Alyssa Glazer: From Art to Empathy
People often confuse art with emotion. This sounds like the opposite of what we are led to believe, but such a statement leads me to an ongoing conversation about the existence of empathy within academic departments. As a Lander art department student, I have learned there is an overall lack of empathy in our department, but I knew I needed to explain why. Except, as I started to go into detail, I realized I’d only generalized my overall college experience and not about my experiences within the art department. I’d hit a wall.
So, I switched gears.
As soon as I walked into the art department as a freshman at Lander, I was taught to release emotions to become better at taking feedback during critique. We were taught to look at critique with an analytical mind versus the human nature of reacting emotionally when a peer expressed the use of yellow that I loved so much was a distraction from the focal point. Freshman year was for tears and temper tantrums, because the next year, there was no place for it. Shed tears left you the whisper of your peers, of downcast gazes and zero sympathy. It was a time to grow up and put your big girl pants on, to face critique with a stone-cold expression, to take any commentary as a strength toward your piece or to shove down. This might sound heartless. It might sound impossible. After all, my peers and I would work on our artwork for weeks, counting down the very hours, only to have it dissected during critique. It is hard, at first, to watch something I’ve grown attached to, spend hours creating, putting my all into it, only to have my classmates turn their noses at the forms, or lack a focal point. By senior year, I learned to value the advice and wise words of my peers, to see their perspective and make the changes necessary to become more successful. Still, this lacks empathy. To reiterate, anyone who had been reduced to tears after a critique did not face empathetic glances. Instead, they were met with resentment, disdain, or misunderstanding.
Once I started showcasing my artwork into exhibitions off campus, I learned the real art world was far more brutal.
In many ways, I am thankful for the harsh reality of critique and learning to distance my feelings and emotions when my work is being analyzed critically. If I hadn’t learned it early on as a freshman, real exhibitions would have hit me much harder. When asked to write about empathy in the art world of exhibitions, the nearest thought of empathy came when thinking of the awards ceremony held near the tail end of reception night. Emotions were high. All the featured artists, including myself, sat on the edge of our seats, waiting to hear our name called alongside the title of our piece shining in its own spotlight just feet away. Everyone looked with longing expressions, straining to see if their title is bolded in curling font on the front of a certificate. The excited crowd drowning out the sound of the name called. Yet, the faces of the crowd never turned my way. There was no parting of the masses to let me through. I held onto the fading hope that I would be next. I looked anxiously at my peers. The same desperation was in their eyes as they had yet to be called. Once the final winner was announced, and it just so happened to be the same first place winner three years in a row, my eyes met my peers. They were thinking the same thought that had been on my own mind. Right then, that’s where I found empathy in the art world.
Their gaze, the small, sad smiles and the hugs to back up words of encouragement. There were plenty of “it should have been you” tossed around. And it was true. I felt it just as strongly as they did. Like me, they knew just how much time I had put into every brushstroke. Like them, I knew how long they’ve spent at the computer, reprinting their photography hoping the printer won’t smudge their carefully curated photograph at the final seconds of emerging from the printer. Collectively, we knew just how the other felt to lose yet again to the same artist.
This is where empathy lives in the world of art. In the arms and sad smiles of your peers. In the dwindling huddle of familiar friends and artists at each exhibition.
Alyssa Glazer is a 2D BFA Visual Arts Major. She executed her breakaway in submitting her work to off campus exhibitions in Clemson, Greenwood, and Spartanburg and having her work exhibited and then attending the reception of each show. In the spring of 2025, Alyssa will graduate, then will continue to graduate school to earn her master's in fine art.