Art School Reunion Tour

Introduction

I went to school last week to discuss my current body of work with professors I used to study under while earning my Associate’s degree.

I wanted to document everything before it evaporated my brain, so I stopped off at the library to jot down some notes before heading back home.¹ The first three sections of this post were written that evening at the library; the rest were written in the succeeding days, along with several tweaks and edits of the earlier writing.

I nearly made this into a note, but it was so meandering I just decided to put it in a diary entry; upon elaborating my ideas more, I then decided it was worthy to go on my blog as part of a new “studio notes” series.

For reference:

• my professor is overseeing my current project; when I was a student, she taught my drawing and painting classes, and helped me get a job as the painting studio technician
• my old sculptor professor taught me Intro to 3-D Design; my craftsmanship is still abysmal, through no fault of her own
• my old figure drawing professor oversaw my Figure Drawing II independent study, which I completed after Figure Drawing I

---

Of Philosophy and Avocados

I woke up early, only to pass out again after feeding my cats breakfast. I woke up again around noon; my professor and I had agreed to meet around 12:45 PM, so I didn’t have time for breakfast of my own. I just packed a Spamwich² and a coffee and headed off.

It was a really nice day. 50 degrees, slightly overcast; very English. I wore a new green top that I bought at Goodwill recently with my usual khaki trousers and ankle boots (also from Goodwill), and a brown windbreaker (from Ross—not secondhand, but not exactly fresh off the rack, either). The drive was pleasant, with a gentle spring breeze. (Naturally, I was playing my Spiderland CD—my favorite album of all time.)

It took twenty-ish minutes to arrive at my community college. The painting studio is set off on the edge of campus in an outdated shoebox of a building. When I attended school as an art student 6+ years ago, it stood alone in a dilapidated parking lot. Now it sits at the foot of a brand new, multistory “work sustainability center” (I am still not sure what that means).

It’s a nice building, but I think it’s funny that the art program is still stuck in the same dumpy old building, whereas other departments got a sparkling new complex with EV chargers out front. Back when I was student I worked part-time at the painting studio as a lab monitor, and I remember the ceiling would leak sometimes!

Anyway, I showed up and headed inside to the painting studio. My professor and I sat down across from each other at a spare table, where she pulled out an avocado, spooning straight from the rind, and I nibbled on my Spamwich.

“Avocados have great plant protein,” she told me, then looked at my Spamwich with curiosity. “What are you having?”

“Vegan Spam,” I said, lifting the top slice of bread to reveal a slab of Violife cheese and ultra-processed soy protein.

She had always told me I needed to eat more veggies. When I worked at the studio back in the day, I’d have a pot of coffee and a cup of Maruchan ramen per shift; once I arrived and saw that she’d none-too-subtly left me a quiche on my desk. I picked at it gratefully, avoiding bits of green onion and spinach. (I’m still not much of a green onion guy, but I can proudly say that I eat a lot of spinach!)

We traded some chitchat, then I showed my professor the notes I took recently as part of an exercise in figuring out my own conceptual leanings. Afterward, we had a talk about concepts, intention, metaphor, and communication.

It was a really cool conversation. How do you guide a viewer through your artwork, both conceptually and materially? What do you want them to walk away with after the fact?

While pondering these questions, my professor mentioned an artist named Robert Morris, who answered with large-scale, monochromatic installation pieces that control the flow of movement through a gallery space—sort of a macro-level of what I want to accomplish with my collage work.

As we spoke, I felt my relation to my professor changing. When I originally studied beneath her, I was a student. Now I felt more like an equal. It was kind of jarring, but very cool. I guess, as an artist, I’m all grown up!³

“Your work has all of these sweet moments,” she said, in the sense of winsome. “It’s intimate and tiny. You’re making it because it makes you happy—and because you want to make people happy, too. Right?”

“Yeah,” I realized. I’d never considered it like that, but she was right—and the more we spoke, the more I realized the potential of my work and what it could mean for myself and for others.

I had always enjoyed strong visual pathways in my work—hearkening back to my non-objective beginnings—but I never considered building emotional pathways, too.

---

The “Rules” for My Current Work

Here’s the gist of what we spoke about, as it applies to my own body of work:

1. I’m a firm believer in that if you’re trying to deliver a message through your art, either make it implied (and therefore interesting to engage with) or just say it outright (and not waste any time).

With this in mind, my current figurative work is all implication. I don’t want to deliver a “message” to anyone. My professor mentioned that I’m still working with metaphors, and she’s correct—but these metaphors are self-serving, existing within my own personal context. Removed from my internal context, they become blank slates onto which people can project their own metaphors, ideas, and feelings.

2. Rather than controlling how the content of my work is perceived,⁴ I should devote my efforts to controlling how the viewer engages with my work itself.

