As previously mentioned, I’m finishing up my freshman year in Metaphorical Arts High School.
These were the courses I took, the field trips I went on, and the creative work I did this year in the Jackson Street Arts High School of the Imagination, complete with my grades (self-assigned!) and my course evaluations. I’ve also provided links for you to take the same or similar courses if any of my course evaluations inspire you. This is a long post! If you’re reading this on email, you may need to click through to Substack for the whole post. Skim for bold type if you’re mainly interested in courses and experiences you could take in 2023.
Winter Quarter:
Courses:
The Create Anyway Masterclass with David Limrite and Jordan Blaquera
This was a generous five-day free workshop that included both critique from the artist David Limrite and creativity coaching from coach Jordan Blaquera. The draw for me was the opportunity to engage in the critiques, which is something you get in actual art school, but is not often available (and never for free) outside of art school. I submitted my work “Neither of You Knows Anything About the Other” for critique, but it wasn’t chosen, probably because Limrite’s focus is more traditional fine art as opposed to narrative comics or illustration. Nevertheless, I learned an awful lot about composition and artist professional development from this 5-day workshop and felt grateful for the gift of it. I don’t see that they are offering this workshop again, but they are offering a free webinar entitled 7 Keys to Creating a Cohesive Series of Your Real Work in 2023 on January 4th, so you could get a taste of what these teachers have to offer.
My grade in this class: Pass (Since I wasn’t picked for critique, I’m going to say this class was graded Pass/Fail. I submitted work to be critiqued and attended and participated actively in all aspects of the class.)
Redrawing Black History with Lilla Rogers and Tamisha Anthony
One of the most exciting courses I took all year, and, again, incredibly generous in that this four-week course was totally free. This class also had a bonus (also free) MATSPrep pre-class where you had the opportunity to create and share three different illustrations of famous black women artists: Betty Davis, Alice Coltrane, and Marian Anderson. In the class itself, Tamisha Anthony offered weekly lectures on different iconic eras of black history, the black female artists that worked in each era, and instruction and inspiration for how you might go about illustrating them. Weekly webinars and critiques with Tamisha and art agent and instructor Lilla Rogers gave wonderful professional development help and guidance, and were also fun. I made pieces I was genuinely proud of of all three artists already mentioned, as well as Elizabeth Catlett, Gwendolyn Bennett, Edmonia Lewis, and Bettye Saar, and the only one of these artists I was even familiar with before I took the course was Marian Anderson. This was some of the richest artistic work I did all year. If I could afford it, I would definitely take classes regularly with Lilla Rogers’ outfit, Make Art That Sells. I took this course live, but it remains available and free as an on-demand course; a wonderful use of your time if you have any interest in black history, women’s history, art history, or illustration.
My grade for this class: A. I participated actively and on time throughout the course, I did work at the very top of my own artistic abilities and stretched and grew artistically throughout the course, and I’m proud of the work I did in this class.
Best Year Yet with United Art Space
This was a life planning course focused on artistic development and making money as an artist. I’m not sure any of this was particularly groundbreaking, but it came at a good time and was a useful reminder and structure for me to take some notes and do some goal-setting for the year. This course is available free again this year from January 5th to the 19th.
My grade: Pass. I participated actively and benefitted from my participation, but this course really involved life and artistic planning, and thus I’m going to say it was graded pass/fail.
Green Fit with Deb Malmon
Even Metaphorical Arts High School has PE! This was a series of outdoor winter adventures: snowshoeing, skiing, spark racing, orienteering/geocaching, outdoor survival. We did this with friends and it was lots of fun. This is being offered again January 5th to February 9 on Thursdays at French Regional Park in Minnesota; it costs $45 for 6 sessions.
My grade. Pass. I participated actively and wasn’t always last at everything. (Did I ever tell you about the only C I got in college? It was in karate. I tried hard and everything, but it turns out I am a C-student in karate. I had even studied shotokan karate before I took the class! This substandard grade has been a consistent conversation-starter at job interviews ever since. Anyway, all PE classes should be graded pass/fail, always.)
Knife Skills with Truffle Shuffle
This class was gifted to us, and what a treat it was. We had the chance to learn cheffy knife skills while making a wonderful pasta dish and cocktails. The ingredients they provided were simple, but still something special; the carrots and fennel tasted like vegetable candy, the Paloma mix and Balinese Truffle Salt made a really special, high-end cocktail. The class itself was fun and playful, but you still learned a lot. If you have any friends who are still COVID cautious but miss restaurants a lot, any of these classes would make a great gift. Truffle Shuffle also offers free community classes where they give you a shopping list instead of ingredients. (This looks like the closest to the one we took.)
Grade: Pass. This class was really just for fun - an elective! The food was delicious, though.
