Hey there, I went into a cocoon in the Fall and have been up to some exciting new things and have had some major life realizations, the title of this post being one if them! I want to share my “art school story” because I think it’s important for people to know that bad apple professors are all too common, and having one or two of them as teachers can have a long lasting negative effect on a once inspired young artist. It is my hope that you, my dear reader, can see how your own creativity may have been stifled, or, if you are considering art school, that you are very careful with the school you choose and know to look out for red flags and bring them to the attention of the administrators immediately.

I’ve interspersed this post with pictures of my art that I made during that time. Unfortunately this is pretty much all I have, iPhones weren’t a thing yet! I am sadly missing all of my best work from 2010-2011 :(

Acrylic painting of my bedroom from Fall 2009

Back in September of last year I was getting really into drawing and painting in watercolor again, but every time I would get “in the zone” I found myself getting super pissed off. A palpable anger would rise in my chest that made it hard to concentrate for very long. During one of these episodes I started thinking about my time at MassArt and the first bad apple, my Illustration 1 professor who we will call Spott Banal. I was 19 when I entered his class in Fall of 2009, freshly transferred from SUNY Purchase because I dreamt of one day writing and illustrating my own children’s books.

So sad this one is blurry! Watercolor from Fall 2011?

Spott was not a terrible professor, I don’t really remember anything that stood out about his teaching, but what I do remember vividly was how creepy he was. He was always asking the girls in class what we were doing for lunch or after class and talking about how in his art school days it was common for the professors to hang out with students. He wasn’t terribly older, I’d say in his early 30s, but he radiated sleaze, only accentuated by his greasy bad haircut and awful mustache/soul patch combo. He loved to assert his dominance over us, like one time he picked up my private journal off my desk and read from it out loud. It was a very nerdy list of things I liked and didn’t like, and definitely not something I ever wanted the whole class to hear! One day he asked me to stay after class, which I agreed to. After everyone else left he asked me to pose for a painting he was working on for an outside project. I obliged and sat on a little stage in the class, he adjusted my arms and legs the way he wanted, snapped some pictures, and that was that. I really didn’t think anything of this, other than maybe, “well that was a waste of time.”

Fast forward a couple months later and I get an email from Spott saying he won an award for the painting I had posed for, which was attached to the email. “What do you think of the work?” he asked. I opened the file and was SHOCKED. There I was, painted with my long light colored hair, sitting in the position I had posed in, but I was NAKED. I was definitely wearing all my clothes when I posed for him! It was in his signature style so not too detailed, but he did take the time to include a perfectly square patch of pubic hair which I have tattooed into my memory to this day. Feeling a flood of shame, disgust, and horror I started to feel sick and closed out of the email, wishing it would go away forever. A little while later Spott emailed again asking if I had seen the piece and what I thought, and asked me in the hallways of school whenever he saw me as well. Each time I lied and said I hadn’t, “but yea I’ll look in my email I must have missed it.” I started keeping track of where Spott’s classes were so I could avoid him. When I saw him in the halls I could feel him leering, “undressing me with his eyes” as they say. I also stopped using my assigned studio desk on the Illustration floor, I told myself I preferred working at home, even though my desk was right next to my two new friends that I was trying to get to know (shout out to Jared and Jeff, still my BFFs).

Acrylic painting in process from Fall 2009

Crazy right?! At the time, being a 19 and 20 year old, in pre-Me-Too world, I didn’t realize why I felt the way I did and that this was such a creepy thing. I mean, Ross on ‘Friends’ dated a student so I guessed this is just normal? Looking back on it now that I’m the age he was when I was his student, its repulsive. I couldn’t IMAGINE being attracted to a 19 year old, they’re practically children! And you’re being paid to support them in their art, not use your authority to try to get them to sleep with you, I thought we all knew that?

So yeah, thinking about this back in September 2021 got super pissed off about this and decided to write a letter to MassArt about him. Because there was no way that I could think of this situation and it be ok. And then that got me thinking about Bad Apple Professor #2...

