MassArt instructor and director of ‘The Lab,’ Clint Baclawski is an accomplished artist who has won numerous awards, exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, and attended residencies in Venice, Italy, and Wassaic, NY.
Clint Baclawski, '08 MFA. Photo: Tony Luong.
MassArt instructor and Associate Director of 'The Lab,' Clint Baclawski is an accomplished artist who has won numerous awards, exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, and attended residencies in Venice, Italy, and Wassaic, NY.
You can find his large-scale works hanging in buildings across Boston—including on the MassArt campus. Clint has been a MassArt employee since receiving his MFA at the College in photography in 2008 and has been teaching here since 2017.
What drew you to the MFA photography program at MassArt?
What I loved most about the MassArt MFA was that the current students were involved in the interview process; first-year grad students would sit in on the interviews because they would end up being in your cohort—they were the second-year photo master’s students when I came in as a first year. It was a great vibe; you could just tell everyone wanted to be here.
What is ‘The Lab’ at MassArt all about?
I think of The Lab (which is what we call the computer print lab here) as the hub of the campus: it’s where everybody goes to print their documents, but it’s also a place where artists can work and connect. We have all sorts of specialty printers in The Lab—wide format, archival, inkjet, a latex printer, a RISO. All that equipment allows students to think beyond the parameters of a normal-sized artwork. Right now, I have a student who’s making a 1,000-foot print: 36 inches tall by 1,000 feet long. They ordered 19 rolls of vellum! I was like, “Yeah, let’s make this happen!”
If a student comes in with a cool idea like that, and I know it’s feasible, my response is, “Of course, let’s do it.” It’s a teaching opportunity where the student figures out how to accomplish their vision. Will the driver of the printer that you’re trying to print on be able to handle a 1,000-foot job? No. So how many slices do you need? I put that on the student to figure out, and I work on it with them.
The Lab is a creative space for community members to explore innovative practices and projects across various media. Photo by Tony Luong
MassArt’s Riso printer offers students an opportunity to experiment with creating everything from limited-edition art prints to zines and posters.
How would you describe the learning environment and the community at MassArt?
There’s a great communal energy here that I experience every day. I think of the students as my contemporaries. I don’t preach from this position that I know best or I know more than anyone—you never know what somebody is coming into the program with.
What’s really cool about being a practicing artist and full-time staff is that the students can see what I’m working on. At 4:00, I’ll put on a different hat and go up in the spray booth to spray hinges for a project, or I’ll go down to the wood shop to sand a piece that I’m going to use for my next work. The students see that, or they’ll see me working in The Lab, and there’s this understanding that we’re all here for the same reasons: to educate ourselves and to become better artists.
How does a MassArt education prepare someone for succeeding in life, even outside of their chosen area of study?
Someone with a degree in art is trained to offer totally new perspectives on situations where others might not necessarily have that same viewpoint. In my first critique, I was making these large-scale lightboxes to be viewed on either side and my professor—with my permission—just hoisted the whole thing down on the floor. We all sat around looking at it from a new perspective and it was a transformative moment—so to me, the MassArt MFA program is really about looking at the world differently.
Bound-ary, Clint Baclawski. Artwork courtesy of the artist. Photo by Dan Watkins
What advice would you give to someone who’s considering pursuing a BFA or an MFA at MassArt?
MassArt is an incredibly encouraging place for any artist. No matter what department you visit, no matter which studio manager you meet: here, people will help you achieve whatever you want to accomplish.
Visit the campus, take the tour, see the resources with your own eyes—in every single discipline, it’s state of the art. Ultimately, it’s a place where you can play and try new things. If you don’t like something happening in your work, throw the lightbox on the floor. Hang the painting upside down. Just try something different. MassArt is a place where you can experiment with anything and see what sticks.
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