Secrets to Success in Surface Pattern Design with Bonnie Christine
I’ve really enjoyed Bonnie’s classes in surface pattern design in the past, and from her have learned how to work with Illustrator, create my own color palette from my own photography, and digitize and repeat handmade images — so many amazing skills! But this class was focused on the business of surface pattern design, not the actual work of creating, and I couldn’t really stay focused for it. Her free 5-day challenge — the first class I took with her that I really loved — seems to be up on demand here.
Grade: No Pass.
Online Course Development Workshop with Flo Morin
Similarly, this course focused on business development of e-courses. This was something I wanted to do this year, and I learned a few things from this workshop, but I really struggle with the business side of artistic practice, in general. I tend to resent needing to monetize things. This teacher seems to have vanished in the year since I took the course with her, so maybe it wasn’t just me.
Grade: No Pass.
Field Trips:
Great Northern Festival Launch Party
This was a fun party with free drinks. The art that made an impression on me were the projections on the side of a grain elevator by the kids at Juxtaposition Arts. This year’s party is January 23rd, but it looks like the drinks cost money this time.
Jovan Speller and Andy DuCett’s Conservatory
Supernatural at MIA
Paris
Spring Quarter
Courses:
The Collective Songwriting Workshop
This was another really generous surprise. Ian Escario is a UK-based music impresario who was astonishingly well-connected and equally astonishingly disorganized. This free 5-day songwriting challenge was an absolutely fantastic experience; he matched you up with others from around the world who had similar musical interests but diverse musical talents, and then we used BandLab to collaborate to produce an original song as a band. Songs were then reviewed and critiqued by songwriter Claire Dove. I covered what I learned in this post, but: The key takeaway? If you want to be a musician, you need to learn to produce. Ian runs a music incubator which promises to leave you with a professionally produced demo track of your music; based on this experience, I suspect it would be worth the money.
Grade: B+ I participated actively and learned a ton, and I really have a long way to go with my musical skills.
She is the Producer II with Femme House
I followed the experience with Ian Escario by trying to learn to produce. This course was free, in-depth, and provided a free license to Ableton, which is worth about $100 all by itself. I was in ALL the way over my head; most of the other active participants were professional musicians experienced with both Ableton and other, simpler, music production software. On the other hand, your teachers here were people like Teagan and Sarah. I learned as much as I could, but should probably have taken their Intro to Ableton course first. Femme House offers a variety of short, free sessions on different music and DJ topics here.
Grade: D. I participated actively for as long as I could (about half the course/homework assignments) and learned to do some cool things, but wow, this class was definitely too difficult for me.
Inside the Puppet Builder’s Workshop with Bernd Ogrodnik
This was a fun, free webinar which taught some Zen principles, some theater principles, and gave some instructions in carving wooden puppets. Honestly, i think the key takeaway was the importance of breathing to life, art, and puppetry! I took good notes but didn’t follow up on the making part of things. I would have enjoyed this class a lot more if he had sent a materials list in advance and I could have built a workbench and started on a puppet along with him. That part, apparently, costs money. You can take two free classes with Bernd: the one I took, and one about character creation.
Grade: Marginal Pass. I did all that the course asked of me but wished it had asked more.
Botanical Sketchbooking with Lapin
This was a Domestika class I took at the invitation of and with a friend. Lapin is incredibly sexy, so it is a joy to learn from him! This felt like a relaxing, meditative, hobby/elective class, a chance to drink wine with a pal, draw pretty things, and relax with a charming teacher. We took a very slow pace, and are still not finished with the class! If you need French eye candy of various kinds, you can take this class here.
Grade: Incomplete
Sketchnotes Workshop with Emily Mills
A fun introduction to the art of embellished notetaking. You can find similar free courses here.
Grade: Pass. This class was very brief; I wish I had done more for it.
Field Trips:
Jovan Speller’s Nurturing and Other Rituals of Protection at MIA
American Swedish Institute’s Paper Dialogues show
Subversive Sirens’ “For the Love of Silver Water” and Splash Mob
Dylan Hicks house concert at the Rock Garden
Summer Quarter
Most of the quarter was our summer residency on Lake Mascoma in New Hampshire. We spent most of this time practicing foraging, engaging in Jewish spiritual development with our Chavura, and making music with friends. I took just a few courses and went on a few field trips.
Courses:
Watercolor Week with Artefacto & Watercolor Marathon with Artefacto
These courses were similar so I’m reviewing them together. The course material is anodyne; you’re painting mostly cats and sunsets and flowers. But I learned a fair bit of watercolor technique in these free classes, and Sterling Edwards’ workshop on Abstract Watercolor was a standout in terms of learning composition and color theory to make exciting abstract work. I’m not usually much interested in abstract work, and walked away from that session feeling like I wanted to do nothing else for awhile! Artefacto often has free courses listed here. Something similar to the Sterling Edwards’ course is here.
