“Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.”
― Chris Marker, La Jetée: ciné-roman
It is said that Paganini used to state that it takes one whole year just to learn how to hold a violin’s bow. I don’t think it takes a year to learn how to hold a pencil (or a brush), but it might take at least one year just to learn how to draw some really good lines. Our associate degree is a two-year program, so the conundrum to select artworks for a yearly art exhibition presents a challenge for professors and students alike. In my classes, around 120 students complete around 1,000 art projects within a year, of which I select around 6 artworks for the yearly Students Art Exhibition. Statistically, that is less than 1% of the work created in my classes. Hence, the amazing work that you see in the Students Art Exhibition is representative of a very small fraction of the projects created by our students in our classes. You are witnessing the best craftsmanship and the best development of vision among our best students.
What about the other works, the 99% of the works that don’t make it to the exhibition? Some are exhibited in our small Art and Design Department Gallery within the ‘C’ building, and several students’ works are constantly being exhibited in the multiple display cases and panels within the building, along with video projects shown in our display monitor in the students’ small lounge area. The truth is that this is what happens as well in the real and practical world outside Academia – galleries and museums do not exhibit most of the work produced by artists (or art students) to the wider public. It happened to Van Gogh and Rimbaud and still happens to many others. During their lifetime, Van Gogh was known to just a very small circle of artists; Rimbaud was known to a small circle of poets. A large part of their lives was a hard struggle, to say the least. But they had something to say.
Not everyone who thinks of themselves as artists has something to say or contribute to the evolution of art. To paint a watercolor every other Sunday doesn’t make a person an artist; a hobby is not a profession, and it could be argued that to be an artist in many instances is not a practical profession (Neither Van Gogh nor Rimbaud made any money through their art while they were alive). Being an artist can be at times a curse and a blessing. Making art is an invitation to be misunderstood.
One of the greatest acts of courage by an artist is to engage in a creative activity that risks incommunicability. The contemporaneous people around an artist may not understand the work (some might even deeply dislike what the artist is doing) only to have a future generation embrace it. To be an artist is an act of resistance, a statement for freedom and an embrace of mystery and unpredictability. Artists have memories of the future. Between the cracks and the scars, some of our art students are already building memories of the future.
–Javier Cambre 2026