Donato Giancola invited me to speak to his School of Visual Arts class. As it happened, my friend Dan Dos Santos was also giving a lecture at SVA earlier in the day so we decided to grab a bite between engagements. The best thing about being friends with freelancers is that they use any excuse to get out of the house – even the lame excuse of hanging out with Dan and me — so we soon had a great group of artists at dinner and I had an entourage to go to class with.I have to say, speaking to students with Boris Vallejo, a man that has been at the top of the field longer than I've been alive, is definitely a "what the hell am I doing up here" moment. Still, I don't think I did too badly. My lecture "style" is to dump a ton of materials onto a table and talk through the process as quickly as I can -- then try to get the kids to ask as many questions as possible. Usually the focus is on marketing themselves, networking, and various other things they are supposed to learn in a professional practices class, but never do. The class had very impressive work on the walls. I was shocked to hear they were just juniors. (I suspect Donato is a great motivator.) If they keep working as hard as they did in that class, they'll do well.
As we were leaving we saw a bunch of students busy hanging their senior exhibit, which opens tonight. I hadn’t planned on going, since I’m already going to a student exhibit on Friday, but seeing some of the work made me think I'll check it out. So, more SVA to come...