Approaching graduation, I find myself thinking about my years at art school and the things I’ve learned there.

We had this assignment in my first ever class at SAIC. It was a reading that basically said (at least, this is my memory of it 4 years later) just because it’s art that doesn’t mean it’s good. Looking back it was the perfect article for a first year class—welcome to art school you young punks. It’s a perspective I now take for granted. At the time, however, I remember it coming as a bit of a blow. It certainly went against a lot of what I thought of artmaking at the time.

The reading was “frivolity and unction” from Dave Hickey’s book Air Guitar.