Several years ago at CAA I ran into a former professor who wanted me to interview for a position in the Arts Education department.. in Chicago. Granted it was Arts Ed, not nearly as cool as the studio art department, but still they wanted someone relatively au courant.
1) at the time, married. 2) husband's job trumped mine. 3) I had just LEFT Chicago. 4) cold and snow.
I didn't even interview. Of course, NOW I would jump on it. JUMP, I tell you.
I'm barely adjunct this semester and truth be told, I've heard horror stories about achieving tenure and the hoops one goes through afterward. What once seemed like a career goal started sounding like something I might not be cut out for. My representational drawing skills are not all crackerjack and I don't do figure. See, I've already lost tenure, just now by telling you I don't draw like an old master. After attending CAA once and not seeing anything available in Los Angeles, I figured adjunct would work just fine.
Then I had a really bad car wreck after a 140-mile round trip commute. That particular day it was more like a 200-mile round trip commute because on the way home, after a 6-hour day of teaching, I realized I had left my keys in the classroom and had to go back. Long story short, it turned dusk to dark as I was pulling off the freeway and my control panel/dashboard lights were not on- and since it was Matt's car, I didn't know where they were located. At some point I realized I had been looking for the dashboard lights for eternity and not looking at the road. I looked up, there was a red light and a car stopped in front of me. I had about 25 feet to hit the brakes as hard as I could. I did, and skidded into the back of the car, crumpling their trunk in completely. I got out of my car to see if the other driver was okay and some bystander started screaming at me and kept telling the other driver not to talk to me. The woman driving was shaken up, as was I, but nothing major or permanent. Thank God, no one was seriously hurt. I am so incredibly grateful there was not a pedestrian in the road.
The pathfinder's cowcatcher grill was dislocated and eventually had to be removed. That was it on my end. Our insurance covered everything. About a year or so later, right before the deadline, the woman tried to sue. She called us up and told us her son or daughter thought she needed to sue and that she felt bad, but she was going to sue us. Matt told her that's what insurance companies were for and if she felt like she needed to sue, then she should sue. Fortunately that's what insurance companies ARE for, and she was not awarded any further damages. Our insurance went up, of course.
Later that year or the next, I was backing out of the driveway. Usually the BMW is parked in FRONT of the Pathfinder. Anyway, for awhile, I just wasn't into driving a car. I surely didn't want to commute a hundred miles to teach, so at that point, I settled into part-time part-time teaching and didn't look for TT jobs either.
Which is all to say that I'd probably not be a good candidate, considering I blur the line between art and life so much on FB and obviously here on the blog. My theory is that this writing and disclosure of information is more or less who I am as a person, which is what makes me a good artist, which in turn makes me valuable as an educator. I'm worthless as an educator without my art, and my life is what feeds my art. It's a little messy, at times, yes, but that's how it is.
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