Homegrown MFA

I’ve been in conversation with some other creatives recently. We’ve been chatting about the need and uses for getting a Masters of Fine Arts degree and some of the damages the process can cause. 

I’ve thought about going back for a Masters multiple times over the years; looking by turns for community or legitimacy or a deeper understanding of my work and craft. There are various reasons I talk myself out of it. There isn’t a program near me that I’d want to attend and without in-person instruction, community, and relationship building, it might give me some of the understanding and skill building I seek but would maybe fail on the other fronts. Since I don’t want to pursue teaching, having an MFA would be me getting the dregree for the sake of getting it. So I can always talk myself out of the process by walking myself through these points. 

No single path

I’ve struggled over the years with staying on my own personal path and not getting off track with other’s suggestions or influences. Keeping to my own inner compass has been a constant challenge. And I have to go back to my personal touchstones over and over which for me are I want to: 1.) make art and 2.) have people see that art. Everything I do I try to filter through those two goals. Even with my intentions narrowed down like that I can still get off track sometimes. Then I have figure out what’s not working to course correct.

We choose goals and work toward them. Sometimes we don’t know if they are going to be what we want. So we have to be willing (and able) to find our path again and go a different direction even if it seems to everyone else like the path we are taking is the “wrong” way. We have to be willing to say that we got off track and we need to go a different direction. This includes quitting a program when it isn’t working or deciding not to pursue a “traditional”, “respeciable” art career striving for admission of our work to galleries and museums.

That takes a tremendous amount of internal surety and trust in yourself to know your own direction. I’m not saying I have it down. But I am saying I’ve been practicing it now for close to fifteen years. I’ve been doing my mental health work. I’ve been spending time with myself to get to know who I am and what I want/need from my art practice. And I’ve been making art. All of those things strengthens that internal compass so you can trust it. 

Ultimately, there’s no step-by-step guide for this process. Each of us creative people have to forge that path for ourselves. We can (and should!) be in community with other creatives and learning from each other but at the end of the day, each of our creative paths are as unique and individual as we are. 

What does MFA as side quest look like?

The stories I’ve heard of grad school sucking out people’s creative juice is also off-putting. I’ve had several MFA grads tell me that the work was so draining that they needed significant recovery time from school after it was over. This seems to defeat the purpose to me. This process should build you up and undergird your creative practice. Any person or institution that tears you down but doesn’t contribute anything to your rebuilding is deeply suspect in my book. 

So my question is, can you do the work of an MFA on your own? Side quest your way into the equivalent of an Masters of Fine Arts? I’m certainly giving it my best shot with mentorships, online and in-person classes and workshops, and reading. 

The reading is what’s most interesting to me right now. I’m currently reading The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp and Creative Quest by Questlove. It’s no secret that I read these types of books all the time! For real, I’m more than a little obsessed with finding the best one. I’m looking for commonalities across practices but also differences. I’m looking for where I am duplicating their processes and where we diverge. 

The thing that I’m certain of after all the books I’ve read is that we have to figure out our own process. Then learn how to sustain it. The commonality is that all of us are different and need to learn to attune ourself to our own practice. That’s both good news and bad news because, short of some really damaging personal practices, there’s not a wrong path, which makes it hard to discern what the right path is for me. 

And here we are back around to paying attention to our practice. Making notes of what works for us and trying to repeat it. Taking care of ourselves physically and mentally so we can do the work. Getting these things is what we artists need, whether we can get there informally from our own practice or formally from an Masters of Fine Arts program. We just need to get there.

What about you? Are you working on your own homegrown MFA? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.