Competition
Art is lonely.
Artists are forced to compete for every scrap. To resent everyone younger or more talented than themselves. To reduce and cheapen their art in order to strive for the same success other artists have been fortunate (and privileged) enough to attain.
Even the disciplines that require collaboration and co-creation are rampant with competition, poisoned both by the scarcity of opportunities and by the constant comparisons drawn by professors, the public, or the insecurity that festers deep within.
Artists in the same major have been pitted against each other since their first year. The one factor that unites all students is the very thing that divides them time and time again: their need for excellence, for recognition, for success, above all else and all others.
Betrayal seems to wait around every corner. Students spend four years at GCAD distrusting everyone around them—distrusting their own hearts and the instincts that drive them toward this danger—and now, at this retreat, they’re just expected to rely on their competitors to help them master an entirely new art form? To forget that their peers would hide every paintbrush or ruin all the clay in the Ceramics building just to steal a spot in a gallery? Is it even possible to forget so many years of backstabbing and bad blood? Of being taught to equate suspicion with survival?
Then again… with the state of the art industry… who can afford not to?
An invitation to the GCAD Annual Artist’s Retreat is already a boon on any student’s resume. But impressing the professors and earning their favor can guarantee a successful entry into the art world. Anywhere from three to seven—never eight and occasionally zero—industry referrals are awarded at the end of the retreat, which will secure a student’s spot in a coveted internship, reputable gallery, or artistic partnership with a major brand.
Winners from previous retreats have all gone on to accomplish incredible things in their fields, reaching heights of fame and success all young artists dream of. Every student at GCAD seems to know someone who attained their dreams and credits it entirely to their favorable outcome in the retreat competition.
Less triumphant previous attendees also credit their performance in the competition for their career opportunities after graduation—or, more accurately, their noticeable absence of any. Not a single interview, not one agent, not even a cursory glance at a portfolio. So far, not one artist that has come out of the Georgia College of Art & Design has managed to overcome the career blow of being blacklisted by the sanctimonious and scarily well-connected staff.This retreat is the make-or-break moment in a GCAD student’s career. And with the current state of the art world, job market, and economy, who can really afford to perform at anything less than their absolute best?
connection
Like all humans hungry for community and support, artists crave connection. Physical, emotional, intellectual, creative. The students of the Georgia College of Art & Design have been particularly starved since they arrived on campus. Whatever friendships they have managed to form with their fellow artists are outliers, forged in fire. Friends may be rare—and friends within one’s own discipline are rarer still—but those bonds are for life. Devotion and passion define every student at GCAD, and the relationships between them are no exception.
Students have been pitted against each other since first year—but that hasn’t left them entirely isolated. They all have a long, tragic history of exes, frenemies, and complex, painful connections that have been severed or stymied over the course of their college career.
But now, the rules have changed. At this retreat, students will be forced to rely on and learn from one another as they experiment in an art form outside of their own for the first time. A student’s success at this retreat—in the art world at large—will hinge on their ability to forge connections with their peers; connections they’ve been taught to mistrust, to deny themselves, to overcome as a weakness and pathetic admission of need.
Many students will struggle with this shift. Others will accept their new reality with open arms, with all the desperation and relief of a parched man happening upon the only spring in the Sahara. For some, the indulgence of such a delicacy may cause them to succumb to their own gluttonous desire for closeness, causing them to question what will truly fulfill them in the long run.
The connections the students form at the retreat can serve as their salvation, sabotage, or inspiration. The choice is yours: accomplishment or connection? Can either be obtained without the other? And what is one really worth on its own?
capitalism
Art is lonely… and, for the artists making it, largely unprofitable.
All artists want is to create, but they are being forced to expend every ounce of creativity they have just to survive. Forced to work multiple jobs in order to afford rent, food, and supplies as they pursue their dreams. Forced to commodify themselves and their art in order to be more palatable and profitable.
With opportunities ever-dwindling in a late-stage capitalist society, and their skills and services increasingly replaced by art-stealing AI models and social-media-famous freelancers, artists everywhere are struggling. Without the advantage of a deep network or wealthy parents, most GCAD students don’t stand a chance of finding success or financial independence after graduation… unless they perform well at the retreat, that is.
Over the course of this retreat, even the most privileged, well-connected, and uncompromising artists will be made to contend with the sacrifices necessary to make it as an artist in this day and age. Will you sacrifice the integrity of your art in order to achieve commercial success? Will you sacrifice your body, your soul, your friendships in order to satisfy the nebulous and Delphic expectations of your enigmatic (and possibly sadistic) instructors? Or will you sacrifice your aspirations—your dreams of making it as an artist, however humble or ambitious they may be, which have warmed you on cold nights as long as you can remember—in exchange for love, sanity, or even simple freedom from the rat race you never wanted to enter?