Grade: A-. I completed the work, but it isn’t super inspired!
Share Sessions at The Alternative Art School
The only really substantial money I spent on Art School this year was to take a course with TAAS (reviewed below). With that investment, I had access not only to the course but to TAAS’s other offerings — probably the most valuable was these “Share Sessions,” or online critiques. I attended a couple of them and really appreciated the chance to receive critique and meet other artists all over the globe. I’m not grading this, because it really was part of the course below.
Field Trips:
Open Mics at Skunk Hollow
We went to see our kid’s friends perform. The kids are alright.
Farmhouse Jam sessions
We’ve made music with this group for many years; it’s always a good time.
Along Side at Night Club Gallery
New, exciting, conceptual, well-connected local gallery space in Minneapolis
Shotgun Jackson house concert at the Rock Garden
Really appreciate Meg and Andy creating this new music space.
Watchhouse at the Fitzgerald Theater
Pneuma at Saint Gaudens National Park
Art Prize in Grand Rapids, MI.
We went to see a friend’s work who was showing in this massive annual art festival in a town I had basically never heard of before. This is one of those small midwestern cities that would cost millions of dollars to live in if it were on either coast. The festival was mind-bogglingly large and diverse, and a lot of fun.
Fall Quarter
Courses:
Maximum Magic with Aaron Gach at The Alternative Art School
Aaron is a brilliant artist who works at the intersection of activism, guerrilla tactics, stage magic, witch magick, and conceptual art. The class was expensive (even with the partial scholarship I applied for and received), rich, chock-full of inspiring readings, video, assignments, and imagery, and I met at least a couple of other artists I hope become real friends. It was an exciting return on the investment. TAAS also offered a lot of value beyond just the online class — events, critiques, extra classes, office hours. The downside was that the class was weekly, and I needed at least two weeks between classes to really complete all the work and learn deeply from it; I wanted so much more time with Aaron and with the material. Aaron doesn’t seem to be offering any classes with TAAS in Spring; I will keep you posted about future offerings.
Grade: C. I didn’t participate at the level I hoped I could in this class, although I’m still making work inspired by it!
Fujiyan Cooking Class with Ying Ye and family at The Alternative Art School
This was a bonus, fun, elective class; we made a delicious Fujiyan-style chicken dish and got to admire Ye’s amazing family’s culinary skills.
Grade: Pass.
Black Friday Festival with Artefacto.
I could say the same things as I did above about Artefacto. I didn’t participate as actively in this workshop.
Grade: B-
Field Trips:
Dessa at First Ave
Tour of Special Collections at the University of Minnesota
It was fascinating to go into the caverns at Andersen Library and see all the materials that are immersed (entombed?) there.
Moises Salazar “It’s My House” at Hair + Nails
I’m a fan of both the artist and the gallery, and this was the first time I’d seen their work in person. Dazzling.
No, I’ve never seen Bridgerton. Who cares? Beautiful dance, costumes, a chance to dress up and boogie. Every ball now is a masquerade ball.
Klezmer Khanike Dance with Southside Shtetl
The Milwaukee Art Museum
Botticelli at MIA
We’re going to see this today!
All Year Seminar (with summer hiatus)
Creative Accountability Group continued and renewed itself this year, and nurtured all year’s creative practice. Highlights included a special mini-class on photography taught by Jacob Nelson and a series of spring parties, including a Comet Party, a Flowers Party, and a Strawberry Festival. Having a group that meets regularly and keeps me accountable was a major propulsion force for me this year.
My Own Work
The main focus and goal of my own work this year was to develop and document on Instagram some kind of daily artistic practice, and to blog weekly here, and begin to develop a readership. I wanted to hit a specific number of readers — and I did not — but I have had slow and steady growth here and have more than five times as many readers now than I did at the beginning. My goal was simply to get habitual in my practice and to explore and learn in a variety of media, not to create any specific work for this year. In that sense, Freshman year was successful!
What Do I Want for my Sophomore Year?
In 2023, I want to make more music and continue to learn how to produce it. Besides the music-focused courses, the classes I most enjoyed this year were at TAAS and MATS/Lilla Rogers Studio; it figures that those are also by far the most expensive options! I want to continue to develop my artistic friendships and networks, especially locally, and create more self-driven (as opposed to course-assignment-driven) artwork in 2023.
Are you joining me in Metaphorical Arts High School? What classes are you hoping to take in 2023? What are you hoping to accomplish creatively? Let us know in comments, and share/like/subscribe if you enjoyed this epic post!