by Gabe Seder >  George Washington University  photos Ryder Haske and David Webster

These three juniors balance schoolwork with professional projects as they try to get noticed in the competitive Art World. Because none are pursuing Fine Art majors, they bring elements of their studies into their work as they begin creating careers as artists.

The Painter
“People think of artists as like Zen, and all this crap,” Joey Mango says. “It’s a painful process for me.  When I think of the word painting, the word ‘pain’ is in there, you know?”  He says he often feels like throwing all his work away, but admits he would never give up painting.
Despite his passion, Mango is content with a peripheral role he plays among student artists.  A Communication Design junior at the New School in New York City, Mango devotes his free time to painting.

“It’s what I do,” he says simply. His workspace is in his family’s loft behind his father’s TriBeCa paint-ing gallery. Although Mango only started painting a few years ago, canvasses are stacked against walls and piled on the floor.

Mango admits that he has little contact with other student artists. He’s never taken an art class, instead learning the basics from his father.

Mango is struggling to get noticed in New York. He explains, “People who own galleries…I walk in there and they say, ‘We’re booked until 2010’… It’s all about how many shows you’ve had.”  He doesn’t see himself staying in the city much longer.  If it were up to him, he’d be “in the woods, with a trailer and a big barn on some land.”

It’s not about the money for me,” he says. “I just want to be out there painting.”

The Slam Poet

Elizabeth Acevedo, a junior at the George Washington University, was dissatisfied with her school’s art department. She created a new major—Performance Art—to combine poetry, theater and dance with sociology, anthropology and other social sciences. Her purpose: “[To] incorporate every element of creativity, but also make me think analytically,” she says.

Combining traditional poetry, rap, dance, and a distinctly Latino influence, Acevedo’s performances confront anger, frustration, self-respect and identity–the difficulties faced by the daughter of Dominican immigrants in New York City.  Her poem “She” tells the story of a girl defining womanhood. In a bilingual piece, Acevedo pounds her chest, concluding: “To know where you’re going, you must know where you come from/I am Dominican.”

Acevedo has been writing poetry, she explains, since her “ABC days,” and she even performed in New York before she began college. For the past two years, she has appeared at local venues and supported herself with paid performances at area universities. She has also organized workshops to teach community women to write poetry and worked with university multi-cultural organizations to promote the arts.  She recently co-founded GW Grios, a student spoken-word group, which she hopes will bring her into the artistic mainstream.

Elizabeth Acevedo says that her experience performing in the area is preparing her for the future. “When I perform, I like to ask for payment just because I try to be professional.  I want to be a poet professionally and be my own business manager.” For now, “an album would be the desired thing, to go in the studio and bang out nine, ten tracks.”

The Filmmaker

“At some point in our lives we find ourselves stuck between what is known, what is comfortable, and what is unknown, something greater.” So starts Hollow, University of Maryland junior Laurence Jackson’s first feature-length film. The movie depicts how the poor choices made by a group of college students come back to haunt them in the form of substance abuse, eating disorders, depression, and so on.

Jackson had already made several short films and even launched his own production company in high school, but he was disappointed to find that Maryland offered no filmmaking program. Rather than give up the hobby, he immediately began production on Hollow and jumpstarted UMD Films, a student organization dedicated to making different forms of film including documentaries, mini-series, and shorts. Two years later, UMD Films boasts almost 60 members, two finished films, and four more in progress.

“I’m pretty spiritual, and so a lot of my films reflect that,” Jackson says, a promotional poster from his latest work, the miniseries “Etiology,” tacked behind his desk. “I try real hard not to impose meaning, but I want people to see it and to think about choices they make.” Jackson says that his participation with student ministries and missions has influenced his art.

Jackson studies business. He hopes the major will help him expand his production company when he graduates. In the meantime, he continues to write, direct, and produce through UMD Films. He is considering studying film in graduate school in New York City, but admits that he prefers developing independently. “I’m not much of a follower—I mean, I don’t always follow the rules,” he told me. “I’m much more like, ‘Let’s just go do it.  Let’s go play.’”