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Marisa Molina Reflects On Her Journey Through Academic Arts

Betsy Podsiadlo | 8/31/2023

Marisa Molina is a student artist at San Diego State University where she studies Multimedia Arts. As she begins her final year of her undergraduate training, we chatted with her hoping to gain some “boots on the ground” perspective on higher education’s role in the early stages of career strategizing and how her artistic practice fits into her professional goals.

Multimedia Arts is a broad major, encompassing many mediums and disciplines. This allows students like Marisa the opportunity for self-discovery through a diverse series of courses and projects. When asked what she’s hoping to learn in this last year, Marisa shared that she is very excited to continue working through her upper-level sculpture course.

“I’m excited to go back to school because I have a small, intimate sculpture class,” Marisa said.

Marisa continued to explain that she finds so much inspiration from this small community of artists who have made their way together through the lower-level sculpting classes. It is clear that Marisa’s passion for community influences the way she approaches her creative practice. She described in our interview how that value translates into her professional life which looks to be gallery and museum work.

“It seems like everyone is in the gallery scene, I didn’t know that was a scene,” Marisa said.

Like many student artists, Marisa experienced some difficulty in identifying potential outlets and paths for her art outside of intense technical work in the classroom.

“There was no set path like all the other majors where you kind of know what you’re getting into when you’re out,” Marisa said.

The experience of attending a larger liberal arts university acted as a window into other fields of study. According to Marisa, she began to notice that while some of her peers in STEM were being taught about clear cut paths toward professional success, she was not afforded this knowledge.

The anecdote Marisa offered is echoed by students in the arts everywhere. Institutions both large and small fall short when preparing students for the realities of work in a creative field. The gatekeeping of career planning and strategizing for creative industries is especially damaging to upcoming artists in a time when the relevance of human-made art is on the societal chopping block. So the question becomes, how can young artists learn to turn their dreams into reality?

Upon further discussion, Marisa revealed that her current dream artist life revolves around her passion for community combined with the pursuit of utilizing art developed with the intention of promoting understanding.

“How can I help people conceptualize information, but in a different way?" Marisa said in a later message to the author, revealing her interest in exhibit design for museums.

She continued to explain that she discovered this interest while working on a project based in astronomy entitled Gallactic [sic] Sphere (2023). The project is “a constellation map of the galactic sphere visualized through a multi-tier chandelier consisting of beads, wire, string and sand… Suspended at roughly six feet, viewers are welcome to stand in and around the center of the piece to fully observe the constellations in a 360-degree experience,” Marisa said.

Interaction, clarity, and whimsy inspire Marisa as she continues to explore ways to infuse a pedagogical sensibility into the pieces she creates. “With a concern for the accessibility of information, I feel that my ability to interactively visualize large scientific concepts may facilitate a more inclusive understanding of scientific methods and discoveries for those unfamiliar with the field,” she wrote in a recent artist statement.

As Marisa finishes the final year of her Bachelor’s degree, she is entering the rite of passage of an artistic life: forging a path forward. As this new academic year begins, perhaps we should all reflect on our own paths, how we’ve gotten to the point we’re at now, and where we’d like to go next.

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