avery andersen

Avery Andersen is a graduate of Calvin University, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and French. He produces art in many mediums, including painting, drawing, ceramics, photography, and sculpture. While studying to get his BFA, he also played on Calvin’s hockey team. He hopes to become an art teacher, while also maintaining his own artistic interests and establishing himself as an artist. He is from Oak Park, Illinois.

 

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Levi Huizenga: Hi Avery, thanks for taking some time to talk with me. Let’s start at some kind of beginning. Where did art start for you? What did it look like?

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Avery Andersen: Doodling, drawing on everything, that’s been true throughout elementary school. I remember being one of the better students in my 5th grade art class, that was a core memory for me as a kid, to be able to say “Oh, my art teacher said I was talented.”

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L: It was always something you could point at and saying like, ‘This is what I’m good at’?

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A: I was always involved with it, but it wasn’t until college that I really started thinking about things seriously, like even throughout high school I didn’t really care about art. It was just doodling and drawing. Not to say it wasn’t important for me, but it just didn’t seem realistic. That’s something I’d wanted students younger than me to understand, that it is totally achievable, that it can be really realistic. You just have to make it achievable.

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L: One of the things that’s interested me about you for a while is knowing you’re a BFA, but that you’re also on the hockey team. What does it mean for you to hold both of these things together? In terms of time, in terms of identity?

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A: It is kind of weird. There’s a culture on the hockey team, probably other sports too, where you don’t really talk about school, you talk about sports. For me it’s been kind of two different worlds, like I’m my ‘hockey self’ and then I’m my ‘art self’. It’s been hard to intersect the two. My teammates support me to some extent, but of course you also expose yourself to the joking ridicule. It’s all from a place of love, but that’s just how it is.

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L: How do you see these two things moving forward into the future? As you look at graduation coming soon here?

 

A: As I’ve gotten closer to the end of the season, I’ve been thinking more like, ‘Well this is obviously coming to an end’, and that I should really be putting me emotional energy into art.

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L: Maybe we could move back to another sort of beginning. Could you tell me what brought you to Calvin? Was your visual art a part of the decision?

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A: Sure. My dad went to the University of Illinois, and I visited a couple of times, but didn't like it because it was so big. I really felt like I would benefit from a smaller school, where I’d get to know my professors, which has definitely become true in the art department, that’s one of the things I've really enjoyed about Calvin. Also that they had a hockey team so. I didn't start as an art major though, I started as a political science major.

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L: Wow.

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A: I truly was interested in it, but I was scared of the art direction, and I think a lot of people are when they view art as a hobby rather than a career at a certain point in their life, and I was definitely at that point. But after taking Intro to Drawing with Brent Williams, that deflected me in a different direction. I basically said, ‘I really don't care about political science, but I'm passionate about art.’

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L: Was it an easy transition? I know Brent can be aggressive.

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A: It was challenging, especially as a new student to the program, I hadn’t experienced anything similar to a serious critique of my work before. It was kind of a new world. Learning how to talk about my work, presenting artist statements. All of that was not really in my view at that point. It was challenging just because I was unfamiliar with that world of taking art seriously. But it was good, I got a lot of support from Brent, from people like Brent, and the small group that make up the art students. We’re all really interested in each other, for better or for worse, I guess.

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L: I love being able to stand outside of that small group of students, having gotten to know a lot of them through Dialogue, you know, to stand outside and kind of peer in. Something that always interests me is how communal and vulnerable the process is, much more like a graduate program where you have to listen to legit people tell you that something is wrong, and that you need to fix it.

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A: Yeah, being vulnerable like that was definitely a challenge for me at first. It’s a weird give and take relationship with your professors because post-critique they expect you to perform based on their advice and if they don't see that, then you can be put on probation from the BFA program, like theoretically you can get kicked out of the program. I've only heard of it happening one time, but it puts weight on your shoulders to create your best work.

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L: Do you think that's an environment that poli-sci freshman Avery would have thought you would thrive in, or did it take some adjusting to?

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A: I think everyone who's a poli-sci major thinks they're really good at debating and stuff like that, but I definitely wasn't prepared for how intentional you had to be when speaking about your art and other people’s art. Every semester you have to display your work in a semi-professional way and all the faculty come in and ask questions about it, it’s an opportunity to build up to something. I wouldn't say I struggle with it, but I'm compulsive about trying to push myself to do more and do better. I think all artists would say that, but just speaking personally, I'm really trying to just build off my previous work to the next and to the next. Specifically with paintings and drawings, it'll take me, most of the time, about an hour or less to create a work. And then I'm like, OK, that's done. I'm never touching that again. I'm just gonna take what I learned from that and move on. Which I think is a little different from other people, some people spend days and weeks on work, whereas just the way that I operate is really step by step leading up to the next thing I guess.

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L: What’s holding your feet to the fire? Can you just not stand looking at one piece for longer than an hour? You’re just interested in high production? High output?

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A: It’s not just production, most of these works are really just for me. I think I just have this urge to get ideas on paper, see them and then say, ‘OK I like this’, or ‘I don't like this’, and then try something else.

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L: What do you see coming next with your work? What’s on the horizon? Where are you going?

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A: Right now I’m really getting into sculpture. I love ceramics, I love painting, and I love drawing, but I’ve recently had this urge to just make bigger things. I’m spending time in a scrapyard, trying to make an installation for the Spring Arts Festival. That’s where I’m going right now, just because I have the facilities and the resources for it.

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L: Looking forward to seeing it. Thanks a lot for sitting down and doing this Avery.

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A: Of course, thank you.

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