I think a lot of artists get so strung up on the meaning of their work and whether or not they will be (mis)understood, that they lose sight of what—in my opinion—art is supposed to be in the first place: art isn’t the linear delivery of a static idea, but the dynamic transference of thought: not from your work to the viewer, but the viewer to your work.

3. Making the work is for myself; anything else after that is for the audience.

I get satisfaction out of producing my work. The creative process itself is what’s “in it” for me. The end result is for the viewer; once it’s on the wall, it’s for them to approach and engage with.

4. Prioritizing the external “others” over my “internal” self.

I don’t need my work to be understood—or rather, I don’t need to be understood through my work. It doesn’t perform that function for me.

I derive satisfaction from my work in itself, by virtue of its being made.

That isn’t to say that my work doesn’t carry personal meanings for me, or that I only view it in a material sense. But I find it much more rewarding to think of what my work might mean to other people, than what it might make them think of me and my ideas.

5. This current body of work (figurative collages) is about providing figures that viewers can relate to.

Given the preceding rules and the figurative nature of my content, the aim of my current work is to provide the viewer with a surrogate they can relate to.

Each figure embodies different emotions and feelings. They are all anonymous (no facial features), so anyone can project themselves onto them.

Upon realizing this idea, I told my professor how cool would it be if fifty people were to walk into a gallery, and I had fifty figures on the wall—there would be something for everyone to relate to and see themselves in.

I think that, more than anything, is my goal right now; I want people to feel like they aren’t alone, and that they can “find themselves” in my work. As someone who spent almost my entire life searching for my own identity and place in the world, providing that for other people would mean a lot to me.

In short, my art—the visualization of my feelings-catalyzes a psychological response for anyone who views my work. Through this liminal bond, we are both validated and comforted in our emotions and experiences.

---

Sometimes the Smartest Solution is the Simplest

With the conceptual stuff out of the way, we then got onto more practical matters.

I’m having a solo show in July. My professor wants to document everything and submit my work to galleries in Chicago, which is crazy. But she’s pretty stoked about my work, and so are the other faculty, so I must have a chance.⁵

Anyway, we were trying to devise a way of displaying my collages. They’re all figures cut out from paper, sort of like paper dolls—so they aren’t on any solid backing like cardstock, canvas, panel, board, etc. They’re also free standing, meaning they’ve got irregular edges; if I were to put them in a frame—literally trapping them in a box—it would change the whole vibe of the piece!

Last fall, I displayed my first figurative collage (which sold!) by adhering it to a sheet of black foamcore.⁶ Cutting it out was a pain in the ass, but it was enough to provide some rigidity to the piece. Afterward, I added two pieces of velcro; the gallery walls at my community college are covered in carpet, which enables a multitude of hanging styles—like slapping on some velcro and calling it a day.

But if I’m going to shop these pieces around to different galleries, I need something more agnostic. My professor and I thought of sandwiching each collage between two panes of plexiglass and hanging those up somehow—it would still create a “box” around the composition, but it would be less obtrusive than a traditional frame. She suggested that I go talk to the sculpture professor, who I hadn’t seen since I graduated in 2020, and would know more about different materials than either of us.

The sculpture lab is in the same building as the painting studio. I just walked down the hall and popped in.

It smelled exactly how I remembered: like sawdust, metal, and butane. There were two students working on a Sculpture 101 assignment (soldering wires together to create a mask⁷). My old sculpture professor was at one of the other tables, working on a frame for a stained glass piece: standing at about five foot tall, her hair pulled back into a long ponytail, pliers tucked into a leather sheath holstered on her jeans.

I awkwardly dawdled at the door before stepping inside, announcing my presence with a jubilant “Hi!”

She looked up with a friendly smile, and all my nervousness melted away. She said she’d heard I was back around campus again. After describing my current work, I showed her the collages I had so far and explained my predicament.

Her suggestion was genius: “What about push pins—or sewing pins?” she asked.

The solution was so simple, but I never would have thought of it!

Speaking in her straight-forward manner—befitting a sharp-eyed carpenter such as herself—she explained that sewing pins wouldn’t disrupt the composition or jeopardize the delicate nature of the pieces, and—given that I plan on displaying them all together as a sort of wall installation—I could freely move them around in different combinations and configurations while preparing my show.

My professor caught up with us at that point and stepped into the room. “How about a blast from the past, huh?” she asked the sculpture professor.

Standing there between them both, I smiled—feeling a sense of community, collaboration, and artistic vigor that I hadn’t experienced since I left school half a decade ago.

While the professors made small talk, mine remarked to the sculpture professor that another faculty member, whom I closely studied under several years ago, would love my current work. The sculpture professor said that he was still on campus, teaching at the main building.

