OCAD – What’s In A Name?

A review of the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) - Drawing and Painting program.
By Lauren W. who graduated in 2006. 738 views.

I chose OCAD because I thought it had a good name for itself and a good reputation. After completing my degree there, I felt like it’s name might be the most it had to offer.

Choosing to take the degree route means you became sort of pigeon holed.

How It’s Set Up

When I started at OCAD, it was in the process of converting from a college to having university status. I figured this was a good thing, since you could graduate with your BFA rather than just a diploma. Choosing to take the degree route means you became sort of pigeon holed. In second semester of first year, you had to chose art or design and commit to it. There was little to no allowance for crossover between disciplines. You also had to decide right away what area you wanted within art or design. I choose drawing and painting because I figured that’s what I was already good at, and didn’t have enough time to find out if I liked anything else better. There is some room to take classes from other areas within your discipline as an elective, but then you could really only take the “intro” class and not get as much out of it as you would have liked. These courses were kind of like teasers, saying “you could have signed up for this program, but you didn’t.” You could take the non-major route, and jump around between areas (drawing and painting, photography, sculpture and installation, integrated media) but then you could not graduate with a BFA.

The degree is a four year program, with a thesis as your final year. The thesis must be done in the area you’ve pigeon holed yourself into. Your 4 years could be spread out as long as you wanted to make them, just as long as completed your thesis. My suggestion, if you can do it, is to take your thesis as a 5th year, so you can focus on it alone and not have your other courses interfering with the work load.

The degree program will also require you to take a certain amount of academic credits; art histories, humanities (cultural studies), English, science, math etc. Keep in mind these are the art school versions of university courses. Easy slacker versions that you won’t learn much form. My biology course felt like the summer school version of highschool biology.

What They Want

What I would have done differently if I were to go back would be to research the teachers in advance. There are some good teachers, I just never seemed to get them. For the most part, I found they could always be described as nice people, they just didn’t know how to teach. They acted more like peers than mentors. Seeing as art is a very subjective thing, you almost had to be on the teacher’s good side to get a good mark. Or just really know how to talk about your art. The better you could explain it, and the more passion you seemed to have to back it up, the better you could do.

OCAD is very much not an academic school. You will not be classically trained. It always felt very self-guided with words of encouragement or criticisms to help you tweak what you were already doing. You will pick up some new skills and improve upon what you already know, but for the most part this is through peer based learning. Tips and ideas are passed on as you go and you’ll learn from your own and other people’s mistakes.

You were expected to find your own style early on and continue to refine it as you went along. Another real push was to be contemporary, and ‘different’ within the confines of what is popular right now. As jerky as this sounds, I found the kids that were doing stuff that looked like something already out there, did better than someone who was trying to make up their own thing. Irony and quirky art reigns at OCAD. Shocking or risqué art also did well. Realism and gentle, appealing, ’safe’ art was really frowned upon.

By far the best thing OCAD has to offer its students is the Florence off campus program.

Highlights

By far the best thing OCAD has to offer its students is the Florence off campus program. It’s a full school year in Florence Italy; with 24 hour access to an open studio, self directed studies, and an unsurpassed art history classes which takes you to small villages and monasteries and lets you be face to face with the works you’ve only seen in slides and books. The art history teacher alone is reason to go. The sweetest most refined man you will ever meet. You will also make some of the closest friends from your entire OCAD experience here. It’s tight knit and very up close and personal but so worth it. There’s opportunity to travel and you’ll be surprised at how easy and cheap it is to get from country to country (day trip to Norway anyone?). In true OCAD fashion there were many administrative related flaws and you can only luck out with the teachers they send for you (we had a bad year for teachers) but this experience will change your life.

After OCAD

It is in fact very hard to find work in the field after OCAD. Those who were successful and able to get gallery representation and the like are able to make some nice money on the side, but still not enough to live off of. There are gallery jobs. There are assistant jobs (I did this for 2 years), but again, no real careers to speak of. Many will choose to take a masters after graduating with the goal of teaching, however it’s still difficult to find teaching jobs. I know a lot of people who like myself went back to school for something completely different. Art will always be my first passion and I will always keep it up, but OCAD may not be the best choice if you’re dead serious about making it as a professional artist.

