RE: Day Job (Don’t Quit Your?)

Organized by Trisha Holt, Haynes Riley, Stamps A&D alum Kayla Romberger, and John Zane Zappas, RE: Day Job (Don’t Quit Your?) brings together the work of 12 recent graduates from the University of Michigan School of Art & Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Though the notion of learning to become an artist in a traditional academic setting is problematic at best, MFA degrees have become de facto requirements for any young artist hoping for a career in the arts. The value of an MFA is concrete — yet difficult to quantify. More than anything, what a two or three year retreat to the Academy provides is time and space to develop a creative practice. 

As recent graduates depart from the safety of their school-provided studios and stumble into the blinding light of the ​“real” world, they become embodiments of the philosophical problem of mind-body relationship: years of physical and mental exertion culminate in a search for a day job, most often only tangentially related their training as a studio artist. This pulling out of the proverbial rug creates a rift in recent graduates where their bodies are forced to spend most waking hours working their gigs, while their minds cling to some semblance of a studio practice staring out car windows and drawing at the kitchen table. 

This exhibition brings together recent graduates from Cranbrook Academy of Art and University of Michigan School of Art & Design who have cast themselves as cultural interlopers, negotiating the duplicitous waters between the Academy and an unknowable horizon. Rather than shrinking back, these artists leverage this unique transitional space to portray and problematize divergent modes of representing reality, surreality, and hyperreality.

May 17 — June 29
Opening Reception: May 17, 2013 6 – 9 pm
Work • Ann Arbor