Art school confidential: The nitty gritty of AFO

Every incoming art student has heard about it. Every art student has to take it. It’s a long, hard road to artistic realization.

AFO.

Every fall semester, an onslaught of incoming freshman art students begin the AFO, also known as The Art Foundation Program, which has long been the standard for entering the art major. Regardless of whether a student is looking to be a graphic designer or a future painter, every student is required to make it through an arduous year of AFO before they are accepted into the specific art program of their choice.

Remember the stories of your roommate’s art friend who made an entire project out of macaroni? Or did you hear of your friend’s homework of creating trading cards for their classmates? Well, they’re all true. And while these seemingly off-the-wall art projects might sound a little kooky, they are often just your typical AFO assignment. But for the students concerned with eventually making a practical living out of art, how does the AFO program really measure up in their preparation?

For the average first-year art student, a typical semester’s workload consists of two labs, a studio or two, an art history class and two general education courses. This usually adds up to be between 13 to 16 credits every semester. Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Wrong.

AFO, which is described on their Web site as a program focused on “establishing a core for a complex whole,” strives to continually bend students’ minds through a series of assignments that often ask the student to conceptually create something. But even if macaroni gets students’ creative juices flowing, does the program really help to develop their skill?

Among the pack that believes the AFO program does just what it promises, Tim Roger, a recent communication design major, is among the first to praise the program for helping him hone his skills.

“I think it helps. I grew up basically doing art, as a hobby and never thought of it as something I could pursue,” Rodgers said. “The AFO program of course laid a foundation for me and directed me towards a certain area of interest.”

Despite that, Rodgers admits that it wasn’t easy and often times, he questioned the value of the program. “It was brutal,” Rodgers says, “Some projects didn’t seem as applicable to real world projects but some of those same projects did pull from you certain other skills (that) you would need in the real world. It did teach you how to think and process information.”

Another recent communication design graduate, Brian Villalon, agrees. “A lot of the projects we did seemed like bull, but I got into my major and I actually applied a lot of that stuff.

“I learned how to take criticism. I learned how to think in different ways.”

But with a program that harvests the growing skills of numerous creative minds, where does that leave the art itself? Though Villalon compares the assignments to a “dog show,” saying that many of the courses are “kind of competitive,” he also admits that it’s very necessary in encouraging students to create their best work.

Also finding AFO mentally helpful as well as with skills, Patrick Benbow, a third-year illustration major, says, “There are also a lot of things taught that I kind of knew already, but had never consciously thought about or understood until it was brought up in class.

“AFO helped me understand what I already knew but didn’t know how to manipulate to my advantage.”

Despite many students praising the program, there are just as many who have concerns with the program that encourages “thinking outside of the box,” questioning how students from all arenas of the art world can be graded equally when they specialize in different types of art.

“Almost all of my projects had to be related to abstract, sculpture-esque things,” Hannah Choi, a third-year illustration major, lamented, “But half of us weren’t even there for fine arts.”

Though Choi is quick to point out that professors never forbade assignments consisting of photographs or still life paintings, Choi hints towards the faculty’s affinity for projects on the more abstract side.

“It felt like a lot of the abstract things were more liked,” Choi said. “But you have to take everyone’s interests into consideration.”

Though incoming freshman students may be asking themselves these same questions as they go through AFO this year, it seems that the ultimate point of the program is to provide a solid introduction to art for prospective artists. So, does the program fulfill this?

Perhaps the answer to whether AFO succeeds in doing so is as subjective as the art itself.