Where Did You Learn to Work?

These are questions I stumbled upon the other day, from artist Chloe Bass, as part of a series on A Blade of Grass’s new publication Landscapes (do read them all!). I was first exposed to Chloe’s work over a decade ago, when I had an internship at the public art organization Creative Time. I’ve returned to her practice time and time again because of the way she uses language in visual art to evoke poetic insights from the mundane.

I love questions like these. They invite me to dig into my own practice, to question how it was shaped consciously and subconsciously, to interrogate the ways my creative work, housework, teaching work, and money work (oh how many odd jobs there have been over the years!) are all entangled and influence each other. When Abraham and I developed the curriculum for EDCP, it felt critical to fold in questions about personal and professional practice alongside the methodology of experience design. To encourage reflection about how we sit within those realms, to understand how they each intersect with each other or how we try to compartmentalize them.

It’s honestly the part I get most nerdy about when we teach, this thinking about how art and life enfold. Though I don’t come from artists, when I was young, my mom left her job and started her own business as an environmental consultant and educator. Watching her and several of her friends who were sole-proprietors normalized life outside the 9-5 grind, how to value my work as a woman, and meant I learned by osmosis things like what could be a tax deductible expense and how to write a proposal. I can’t understate how this paved the way for me to be an artist: I saw a working life that was outside the status quo, that was about making possible what we really valued rather than what society said was important.

In the Experience Design Certificate Program, our curriculum makes room to reflect on the relationship you have with making art and making money. This is an arena we aim to discuss in mentorship meetings with students (many of whom come to the program wanting a new role or a new career entirely), and during our Professional Practice sessions in the fall.

That’s all for now–and if you need a break from your day job, let us know what you dream of shifting the balance of work and creative practice.