My professor immediately sent me to go find him. After bidding the sculpture professor goodbye, we went back to the painting studio where I packed up my things, said goodbye to my professor, and left for my final quest of the day.

---

Questions of Collage

I drove to the other side of campus and sat in the parking lot for a bit with my windows rolled down, texting Jem and enjoying a little quiet after socializing more than I have in ages. The cool spring breeze felt nice; sunlight strained against the clouds, casting lukewarm light through the gray filter of impending rain.

After about half an hour I went inside and headed downstairs to the art department, jittery with a weird mix of nerves and excitement. As with the sculpture professor, I hadn’t seen this professor in long time, either—not since my Figure Drawing II independent study in 2019, wherein I produced two pieces that I consider as the best of my college output.⁸

He attended art school in San Francisco during the 1970s, studying under second-wave Abstract Expressionists,⁹ which tells you everything you need to know about him. He leads by forcing you into action with nonchalant aplomb—teaching through experience rather than instruction.

We clicked pretty well the summer I took Figure Drawing II. His ideas around art mirrored my own preferences, helping me establish my artistic voice. A lot of what is now instinctual to me while drawing was first realized during my time with him.

The art department is one long hallway. Beginning with the ceramics lab and kiln room, followed by the lecture hall for art history classes, it then takes a bend toward the office for adjunct professors.

The office was empty, so I popped into the Intro to Art classroom—now arrayed with new desks for each student in place of the long, shared tables I had used in 2017; he wasn’t there either. Next was the drawing room, where Intro to Drawing students were circled around a still-life—no sign of him there, either.

I made my way back to the adjunct office, then pivoted and entered the Intro to Art classroom again, asking if he was teaching this class.

“Yeah,” one student said.

“Do you know where he went?” I asked.

Another student looked up from their work with a bemused grin. “No, he just sort of…disappears.”

I smiled with fond amusement. “Yeah, he does that. Well, thanks anyway; maybe I’ll catch him another day—”

Someone stopped me as I turned to leave.

Each classroom has two doors. I stepped backward through the first door as my old figure drawing professor walked into the room through the second door opposite of me. Palms smeared with charcoal or ink or something, his eyes lit up with surprised familiarity. Wearing his customary fedora and a blue short-sleeved button down, he looked like he should be drinking mimosas in the Florida Keys instead of teaching art in the middle of Illinois.

My years-long art hiatus had sapped my confidence; overcome with nervousness once again, I held out my artwork as a buffer. By now I figured everybody had gotten word of my return—I announced it anyway and explained my current project, stuttering over my words until finally I just laid out all of the collages I had made thus far.

my figure drawing professor looked down at them and grinned. It was an expression I knew well, one of conniving interest. I could see thoughts formulating under his hat: he liked my work, and had ideas about it.

Generally, his advice trends toward extremes: it’s either super specific, focused on a single element with revealing clarity—or a vague half-notion that’s you’re supposed to intuit on your own.¹⁰ All of my collages are at a sort of halfway point, so there wasn’t much formulating I had left to do, which helped narrow down his potential reactions to something less esoteric.

He was immediately taken by the materiality of them. “This reminds me of someone,” he said, and moved to the computer.

One of my favorite things about him was that he’s sort of a touchstone to the living history of Abstract Expressionism. During Figure Drawing II, he was always showing me different artists and artworks, and I liked pretty much all of them. We have very similar tastes—which certainly hadn’t changed over the years.

He pulled up a striking collage.

“Conrad Marca-Relli,” he introduced.

Conrad Marca-Relli was an Abstract Expressionist from the original New York School.¹¹ Although much of his work echoes that of his contemporaries, he stands apart as an inventive collagist. His compositions are defined by a sensitivity to material, edges, and the boundaries of shape/space.

His work is almost figurative in nature, whilst still being non-representational. Curvaceous protrusions illicit the impression of arms spread open, or maybe wrapped around an object. Notions of up/down, above/blow, and within/without intersect one another—at times even disappearing into their opposite.

This interplay between elements is achieved through a fastidious approach to edges. Marca-Relli would sear the edges of paper, burlap, etc; collaged intentionally, these scorched edges create an illusion of depth between overlapping pieces and within their previously one-dimensional interiors.

“It’s the opposite of what we teach in drawing,” my figure drawing professor said—“‘Stay away from the edge, get off the edge’.¹² But, you know, there’s exceptions to everything.”

