When You Hire an Artist

Whether it’s a joke about “a side of fries” with your college degree, the assumption that baristas are English Majors, or the trope of concerned parents strongly dissuading their children from studying art, there are any number of critical anecdotes about an the overeducated and underemployed workforce in circulation. 

I can confirm that I am not any more employable with my degrees. My annual salary has capped off at 30-40K which is the same as it has been for my entire adult career. I have two degrees, one in fine arts and one in “liberal arts” with minors in music, theater, sociology and TESOL (just incase). In other words, I can pour coffee. Or in my particular case, I can answer a crisis line. Though, I didn’t actually need a degree for that. 

I am not here to write about why I think university education is important–though I think it is. What I want to say is that employers benefit from a university trained workforce, especially artists. 

When you hire a university trained artist, you first of all hire someone who has undergone the pressure of what it is to be a student–juggling multiple high stress deadlines while also attempting to maintain some kind of social life, racked with financial burdens, unable to work full time, probably working three part time jobs to afford gas and Mr. Noodle on their way to class (what?! No, I am not referencing my personal experience.)  Beyond managing the normal university pace, artists learn to become sensitive to material, desensitized to critiques, and have spent considerable time exploring their own particular voice. These are incredibly valuable capacities to employers. 

Trained to attend details of visual language, artist pay attention. We think about the color, shape, value, material, histories, contexts, impact, communication, and “voice” of the world around us. All material has a voice, a physical and social history and being attuned to listen to material is a necessary skill artists learn for our practice. Whether artists are employed to produce products or to provide services, their capacity for attention and ability to hear in multiple modalities is an asset to any organization.

Artists are also trained to listen to and deliver critique. Not all crits at art school are beneficial, but the best ones, the ones that helped me grow in my own voice as an artist, taught me that critique is an act of care. The act of looking at someone’s work, being curious about their choices, asking questions and making suggestions is a generous act. Without critique it is impossible to grow as an artist, let alone a human. While it is easy to give lip service to critical discourse, it is a totally different thing to have an integrated experience separating selfhood from work. The ability to approach work with a critical lens, give and take suggestions in a spirit of care, maintain curiosity during a disagreement, cultivate a strong team. A workforce that is able to be critiqued is a workforce that will help companies grow as an organization. 

Lastly, university trained artists have done a lot of work to find their voice and risk expressing it. When you hire an artist you are hiring someone who is self reflective, expressive and practiced at vulnerable communication. I don’t know of any partnerships, organizations or companies that wouldn’t benefit from having team members who are self aware, know their boundaries and are comfortable with risking their voice.

Whether you hire someone with a BFA for their artistic expression or in a non-art specific role, you have a team member who brings a set of capacities specific to their training to your team. While it might not be something organizations intentionally compensate, artists contribute valuable perspectives and capacities to employers specific to their training practices.