Due to the fact that this pertains to all of us, I thought I would write about it this week. I don't know about the rest of you, but I personally take out student loans to get through school, and this article describing the issues around federal student loans really hit home. Evidently the government is concerned that the student loan section of their industry will turn into the housing market, in that it won't hold up in the next few years, due to students' inabilities to get jobs after college and pay their loans off. While this is obviously a very real concern for those watching the economy to have, students as well as future students are getting sent so many mixed messages about colleges because of this student loan debate. We are told, from a very early age, that we must go to college in order to make a living. It would seem in the growing technology age this is growing more and more evident. (Not that my choice in majors is facilitating this idea that I'll go into a technological field, but the great number of students in Speed school does attest to this job driven mentality.) However, with the tuition of institutions rising it is becoming more and more expensive to get that diploma, making it harder to pay of the loans. Another problem that these articles generally neglect (this one included) is the decline of scholarships now that the economy is heading south. I promise you any student with a decent GPA would be going for free money over federal money any day if that were as much of an option anymore. Obviously it doesn't help that we are in a recession where there are less jobs. This has all been an obvious recap, but with higher tuition and more students with less jobs and greater student loans, it is obvious that there is trouble on the horizon. While certain conservative candidates are attempting to appeal to a 'blue collar' audience, the argument that going through a higher education makes a person liberal and threatening to those hard American workers (which couldn't be further from the truth, just taking the hard laborers at UPS who are primarily students into account counters this on our campus,) is so wrong it is almost frustrating to hear it repeated over and over again. The worst of these arguments, however, is that there are just as many, if not more, jobs waiting for the averagely-educated (those with high school diplomas only) as the higher-institution-educated is obviously false. If that were the case then not nearly as many people would be bothering with college. Some people arguing about student loans make it sound as if we like to just grab all the student loans we can and deal with it later, but any art student will tell you money really matters, and for the most part we are very conscious of how we as students utilize it.
While we hear we have picked a bad time to be artists, it would seem we have picked an even worse time to be art students.
Art-
http://buttnekkiddoodles.com/
Don Colley is an artist I have looked at a few times before, but I find myself constantly coming back to his work. He lives and works in Chicago, and while he does to time intensive works of art, the primary work that catches my attention is the ink drawings he does straight from life all over the city of Chicago. From watching a documentary on him previously, he prefers to draw in old accountants books, giving certain drawings a deeper dynamic. His versatility as well as quick study skills are very impressive, as well as beautiful to look upon. While he does has a sense of humor that lends itself to entertaining work (just look at the name of his website) his delicate attention to features of those he observes, and his delicate use of ink tones really takes my breath away. Don Colley is a dimensional, entertaining artist, who I love to be inspired by when I need a reminder that drawing quick life studies out in the open can lead to greater work.
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