What does it mean to work professionally? I find myself asking that question daily, having attended the Alberta College of Art and Design I was exposed to people, all colours and creeds with their own take on what it means to be creative and the purpose of such a thing. “Bah, professional!” Some would speak with venom, and then return to a canvas to throw paint at it, while others not unlike myself regarded the word with reverence; something to aspire to through pushing ourselves further via hard work and dedication.
When I was a lad, and before my parents diabolically sold the NES from under my nose, I would enjoy late into the day classic titles such as Castlevania, Dragon Warrior, and the Mario Brothers. When asked that patronizing, yet important question of “what I wanted to be when I grew up” it was certainly to “do art for a living!” While a freshman the entire experience was mysterious and mythical since I was playing out my childhood dreams attending ACAD, taking my first steps towards doing art professionally! The smell of rubber cement permanently adhered to my mind, while some of the Art History I crammed for the week before lost its hold post examination. As the years progressed the rose coloured glasses had to come off, I began to realize my experiences as a student seemed to be lacking something, and it was the engagement the rest of the world has to offer. College, as hermetic as it can be sometimes, is great for the mind, and for building character through hard work. it is great because of the interesting people and the experienced professors that lay out their life on the table, feeding us nibbly bits of personal experience that only they can impart.
Challenges in the studio present themselves to me in a variety of ways, mostly from fighting with technology which occasionally gives me grief. The parallels can be drawn from the college experience of consistently needing to meet deadlines for school projects to working in the studio and needing to get things done on time. With the college trials of learning proper colour theory, perspective, design, and even art history, it became a montage of skills useful in the studio when the need arose to call on the learned knowledge and wisdom, similar to my time parked at a desk in the classroom messing around with a new program, I’m constantly learning new ways of doing things. Differences I noticed between the two is that the playing field seems much more vast in the work place when dealing with the lineup of clients all offering their input on a project and discovering the common ground on which we can all stand.
Being a professional is the willingness to take challenges as they come, to set those challenges for ourselves, and for all who are creatively minded to keep the inspiration alive as we look to our heroes. When we think of where we want to be in the future some of us are guilty of donning the rosy goggles and only looking at what we want to see. Those spectacles only bear the truth that we give them, it is up to us to bring on the roses.