A look into the lives of artists and their professional endeavors
By Alicen Hackney
After years of being a high school set designer, of painting for commission for friends and of making sculptures in her spare time, my sister Claire was starting to think about college. Given her interests, art school was a natural choice.
The fact that she was even thinking about going to a university was a major shift for her. Even though a bachelor’s degree has always been the rule in our house, Claire had never thought that going to a university was the right path. That was, until she considered art school. And while that should theoretically have been a win for my parents, it ended up being rather problematic.
She hadn’t shared much about her newfound goal until one day when the women of our house were chatting in the kitchen.
“I don’t know about that,” our mother said with a frown. “What about welding? You could go to trade school!”
Claire’s cheeks flushed, and she sank into the couch. After having the big college decision looming over her shoulders for years, she finally had figured out an option she didn’t hate, but this seemingly random shutdown surprised her. She knew it was going to be a slightly controversial decision, but she hadn’t expected our mother to think it was such a poor choice that she would rather her take on an option that was less than the family ideal of a four-year degree.
When I asked my mother later on she explained, “it’s not that I wouldn’t want her to study art, I want her to study what she loves. I just would hope she would get a four-year degree before going to an art school so she has something steady fall back on. And as for trade school, welders make a lot of money, and that’s something she wouldn’t have to spend a long time studying to be successful in.”
As I listened to this conversation, I wanted to interject to make sure Claire didn’t lose hope for her new idea, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I had the same immediate intuition about art school as my mother did, that it wouldn’t provide Claire with a proper education or steady career. But as I mulled it over, I realized that maybe there was something to it. After all, the writing career I’m studying for doesn’t offer an obvious career track either.
As I did more research, I learned even more about why art school could be a good choice. Art schools in the U.S. accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design ensure their students receive a liberal arts education alongside the arts programs. This means not only will these students have an education in their field, but they are also pushed to find success in unrelated studies. That’s really not unlike my own Mary Washington education.
And as I read online about artists’ own paths to success, I realized that there are many opportunities that they are able to find for ways to get paid to do what they love. To better understand what my sister may be stepping into, I decided to learn from artists myself, what their experiences were in higher education and later on, and how they remained impassioned through it all. Did they struggle to explain their choices to family and loved ones? What inspired them to chose a field many see as financially unstable? And what keeps them going?
Lynne Mulhern
As a 10-year-old, Lynne Mulhern attended the World’s Fair in New York, she waited in line to see Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” one of the most iconic pieces at the gathering. It was an incredible statue of the Virgin Mary holding her son Jesus as he lay lifeless; it was so incredible intact that two popes had to approve of its relocation from the Vatican for this event. She remembers getting chills as she rode the moving walkway around the statue, thinking, “I wonder if I could ever do anything like that.” That was the day she decided she wanted to become an artist.
From that point on Mulhern fell in love with painting and drawing and when she had reached college age she knew she wanted to continue as an artist, but her parents pushed her to become something they believed would be more financially stable like a teacher or a nurse.
“It was the 70’s, and my parents just didn’t understand. They would say, ‘Art? How can you make a career out of something like that?” Because of their influence, she studied and became an elementary school teacher, and later taught art to both elementary and middle school students.
Over a decade later in life, she received an endorsement to go back to school from her work, and went back to school where she took art classes at night. “My husband and close family encouraged me to go back,” she said. “As a family we had moved around a lot and once my husband retired from the marines he encouraged me to take time and pursue this.”
While taking her night classes at Virginia Commonwealth University she realized that there often weren’t introductory classes that she felt she needed, such as the basics of drawing and painting. “I felt intimidated by the students around me,” said Mulhern of taking classes with more experienced artists. Luckily, she had a favorite professor who let her do her work at her own pace and would suggest artists and pieces to find inspiration in.
“It took ten years before I finally got one painting where I felt comfortable saying I was an artist,” she said. “It was a 5x4 painting of artichokes with one red pepper for spice.”
She graduated with a Master of Interdisciplinary Studies in painting and printmaking at 55 years old. Today Mulhern has studio space at Liberty Town in downtown Fredericksburg where she spends time working in many mediums including cold wax, pastels, printmaking, and her personal favorite, which is oil painting. The freedom of retirement has allowed her to travel to find muses and make money through her passion without relying on it for a livable income.
“What makes all of this worth it is when someone really loves one of my paintings; they’re my children,” she said citing the time a family bought one of her paintings of a staircase in Italy and decorated an entire room in their home based on it’s colors and style.
Jon McMillan
In the years before Jon McMillan attended college, he had already become a decent painter. So when he went to apply for colleges he knew he wanted to look for an art program, but not necessarily an art school, so he could get a broader education. His parents had already been watching him dutifully pursue his hobby, so they had confidence in his potential as an artist and supported his decision about his schooling.
“When I started undergrad at James Madison University they thought maybe I might turn in the direction of architecture, but that just wasn’t what I was interested in,” he said. “I was always an artist.”
However, McMillan didn’t pursue jobs directly in his field until over a decade after his undergraduate schooling. He freelanced as a professional chef in many kitchens and worked full-time as a functional potter, making things like dish ware and other home goods. After all those years, he decided to go back to school and spent his graduate school years at Southern Illinois University studying ceramics, an art form he didn’t approach until his years at JMU.
Even though he started out painting, he took a ceramics class and fell in love with the material, the process, and the potters wheel. While he was at graduate school he became a teaching assistant, and stuck with teaching from then on. His initial schooling in the arts guided him along the whole way.
