I would eventually go on to do a double concentration in Watercolor and Graphic Design, but Sophomore year, I was actually registered in the Drawing concentration, and as a Freshman I wasn't officially in the art department at all - but still an "undeclared" major.) "Selfies" weren't really a thing yet (this was the 2006-2007 school year), but I was living away from home for the first time and trying to figure out exactly who I was - so self-portraiture seemed like an obvious direction to explore.
I took self portraits of myself with a digital camera (my phone did not take photographs). I played around with Photoshop to alter these photos. And I used some of the photos as source material to make drawings (graphite, ink, charcoal) and paintings (acrylic). Over the course of the year, I amassed several of these self-portraits, and it was these that I displayed at my first ever Undergraduate Symposium in 2007.
Here are some photographs from that display:
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| A wall of self-portraits ranging from acrylic paintings, ink, charcoal, graphite, and colored pencil drawings, photographs, and Photoshopped images. EMU Symposium 2007. |
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| A printed poster (designed in Adobe Illustrator) that paired an artist statement with text pulled from my journals and a collage of photographs. |
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| I also laid out pages and pages of printed photographs on the table for guests to flip through if they wished. |
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| Here I am (the blonde) showing the display to my husband (to my left, who was my boyfriend at the time - we had just started dating a few weeks prior) and his college roommate (to my right, who also happened to be one of my closest friends from middle school/high school - which is, in fact, how I met my husband). |
The truth is, I used a variety of media and played around with a variety of lighting techniques and poses in the source photographs because I was experimenting. I didn't have a plan; my goal wasn't "to showcase a variety of emotions" or to show how one's opinion of oneself can change from one month to the next (or one day to the next, or one hour to the next) - though that is how I discussed this oeuvre at the symposium. I created a body of work - which included a lot of experiments and mistakes - and then came up with a narrative to explain the choices I made.
I feel like that often happens to artists. They go along making their art and then someone wants to understand an "overarching theme" or make an exhibition of work, and a narrative is created that might not have been conscious on the artist's part during the actual creation of the works. Art exists (people exist), and then later, that art (those people) are labeled and put into boxes.
I was encouraged by my research faculty mentor, one of my drawing teachers, to include everything - even the ones I wasn't as pleased with - because they worked together as a whole. She was a very positive person and wanted me to feel able to make mistakes. I think I grew a lot that year - in general, living away from home and trying to figure out who I was in college, but also as an artist and a self-confident person, and I credit my faculty member and the SURF program for helping me do that.
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