Tufts Blogs

I never really thought of myself as someone who did research until my sophomore year at SMFA at Tufts. I was enrolled in an independent study with one of my favorite sculpture professors, which meant I had a semester to focus on my own practice and plan an intensive project while getting one-on-one mentorship, and I’d even gotten funding for it through the Dean’s Research Award. I applied for the award when I asked my professor if I could do an independent study with her in the hopes that I could use the funding the support the study. While I was really excited to expand my practice and make some new work for the independent study, I realized I had no idea how to start coming up with ideas for art projects. My professor suggested I make a research appointment with an SMFA librarian, and ever since then research has become an integral part of my art practice.  

My research appointment consisted of me sitting down with a librarian and telling her everything I was interested in, artistically and conceptually. I explained what kind of art I had made in the past, and what kind of mediums I was most interested in exploring at the moment. At the end of the session, she rattled off a list of books, artists, and artworks that I might find interesting or helpful for my brainstorming, and then proceeded to help me find the books that were available in the SMFA library to get me started.  

Research has this connotation that it has to be based around ‘data’ and therefore appears to exist almost exclusively in the STEM fields. Along with that comes the presumption that research is the process through which you find the single, right answer to a specific question. The most important thing to understand when it comes to doing research as an artist is that there’s no such thing as a ‘single’ answer or a ‘right’ answer. In fact, a lot of the research process is simple intuition. The research you’re doing is often only for your own sake as an artist, and that too is an important distinction and determines how you should go about your research practice. Research is a crucial part of my overall art practice, and it often looks like me in a library or at a computer trying to find other artists that are making work in the same areas as me and taking note of what kind of work I find most intriguing. I work with a lot of different materials and in a lot of different conceptual areas, so when I’m working on a new piece, I have several starting questions to consider that only I can really find the answer to: What medium should the piece be in? What aspect of this piece feels most important? What is it trying to accomplish, both for me and its viewers?  

I find I can usually answer these questions through a combination of research and intuition. Once I find some other artists working with the same concepts I’m interested in, I can begin thinking about how my intent is different from theirs, and adjust my own work accordingly. I’ve started to maintain a running list of artists that I like, even if their work is super different from mine. Not only have I found many of my favorite artists this way, but it has given me a jumping off point for thinking about my own practice. I can draw upon their work for inspiration and using it to better understand how I might create something that’s also entirely my own. Often, some of these instances of brainstorming fall flat, and I realize I’m not actually interested in using the idea— but that’s ok! Research is a good tool for experimentation as well, and even finding out that you’re not interested in a medium or concept is helpful for moving forward! 

 Research can continue to serve an art practice beyond the brainstorming stage as well! For example, many artists I know do a lot of historical research on the subject matter and symbols they use in their work; one artist I know researches their own family history to conceptually support their work. Research is also an important tool for understanding the social contexts in which art is made! It’s a good practice generally to be socially informed, but it’s especially important that cultural workers such as artists take the time to research the world around them, in order to make sure their work is made with respectful consideration of its inherent social context.  

Research doesn’t have to take place in library either though, and depending on what you’re focusing on, research might be a process based in drawing or in travel or in interviewing! I mentioned earlier that I won the Dean’s Research Award, and I ended up using the funds to buy a nice recorder so that I could continue interviewing my parents over the summer to continue the project. When I applied for the award though, I didn’t really know what I would end up using the funding for. In my application, I detailed what I wanted my ‘research’ to center around, and furthermore why I thought I might require funding. The open-ended nature of research in an artists practice means that it’s okay to not know what your goal is when you start, and the structure of this award goes hand in hand with that idea!