As you may know already, I attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for 1 year before I left to pursue tattooing. I get a lot of questions about my experience so I wanted to go more in depth here.
In high school when I was applying for colleges, I felt extremely overwhelmed with the process and weight of my decision, (and I would not recommend doing what I did). I only applied to 3 expensive art schools, and didn’t understand the reality of loans. I had intended to apply to some state schools and “safety” schools, but once I had been accepted into SAIC, my mind was made up and I blew off applying anywhere else because I wanted to be in Chicago. I ended up choosing SAIC in Chicago over The Pratt Institute in New York City. I had spent a week at SAIC the previous summer for a figure drawing class which I thought of as a test run for college. I ultimately chose SAIC because I was so familiar with the area and the school. I had walked around the Pratt campus briefly on a family trip to New York before, but had never set foot inside the buildings or spoken to any of the staff or students.
While I did pick up a few new skills at SAIC, my overall experience felt lacking. I had expected to learn the ins and outs of oil painting, and how to construct a sculpture, but instead the focus of all of my classes was the message behind the art. The emphasis of a story, or ‘deeper meaning’ behind a piece was placed higher than the overall quality and craft. I value art that has a statement behind it, but I had been under the impression that going to art school would be more execution based learning. I often joked with my family and friends that I was at “fake school” because compared to my AP art class in high school, my classes were easy, and I could put little to no effort into a project and as long as I had a good speech to give, my professors were pleased. I remember a girl in my class presented an old high school art project at a final critique and literally made up a meaning and the teachers ate it up. It was obviously frustrating to see some of my classmates pass off old projects they did in high school as new work because they had spent the night drinking instead of working, and get away with it.
SAIC was a very relaxed school— probably too relaxed for me. There were no grades, everything was pass/fail, you could create your own schedule, and you never had to declare a major. Looking back, maybe this just wasn’t the right school for me, and maybe there is such thing as a more structured, technique based art school, but SAIC was not what I was looking for.
I had always wanted to tattoo since I saw LA Ink on TV, but all I knew about the industry was that show, and my brief experience of getting my first tattoo when I was 17 with my mom’s permission. Tattooing was very mysterious to me, and I felt like an outsider with no way in.
My parents have always been very supportive, and when they heard I was unsatisfied at SAIC they urged me to take some time off of school to search for a tattoo apprenticeship. At first I was unsure because I didn’t want to ‘give up’ on college even if it was a fake college. It took some time, but it all worked out in the end, and while I am glad that I was able to experience art school, I’m even happier that I dropped out to do what I really wanted to do.
The Gallery below is some of my projects from my time at SAIC