His eyes flicked back to my collage figures. He spoke about experimenting with different textures (“You don’t have to jump to stuff like concrete or fabric right away,” he reassured me, although the thought hadn’t crossed my mind just yet)—hot-pressed versus cold-pressed paper, for example, or corrugated cardboard. He also recommended that I pay attention to my edges à la Marca-Relli, and accentuate them with loose materials such as powdered graphite.¹³

I then showed him a couple spots in my collages that had been bugging me, and we deduced that I needed to be more intentional about switching between warm and cool tones. As a general rule of thumb, warm colors pop out and give a forward-facing momentum, whilst cool colors appear to recede and push elements back. Taking advantage of this dynamic will help establish the literal perspective of my figures and the material logic of my collages.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but in hindsight I can tell that my figure drawing professor was trying to provide solutions for future problems he knew would arise, but which I was still innocently oblivious to.

I’ve since worked on one of my collages, laboriously hauling it past the ephemeral “halfway point” to something more developed (and all the more unclear for it). The problems I encountered, and the decisions I made to solve them, certainly put me through my artistic paces—but that will be the subject for my next post.

---

Pure Joy and Curiosity

These collages are made from pure joy and curiosity—not in the pursuit of recognition or reward.

While talking to my figure drawing professor, a student came up to look at my work and asked what assignment I was making them for.

“Oh, I’m not a student,” I said. “I graduated way back in 2020; now I’m just making stuff for the hell of it.”

My chest puffed with pride; I’d certainly come a long way from having existential panic attacks over my choice to not pursue a Bachelor’s in Art.¹⁴

Although I’m preparing for a solo show and eventually sending my work to Chicago, these ambitions were inspired at the gentle insistence of my professor. Personally, I didn’t start this series with any goals in mind. I just wanted to make art again, using my favorite style—abstract realism, with non-objective Abstract Expressionist motifs—to iterate upon my favorite subject: the human figure.

Drawing these figures, constructing the resultant collages, and wrestling with their composite parts to make a cohesive whole is “the point”. Anything else that comes after is just extra.

This is something I want to continually remind myself through the span of this project: it’s focus is not me, the artist—it’s the art and what it can provide other people.

To err away from these principles and get all hoity-toity would be of detriment to my work and contradict the heart of its meaning. So any time I approach the sketchbook and cutting mat, get frustrated or full of myself, that’s my mantra: “This is for me—but it’s not about me.”

I find joy in creating, not in my creations; they’re meant for everyone else to get joy out of.

---

Footnotes

Footnotes

1. I forgot my coffee thermos in my haste to drive back to my town. I’d hardly drank any of it, too! ): ↩

2. A sandwich made with a vegan Spam substitute; I live off of these things. ↩

3. Or at least, compared to when I was 19-22… ↩

4. A lost cause, in my opinion. ↩

5. The shitty thing about the art world is the rampant gatekeeping, like some academic, artsy-fartsy clusterfuck of occupational liscening. I’ve only got my Associate’s degree, which is a pretty serious handicap. My professor recently told me about a local artist who went back to school for her master’s because galleries wouldn’t accept her work since she only had a BFA. My professor thinks my work is interesting enough I might have a chance, but I don’t know—I guess I just have to shoot for the stars and all that, lol. ↩

6. Literally one of the worst materials, I hate working with it lol. ↩

7. A project I remember none-too-fondly; I took sculpture class at the onset of Covid, so I only made it through a couple projects before lockdown started, after which we used more accessible materials like cardboard—in a weird way, it could be considered a premonition of my future collage work. ↩

8. Although I still haven’t set up my gallery on the site, I’ve got a bunch of images waiting in my files; here is one of the two pieces. ↩

9. Abstract Expressionism is my favorite historical art movement; my favorite painting of all time is She-Wolf by Jackson Pollock. ↩

10. Considering this is the same dude who told me that his professor used to walk around with red paint and slash it across students’ canvases whenever they lapsed in creative energy, a little riddle isn’t bad. ↩

11. The same group that produced juggeranuts like Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, and Mark Rothko. ↩

12. Learning to draw is more about learning to see with your eyes at the same time you are making marks with your pencil; a common point of friction beginners encounter is drawing too much and not looking enough, which often leads to over-emphasized lines and edges. ↩

13. When he said that, my brain jumped to chalk pastel—I was obsessed with it during my stoner art phase. My professor said that she thinks it’s unhealthy to breathe in the dust particles from the pigments; back then I was chainsmoking cigarettes though, so I guess it’s all a wash, lol. ↩

14. This very delimma is the subject of a lengthy blog post I’ve been working on for about…six months now, lol. It’s nearly done, I promise! ↩

---

#2026 #abstract-expressionism #art #art-analysis #collage #drawings #my-art #personal #studies #studio-notes

Back to top © Xavier H.M. 2025-2026 ✘ CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Built with Astro and bun ✘ Hosted on Nekoweb
Home | About | Favorites | Shrines | Links | Notebook | Blog | Sketchbook | Gallery | Writing | Photos | Videos | Sitemap