Portfolio Day at the Art Institute

Yesterday my daughter and I did portfolio day at the Art Institute. We spent four hours standing in long lines to have her portfolio reviewed by our top picks for Art schools in the country. We did this last year too. That time each school we saw gave her very conflicting advice about what they wanted to see in a portfolio. One said more drawing another said nothing but design work but they all said she had too much stuff. I kind of knew that, but she had so much good work in so many areas that I thought we should show a decent sampling of her talents.

This year we narrowed it down concentrating on graphic design work. We made sure she had a good selection of life drawing, still life’s, gestural, line, and rendered pencil drawings, a few photos, (she has an excellent eye but that is not her intended major), several logos, package designs, identity packages and several pieces that involve photo collage combined with drawing and design elements. This year the response from the schools was amazing. They all said very similar things. Every one was very positive the only suggestion was to take a couple projects to a more finished level (photographing the final product) when submitting her portfolio. We saw Otis (where I went to school), Art Center, RISD (the hugest lines), the Art Institute and then we ran out of time.

We celebrated her success with lunch at the Art Institutes museum restaurant. Yumm.

I think her first choice is Art center, followed by Otis. I don’t think any of us are ready to send her off across the country to go to school next year on her own though. So we may do a year of community college and work on getting those SAT’s taken. Then really start investigating scholarships, boy is art school expensive.