The school’s focus was too centered on making kids who could produce the most contemporary art that would show well in the Toronto market.

So Is It Worth It?

Overall, it was a very disorganized school with very little help or guidance from teachers or academic counselors. There were not enough courses or enough advice given to prepare you for the “real world” of art. The school’s focus was too centered on making kids who could produce the most contemporary art that would show well in the Toronto market. I’ve heard this same story from practically everyone I’ve met or known who has survived OCAD. This being said though, the people you meet there and the amount of creativity coursing though that building is inspiring.

All and all, OCAD was an interesting experience. If you’re interested in living in the city and really getting involved with the contemporary art scene it could be the right school for you. Once again, it does feel very self guided so the more you put into it, and the more involved you get with other students and artistic projects and events, the more you will enjoy it. Don’t go here if you’re looking to learn how to perfect your life drawing skills or become a photorealist, you won’t learn it and they wont appreciate it. You will meet good people and be inspired to keep creating, but you will have to put in what you expect to get out of it.

http://www.laurenwright.ca/

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6 Comments

Sarah Mulholland

11.22.09

Since Lauren graduated in 2006 she was not able to take advantage of OCAD’s new minors, launched in 2008. The minors are part of OCAD’s New Ecology of Learning. The NEL gives students more flexibility to construct a program of study that responds to their particular interests and needs, and the minor program was developed in response to students’ desires to study in a more cross-disciplinary environment. There are minors in Drawing & Painting, Integrated Media, Photography, and Printmaking within the Faculty of Art, but you can also take minors in the Faculty of Design in Communication Design, Furniture Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Industrial Ceramics, Material Art & Design (fibre, ceramics and jewellery) and Sustainablility in Design. Not to mention the minors in the Faculty of Liberal Studies in Art History, Creative Writing, Digital & Media Studies, English and Social Sciences. There are also Interdisciplinary Studies in Aboriginal Visual Culture, Digital Media
and On-Screen Media.

Anonymous

11.28.09

OCAD is not a school worth going to in my opinion.
Complete waste of money.

anika

1.5.10

Interesting comments. I attended OCAD 20 years ago and it looks as though not much has changed. I and others found teachers provided next to no instruction and that instructor critiques were unhelpful and very subjective. I left after the second year of my program and felt that it was the best decision I ever made.

1.19.10

As soon as ocad became a university, it lost it’s original concept of a studio art school. studnets became focused on liberal studies and forgot about their creative pursuits. The difficulty is most artists are not that interested in liberal studies, we want to create. I found myself saying, well, I’ll do the art, and skim through the liberal studies. to give you an idea, I went to 3 classes in a large class, and passed. All I did was the projects, they never took any attendance, so why go. Art schools are about art, not books. Plato was a cool guy, yet, Van Gogh was far more fun.

A. Mason

2.5.10

i’m a current student and i love OCAD. although I agree that you get what you put into it, but isn’t that the point? art is a tough competitive field and if you want to make it, you have to go the extra mile. I’m majoring in photography and i plan to minor in screenprinting, but i’ve also done material art and design and worked with programs like final cut express. i think if you expect people to tell you exactly what to do without thinking for yourself then don’t go to this school, but if you’re dedicated there are people here who will help you, and all of the teachers and monitors, even from programs i’m not in, have been willing to give me advice and teach me what i’m willing to learn. even in my first year i’ve had my work in a student gallery and i don’t think other schools could have offered me some of the experiences i’ve had.

Ian

2.6.10

@A. Mason, the original articles discussion of “guidance” isn’t about the teachers telling you what to photograph; take all the black and white shots of empty train tracks you want. It was about guidance and preparation for the real world AFTER art school.

Like most schools, ESPECIALLY art schools, students are taught in a bubble and essentially have to abandon much of what they learned and instead retrain on the job.

For example, the animation program I went through 5 years ago taught me virtually nothing about how an actual studio operates. Even today, when I do guest lectures, students are surprised to learn they won’t be doing character design, modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, compositing and final edit. Worse still, none of them are particularly good at ANY of those specific disciplines as the schools have trained them as jack of all trades and masters of none.

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