How I became an art writer
I’ve lived in Charlotte so long that I assume everyone knows everything about me. But then I realize I’m a reserved person and I often don’t share a lot of personal information. I also realize that this blog doesn’t just reach Charlotte. This is the internet, and some of my subscribers don’t know me in real life. In order to rectify that, I want to occasionally touch on my own biography. Today, I want to share the story of how I became an art writer.
It’s fairly obvious how people become artists. They’re typically born with an inclination toward creativity and some level of talent. It’s far less obvious how someone becomes an art writer or, dare I say, critic. It’s only recently and in retrospect, that I even understand how I became an art writer, so allow me to explain it here.
Some internet art critics.
Not long ago, I unearthed a memory of a beach trip I took with my family when I was in middle school. Every year, we’d rent a beach house somewhere along the Carolina coast for a week or two. This particular year, we had chosen Figure 8 Island for the first time. Figure 8 Island is a tiny barrier island close to Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina. It’s sparsely populated and only accessible by a small bridge off a country road in Wilmington, NC. I haven’t been there in almost 15 years, but I think of it often, as it is a uniquely magical place. But I digress! We always took my mom’s mom, Joanie, on our annual beach trips, (more on her soon) so of course she was with us in Figure 8. You might remember from a previous post that she is the Modernist rebel who majored in art in college and taught elementary school art for decades. In spite of her abstract leanings, her knowledge of art history was encyclopedic, so she was our family art expert when I was growing up. Now, to the story!
In the rental house, there was an original painting in the living room. It was a semi-impressionistic still life of some kind. There was a table with various objects arranged jauntily, and the painting’s palette was mostly pastel colors. At a glance, it was pleasing to the eye. One morning, I stood near it with my mom and grandmother. One of us remarked that it was a nice painting, so we all turned our attention toward it. “Well, kind of,” one of us said upon closer inspection. (Probably my mom or Joanie.) One of them pointed out some awkward passages in the painting. The other noted some perspective that was off in a way that was distracting. I made note of some compositional issues causing disharmony. And just like that, we’d critiqued the whole painting—on our beach vacation. It was the first time I had done such a thing, and I must say, I found it quite fun.
I always loved art when I was little. As I went through elementary school, I began to love it more. Drawing and painting were favorite pastimes of mine outside of school, too. They offered balance to my rigorous ballet schedule. I was fortunate to have an incredibly good K-12 education, that even more fortunately included a shockingly good art education. We learned the elements of art and design, as well as the color wheel, starting in elementary school and kept working with them all the way through. In 7th grade, we could choose our arts elective. Up until that point, we all took some kind of visual art, but by then it was evident who liked art and who wasn’t so interested. It was also evident who was good at it. I was not the best, but I did have talent and more than that, I had passion for it. While some of my friends chose band, orchestra or choir, I chose art class.
In high school, those of us on the art track could choose specific courses. After you took the general “visual studies” class as a freshman, you could pick form categories like photography, 3D design or 2D design. I took printmaking and drawing classes primarily, until Junior year when I could start doing AP Studio Art. There were only about 6 of us out of the 240 students who made up the Junior and Senior classes. We were an elite group, and I learned invaluable information in that 2-year course.
Even though I was taking advanced art classes in high school, I was already fairly aware that I would not grow up to be an artist. Art-making was cathartic and enjoyable to me, but I knew it wasn’t exactly my thing. What was seeming like my thing was art history. My high school history classes always included a unit on art history, and I would revel in those lessons. I wished they were longer than a unit, and when it came time to write a research paper for history class, I would always choose an art historical topic. By the time I was a Senior, I was able to take AP Art History and I jumped at the chance. It was basically like a college survey course, and I adored every minute of it. When it came time to take the AP exam for art history, I studied but it didn’t feel like a chore. I sailed into the exam and made a top score. After that, I knew what my college major would be.
I think I’ve shared before that I went to Bryn Mawr College for my freshman year. The tiny Seven Sisters school was known for its art history department, which partly informed my decision to go there. Even though the school wasn’t for me in the end, I got a lot out of the art history department there, and when I transferred, I chose another top art history school—UNC- Chapel Hill. I spent my college summers interning at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, writing and researching for them. I had most certainly found my thing.
You already know I went on to work at Jerald Melberg Gallery upon graduation, and this is when the art writer thing began to take shape. I often wrote copy and things for the gallery when I first started there, but nothing too serious until a year or so in. We were planning an exhibition for Lee Hall, a woman who showed at Betty Parsons’ gallery in the 1960s until she withdrew from the commercial art world to write books and eventually become the president of RISD, among other academic accomplishments. I loved her work and I loved her, too. She was sharp-witted, funny and undeniably brilliant. Her abstract landscapes sat well with my Modernist soul. I knew I wanted to write the catalogue essay for her show. With Chris’s encouragement, I volunteered myself to do so, and the Melbergs let me. I labored over the essay, desperate to make it the best thing I’d ever written. I’m not sure that I achieved all that, but when Lee read it in its final form, she said something to me I would never forget. She told me, “I’ve read Greenberg and Rosenberg and all the rest—and you’re as good as any of them.” Lee was never one to flatter you or say a word without meaning it. I nearly fainted.
Around 2019, I learned something no one had ever bothered to tell me: you can pitch stories to publications. it was the perfect time to learn this because I was in a brief window where I wasn’t working in the arts. I was in a bit of an existential crisis after the sudden passing of my mom in 2018 and I was working mostly at Yoga One. My involvement in the art community had become more peripheral. It seemed like a long era, but it was probably only a few months. I was suddenly wracked with pangs and urges to get back into “the art world,” so when I learned I could just pitch arts articles to people, I jumped on it. I started kind of small, with Indy Week. I used to read Indy Week in college because they had good arts and culture articles and it was free. It’s like the Triangle area’s Creative Loafing, I would say. I contacted someone there with a proposition to write an exhibition review of Damian Stamer’s show at Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, NC. It took some convincing and explaining to get them to let a girl in Charlotte contribute to their Chapel Hill/Durham/Raleigh newspaper, but eventually they let me, and it went really well.
From there, I started pitching all over and got my writing in Charlotte Magazine and Burnaway. I even did an entire catalogue for the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum (BRAHM), which was a dream project I will write about someday. I did a lot with Burnaway for a few years until it was no longer a good fit (maybe someday I’ll tell the tale,) and there was a lapse in my art writing save for catalogue essays for the gallery. I let that go on until I started Chouette this year, and I must say, I feel much more like myself now that I am regularly writing about art again.
Why have I told you such a long, personal story? Well, for a lot of reasons like allowing myself to be known and illustrating how someone gets into the “support class” side of the art world, but mostly to show you that if you really want to do something and know it’s what you’re meant to do, you have to claim your seat at the table. If I hadn’t made pitches or started my own blog, who knows how much art writing I ever would have had the opportunity to do. Just the other day, I reached out to a favorite podcast of mine and asked if I could come on and talk about the art world. I felt like it was a long shot, but guess what? They said yes! As much as I wish it weren’t true, no one is going to invite you to where you want to be. You’re going to have to ask, and when you do, you will be surprised by how many people tell you to come on in.