Andy Graydon Studio Mentoring
One-on-one studio advising for artists and filmmakers developing a body of work
You have the degree, the studio, a community of peers. You’re working.
And still there comes a point where the work knows something before you do. You can feel where it's reaching and you can't yet see the path.
That's when a mentor matters. The right one changes what's possible.
I had many professors while studying to complete my MFA, but Andy is the artist I learned the most from in terms of planning for exhibiting artwork, and how to read and critique the work of my peers. Andy has the unique ability to provide feedback that is highly constructive and affirming to the artist at the same time. Any critique I have received from Andy has left me enthusiastic about making my work and provided me with meaningful pathways for changing and improving it.
Montana B. — painting and sculpture
Working together
For over a decade I've mentored artists at Harvard, MIT, MCAD, and the SMFA at Tufts. Not lecturing but sitting one-on-one with artists and their art, and advancing it together. I listen for what your work wants, and I help you make it stronger than you could alone.
What I bring that's less common is a deep feel for how mediums talk to each other and amplify one another. A painting reaching toward something it can't say on canvas. A body of work that wants to move into space, into time, into sound, but you haven't found the way there yet. I've spent years crossing those lines in my own work, and I can help you cross them with confidence instead of guesswork.
Who this is for
Around a degree: MFA graduates returning to a practice after a gap. BFA graduates who want the next level of engagement without committing the years and money of an MFA. Current students, BFA or MFA, working on an advanced capstone or thesis project; or students wanting more structure and momentum than what’s in their current program, including low-residency program students working between residencies.
Building a new direction: Practicing artists, emerging or mid-career, opening an ambitious new direction and wanting guidance through the uncertainties of expansion. This might be at the moment of wildest experimentation, or at that place where it needs to be made concrete enough to fund, through project development and grant writing.
At a pressure point: Artists preparing for an upcoming opportunity that matters — an exhibition, a publication, a talk, a performance, a film. This includes artists inside an intensive, fertile period like a residency, fellowship or retreat, where the time is short and the stakes are high.
The process
We meet regularly, one to one. In the studio, in your writing, and in real conversations about what the work is doing and what it needs next. The structure comes from your work rather than from a curriculum.
Between sessions, I'm available for questions or to provide additional feedback and resources.
You'll come out of it making stronger work, and surer of your own hand in it.
Andy is one of the few mentors or professors who can help you deepen your practice and expand your understanding without filtering out your own voice, interests, and values. He is a delightful, inspiring, and validating art sage! His feedback is always useful. I always left our meetings feeling motivated and ready to work.
Tara T. — video and installation
The shape
The work can take a few forms: a sustained sequence over a semester, a longer arc across a year, or a shorter run of sessions aimed at one thing: a show, a statement, a new portfolio.
The shape and fit depend on your work and where it is. We figure that out together, starting with a brief introductory conversation.
Andy's critiques were positive yet constructive and thought-provoking. I continue to hear his questions as I plan and execute new work, and always value his input.
John S. — sculpture and installation
-
I work with artists in any medium, on ambitious, developing projects. The conversations are rigorous and they begin where your work already is. I ask the questions the work raises, and we use these to help you articulate goals and deliver work at the next level.
Focus areas:
Painting, drawing, and printmaking
Sculpture and spatial installation
Performance, relational and social practice
Film and video: narrative, documentary, experimental
Sound, music, and listening practices
Studio practices looking to open toward installation or time-based work
Projects that reach into other fields: the sciences, ecology, critical and creative writing
In person or remotely. Our work together is always confidential. Whatever the medium, the common thread is attention, honesty, and building a bridge to a better practice.
-
My own work has shown at the New Museum, MASS MoCA, the Honolulu Biennial, the Berlinische Galerie, the deCordova, and the Frye Art Museum. I've been commissioned for new works by museums and public art programs across the US and Europe. It's held in the collections of the Walker Art Center, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Honolulu Museum of Art, among others.
Grants and fellowships include the McKnight Foundation Fellowship in Media Arts, a MacDowell Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts award, and, currently, a fellowship at Harvard's Film Study Center.
I've mentored graduate and advanced artists for over a decade, at Harvard, MIT, MCAD, and the SMFA at Tufts.
-
Art is speculative thinking done with your senses. Speculation here is akin to dreaming: reaching past what you already know toward what might be otherwise. Art does this dreaming in and with the body, in material, color, sound, image, and time, in the eye and ear and hand. The studio is where that happens.
So my first job is to listen. Before advice, before direction and without judging, I want to understand what a work is doing, and what it's gesturing toward. Often this is something the artist half-knows but hasn't yet articulated. From there the work is shared between us. We build the vocabulary to name what you're after, and the habit of questioning that keeps a practice moving and robust.
I don't come to a studio with a style to hand down or a school to enroll you in. I've spent my own life following projects across installation, film, sound and writing, wherever the idea needed to go. That's how I work, and it's what I bring to yours.
Andy Graydon embodies the rare combination of accomplished artist, rigorous intellectual, and deeply effective educator. He neither imposes stylistic dogma nor seeks to produce replicas of his own artistic voice; rather, he cultivates independent thinkers capable of developing authentic and sustainable creative practices. Students respond to him not only because of his expertise, but because they recognize in him a profound respect for the creative process and for the vulnerability inherent in serious artistic development.
Kevin R. — painting and sculpture
Start with a conversation
Tell me a little about your work and where it is right now. If it feels like a fit, let’s talk.