We received this question via email recently and we thought it was such an important question that we’re addressing it in this blog post. The question:
“I'm currently at the end of my Junior year in high school and I just read your article on writing college essays about art to look for some guidance. I noticed that the majority of the article referred to performing arts and film. I am planning on writing my college essay very soon, within this year, but I would like some insight on how to go about writing my topic on the traditional side of art without it sounding cliché. I really wanted to include art in my essay because it is a very important aspect of my life, it allows me to convey my thoughts and emotions.”
--PicasSo Confused
The answer:
Art is like, really complex. Totally. We get it. We’ve written about college essays and art, art supplements, and how to craft your college essay to reflect your creative side, and so on. But we wanted to more deeply explore the above question of how to craft an essay about more “traditional” art without it being bad. We had a few immediate reactions to this question that we’ll break down:
Art is an easy cliche
Plain and simple, writing about a piece of art, or your artistic approach, is cliche if done without careful thought (and probably a lot of bad drafts). We can’t think of a more boring essay than one about a singular piece of art. That’s what your arts supplement is for -- to show your art. Your essay, on the other hand, is an opportunity for you to tell a story. And not a story about how much you love art, but rather a story that shows how much you have invested in and how much of your life is reflective of this creative process.
An essay about art can be good if it’s not about art
We know this might sound like a confusing, circular statement, but hear us out: a piece of writing can be thematically related to something without actually being ABOUT it. We advise our students to identify something small, and to make their essay about that small thing while invoking the larger thing, instead of making an essay about the bigger thing.
So for example, a student we had last year is an incredible artist. Their supplement was outstanding, they’d won a bunch of awards, and even sold their art for substantial amounts of money. It was certainly tempting to latch onto one of those big-ticket, flashy pieces and tell a story about it, or to discuss their “approach to the artistic process,” by exploring their process. Instead, we worked with them to find a relatively obscure story from years prior when the student came into contact, and ultimately, conflict, with someone in the world as a result of their art. It was barely about the art itself, and more about the human element of this conflict.
In short: no matter what your topic, but in this case it’s art, don’t knock the reader over the head with your views on art or approach to art, and instead work to find a creative and interesting way to highlight your passion about art by telling a story. The story should not be overwhelmed with description (a description isn’t an essay), but rather structured in such a way that has a clear beginning, a middle, and an end, with a narrative, individual voice weaved throughout. And on that note:
Make sure it’s personal
What made us most concerned about the direction of this question is the phrase “traditional side of art,” because it doesn’t sound very personal. It’s easy to take a subject and to intellectualize your involvement and interest in it. That’s not what’s going to force admissions officers to wake up out of their fog after reading hundreds of boring essays that end with “What I learned from this experience…” This is where we’ll challenge you to make this essay intensely personal (not saying you need to overshare...in fact, please don’t). When we say intensely personal, we mean the narrative voice that you use and the story that you tell. The events that make up who we are, why we care, and how we express that care, are likely small moments that lead up to the big moments. That’s what we challenge you to write about when it comes to writing about “art.” Do the work (we’ve written out a step-by-step guide here) to isolate some moments you may have forgotten about because they aren’t obvious, and explore those. They may very well be where the essay is.
Please feel free to reach out with any and all essay questions -- we love answering questions that are useful to you!