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Fine Arts Programs Prepare Students for Real World

“All aspects of the art world are commercial. It’s a commercial enterprise,” she said.

Recent graduates say the business skills are invaluable if someone is serious about working in the art world.

Indianapolis-based artist Susan Hodgin got her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Montana at Missoula in 2001. She said the professional practices classes there warned students that they’d need to find an arts-related job first because they couldn’t just graduate and hope for immediate art stardom.

Then, instructors showed how to do everything from shoot slide images of paintings to write an artist statement and resume.

“I learned a ton of stuff along the way,” said the 29-year-old painter. But many of her best lessons still came from outside the classroom. During college, Hodgin also worked in an art gallery where the owner gave her a valuable piece of advice: You can always raise your prices, but you can never lower them.

So Hodgin started out pricing her pieces low and her reputation grew to where she now works full-time as an artist.

Herron graduate Emily W. Kennerk said her classes there covered how to polish a portfolio, write a proposal and present oneself to a gallery. But even more useful was watching the working artists on Herron’s staff. She said professors walked students through the process as they wrote proposals for projects, tabulated material costs and hours of labor. She received a bachelor’s of fine art in painting in 1997 and a bachelor’s of fine art in sculpture in 1998.

The knowledge seems to be paying off for Kennerk, whose career is gaining steam. She was a 2005 Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellow, earning a $20,000, no-strings-attached grant, and the first American exhibition featuring her work at the Indianapolis Museum of Art recently closed.

“There was a very practical side to the program you can only get seeing professional artists working,” she said.

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