Sam Weber

Thanks for posting all these different stories. I hated art school. It was my first time being in an all white environment and it's like I went from being a normal student to being some type of criminal. Teachers yelled at me for doing the same things they joked about with other students. Everything I did was wrong. They sat me down and told me to quit. But I won national awards. I now work professionally as an illustrator. I'm still learning not to doubt myself as much as they thought I should.

Lord…

In my freshman year at VCU, I had a class that I constantly skipped. I’m not encouraging it necessarily, but that class was horrible. The teacher, an older British dude, was horrible. I learned nothing, even when I did show up. I know he was just collecting his paycheck to teach us how to make art exactly like his, on some Art School Confidential shit. At a certain point, the teacher pulled me aside for skipping class. He asked me if I was on drugs.

He asked me if I was on drugs.

The condescension and sometimes outright abuse is something I talk about with my local RVA folks. It’s like some people can’t stand us to be at or above their level in any way. So many of us have gone through it at certain points. I do remember specific moments where I would offer someone genuine help, maybe higher up than me or further along in their career, and they would go out of their way to ask someone else later. I’ll never forget moments like those.

Recently I was chilling outside on my porch with a black graphic designer friend and we talked about how so many people in America probably don’t have any black figures in authority or respected positions above them and whether that also leads to the need to “humble” black people constantly.

It’s humbling someone to the point where they’re never proud of themselves, their work or even their own experiences. They’ll be doubting whether something that actually happened to them is really what happened to them.

Anyway, salute to you, anon.