“Decisions change and I just had to roll with it,” McMillan. “Art studies teach creativity, flexibility, and problem solving, and that is all important as the decisions in life change.”
For McMillan the most fulfilling thing about teaching has been being able to encourage the next generation of artists. About a year ago at the Sophia Street Pottery Throwdown in Fredericksburg, a local pottery exhibition and sale, McMillan had a tent showcasing some of his work, and out of 20 artists participating in the event, a major of them were alumni students of his.
“I was so happy to see all of them there, continuing in their art and knowing I had a hand in that.”
Currently, McMillan is both a professor of Ceramics and the Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Mary Washington. He’s come to understand that he prefers the experience of UMW over the larger school, as smaller liberal arts schools allow non-majors to gain experience in the arts, while larger schools are separated into more distinct departments and don’t allow for students to take classes outside of their majors very easily.
“In the next 20 years, 50 percent of jobs will be all new, and we are behind in preparation for that naturally,” said McMillan. “But art gives you the basic, important skills to be successful beyond your career. It gives students a more holistic approach to the professional world. Job training will come with experience, but you need to be able to know how to roll with the punches.
Elizabeth Freeman
Elizabeth Freeman grew up in a family of artists, and from a very young age developed a love for drawing and painting. Her grandfather was a landscape painter, who would frequent the family’s home in the Catskill Mountains where he found inspiration. It wasn’t until 2010, however, that she took her first pottery class and fell in love.
“Most of the artists in my family are painters, so I feel a little more intimidated to pursue that avenue.”
But art isn’t her main career. She is also a scientist. Her schooling includes bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology and a Ph.D in environmental science and policy. Today, Freeman is a biology professor at George Mason University and a conservation biologist who specializes in the behavior endocrinology of endangered mammals. “More simply, I study the behavior and hormones of elephants, rhinos, red pandas…etc.”
Her love of science in prevalent in her art. Like her grandfather, she is inspired by the natural world. She puts images of species such as red pandas and elephants into her work, and incorporates art into her students’ scientific studies regularly. For instance, with colleagues she designed and taught a freshman level course that combines science and art. Students had to create an original work of art that expressed their relationship with nature. She also just started a practice in which her graduate students had to present an artistic representation of their research when they defended their theses. She explained that art and science can overlap in many ways, and often people gain an understanding of the scientific and natural word through art. “Most people learn to love and care about the natural world through documentaries, photography exhibits, or even more recent movements using recycled materials and trash in sculptures. Those reach and inspire far more people than my peer-reviewed scientific papers ever will.”
As art is not her career or primary source of income, she finds that the freedom of not relying on art for her livelihood allows her to appreciate her pottery for its stress relieving and creative processes more deeply. “More than anything, my pottery is a stress relief from my job and my commute up and down I-95. Both my profession and pottery hobby allow me to be creative, but in very different ways. Work is very much a mental exercise in creativity. Pottery is a physical expression of my creativity.”
“I believe an arts education and eventual career as an artists is as important as being a science major,” said Freeman. “Our society needs both artists and scientists. They complement each other and both advance our culture in different ways.”
Nicole Hamilton
When she was 3-years-old, Nicole Hamilton drew a portrait of her grandparents that is now it is framed in her home. Needless to say, from a very young age Hamilton knew she wanted to be an artist. “This is what I was meant to do. I need to tell these stories.”
In the 90s, when Hamilton was in college, computer graphics had just become the next big thing to major in for the best career opportunities beyond college. While her parents supported her artistic endeavors, they encouraged her to major in something they believed would bring her a more financially stable career, so she studied graphic design at Colorado State from which she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree.
For three years after college, Hamilton worked at American Handgunner magazine as their art director, arranging and editing photos and graphics. “I was bored to tears,” she recalls finding herself feeling unfulfilled from the lack of creativity in a job mostly consisting of putting together picture after picture of guns. After leaving the magazine she decided to purse art full-time, working for clients on commission and producing as much art as she could. It was a bold decision, but she knew she didn’t want a steady paycheck to get in the way of her passions.
In her time painting commissions she had been approached by the coworkers of a man who had lost his 19-year-old daughter to cancer. They wanted her to paint the young girl for the man’s family. Hamilton painted a portrait of the girl by the ocean with her arms stretched wide to symbolize the cross. At the unveiling of this portrait for the girls family, the girls brother walked up to Hamilton and hugged her, thanking her for this gift
“That is what makes what I do so important, telling these stories,” she said…
“I think of art 24/7, and I fight really hard to be an artist… It could have been easier or more lucrative, but just like starting a restaurant, I knew it would be difficult to build, and I knew I needed to do it.”
These days Hamilton spends most of her time painting. To enrich her work, she has studied with professional artists in Maryland, solidified her command of the basic artistic principles, and kept herself to a high level of productivity she knows creates success. She uses her paintings to connect to the life and experiences of those around her as primarily both a portrait and still-life artist. “The story of the objects and the story of the person fascinates me. Often I feel the grouping of objects becomes a portrait of the person as much as an actual painting of the person themselves.”
“You can’t draw or paint enough; I paint every day as much as I possibly can,” she said. “To be an artist you have to be open to a life of learning. And I am thankful I have been strong enough and confident enough to pursue this dream.”
While my sister is still trying to figure out her college and career arraignments, she is looking into schools that would provide her with the opportunity to explore her passions both artistically and not. The rule in our house still stands, and she will be going, but she knows that she is free to study art in college and beyond. As all the artists I have interviewed have told me, in art you never stop learning, just as you do in life.