I had Loosanne Farmes as my Illustration 3 professor in Fall of 2010. I was doing well in the class until my Grammy died, on October 19th, my 21st birthday. I was devastated. She was my first family member to pass that I was especially close to and it was really hard on me. In another class, taught by a fabulous apple teacher, we were just finishing up a drawing assignment that took place in a cemetery. I worked with this professor to alter the assignment, because the thought of adding ghosts or skeletons to the scene was very upsetting at the time.

Loosanne, being a witch, also assigned a graveyard assignment that I really struggled with but, being the good student I always was, put together something shoddy just to have something to hand in. Loosanne then asked me to see her in her office on break where she told me she had seen the other cemetery assignment I did for the nice teacher’s class and stated that that had “set the bar” for me and I had to redo my piece. I explained to her, while crying, about my grandmother’s passing and the subject being difficult to me, and she responded by belittling me and going off on me about how “in the real world” you can’t let frivolous emotions get in the way of your work, and she insisted that I had to redo it anyway.

She then found a reason to keep me in her suffocating office and make me cry for the remainder of the semester. She was determined to teach me a lesson. All of this came to a head during a critique of our final projects where she started making fun of my “emotional issues,” mocking me in front of everyone. I didn’t respond and went to take down my work and leave and she ran up behind me, grabbed me forcefully and screamed at me not to make a scene in her class! She was still holding me as I said “Don’t You” and pulled away and left.

Mixed media Barnacle Tree from Spring 2009

You might be wondering, how does Mel remember all of these details? Well, it’s because 21 year old me was a badass and wrote a 4 page report on this incident and sent it to the school. I had totally forgotten about it, but after I reported these two teachers in September 2021, the woman who is in charge of cases like this found it in the school records. Serious gold!

Unfortunately, nothing happened to Loosanne, as she was tenured and the head of the Illustration department was her close friend. Feeling like I definitely did not belong if the faculty saw no issue in behavior like this and already avoiding being at school because of Spott, I told myself I must just not be an illustrator! This was not the career for me if I would have to work even though a family member died, or I’d have to go to networking events with more creeps like Spott. So, they let me leave, and I just took random classes for the rest of my time at MassArt. I did learn some cool things, I took a class in cold glassworking, and took a couple in Fashion and printmaking, but I missed out on ever doing a big senior project and my degree says “Art and Design.” I didn’t trust any of my professors after that and just wanted it to be done with. After graduating I continued taking random jobs here and there, not able to focus on anything because I believed my true love, painting and drawing, was just not a feasible career for me.

I feel good knowing that Spott has completed a workshop on Sexual Harrassment, but am disappointed in the overall response I got from MassArt. They love to show how their students are out in the world succeeding, but what about the ones that they failed? The response I got from their current president was along the lines of, “Thanks for bringing this to my attention and it’s great you’ve been able to heal but its not my fault, so sorry there’s nothing we can do.”

But what really helped was piecing this all together and realizing that I AM an amazing artist, and what these professors did to me was 100% wrong. In the book ‘The Artist Way’, there is a story in the first chapter about a young man who loved to write and put his inner writer away after a college professor started making advances on him. Just like me, it took him years to connect these things and be able to write again. The actions of professors have a serious impact on young people, and I wish that they and the schools who protect them could be held accountable and make it up to the paying students whose creative growth has been stunted.

Drawing of a room with furniture from spec Fall 2009

This realization is why now, at 32 years old, I am dedicating as much as my time as I can to working on my art. I still get very frustrated about missing 12 years of practice, but my anger is getting less and less and I’m very proud of what I’ve been making.

This also brings me to another exciting thing I’ve been working on and am so excited to share! I have been training with the Dharma Coaching Institute and am proud to announce my Empowered Creative Coaching business. It is now my mission to work with people of all ages who feel like their creativity has been stifled in any way, whether it was by a bad apple teacher, lack of support from family, or being too caught up in a corporate career or motherhood. Whether you want your creative practice to be your career or to enjoy it as a hobby, we all deserve to let loose and express ourselves. It can also be a great source of healing for the trauma we all face in today’s world and being creative can help you succeed in many other areas of life as well. Please check out my brand spankin’ new coaching page to learn more and book a free intro call with me! I’d love to help you pull your own creativity back out of the closet it’s been hiding in.

Xoxo

Mel

P.s. Did this story resonate with you? Let me know in the comments <3

How Two MassArt Professors Made Me Never Want to Be an Artist