editor's voice: Bachelor of Fuck All?
Erin Ashenhurst, Graphics Editor

Contemporary arts is a land unto itself. Attending an art theory class - like any university class - one notices a lot of 'issues' sitting in the audience: the brooding hipsters with elaborate illusions of grandeur, the loudly emotional types who seem to be frequently sleeping with someone or other in their program regardless of gender or mental health, the creatures with the exaggeratedly good posture who make comments about their 'creative soul,' and a large population of revelling cynics of all genders/sexual orientations/vices. These are my people. However, I do not wish to address all of contemporary arts with my flippant remarks. More specifically, I am one of the few who will soon be graduating with a major from the mysterious program of 'visual arts.'

What is the visual arts program? What kinds of skills does one acquire? What kinds of equipment are required? And why the hell am I still here enjoying the patented SFU contemporary arts fifth year? All I can offer you is my admittedly slightly disgruntled perspective.

The program is structured with an emphasis on studio practice and theory courses. It is entirely possible for one to develop a reasonably strong conceptual basis for one's work. Topics such as 'the body,' 'the city,' 'female identity,' 'Asian identity,' 'queer identity,' 'pop/childhood/nostalgia,' are thoroughly encouraged as acceptable justification for student work (whatever you choose to make of that). Unfortunately, there is very little emphasis on learning any practical skills with which to express one's 'unique' vision. Due to limited funding, skills classes are not offered very frequently and hard to register for during the first few years of one's training. Naturally, those students transferring in from colleges or other institutions which have actually required them to learn a basic understanding of materials are praised and envied by their peers.

The grading criteria for the seemingly unending hours of studio work could benefit with development. Perusing one's transcripts, it can be (and, in my case, is) entirely possible to identify which instructor one had for a given class based on the grade received. This is not surprising when the criteria identified by the instructors is openly founded on fantastically subjective points such as 'improvement,' 'effort' and 'potential.' In the spirit of junior high gym class, it is not clear how these elements of one's performance are actually evaluated. There are no marks given on specific projects after first year, and few - if any - written comments handed out. Depending on the instructor, the tele-reg voice is about all you're going to get.

One's 'use of class time' is greatly taken into account under the 'effort' category of grading. This can be tricky to pull off when the facilities provide less technology than many of our relatives' houses. The kinds of work produced by students - both conceptually and materially - tend to be acknowledged or discouraged by certain instructors in relation to their personal interests and practices. This is also true of the types of materials prioritised for purchase. For the first three years of my study, the students in Visual Arts had limited access to one office computer equipped with Photoshop. Last year there were three computers, one of which had Final Cut Pro and could be accessed during class hours through a sign-up sheet. People have been known to 'sketch' frames of their video in order to appear busy during the required six hours a week of 'work time' in class.

The final consideration I have had to deal with as the time approaches to leave this cosy concrete - BFA in hand - is, of course, paid work. As a Visual Arts student, one is told through the years about the magic money of 'grants.' In my fourth year, the utterly slim chances of ever seeing any of this government money was revealed, and other ways to make money were mentioned (namely teaching or arts). The possibility that people (unconnected to our government's weak commissioning of Canadian culture) would want to pay you for your creativity in relation to, say, some commercial venture is not discussed. This would be selling out. This would be compromising your self-expression. So why was I taking these classes if only to fall back on my customer service/administration skills? If there's one thing I've learned in these five years, it's critical thinking.

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