Thursday, October 26, 2023
Campus
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Arts & Life
Ohio State’s most interesting courses next semester PAGE 02
Local businesses prepare to celebrate Friday release of ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ PAGE 04
Women’s Basketball: Buckeyes continue building chemistry PAGE 07
Jeff Smith talks stigma around arts in education By Emma Wozniak, Asst. Arts & Life Editor
A
s a high school senior, Jeff Smith’s passion for comics was as strong as when he was a mere 4 years old reading the Sunday morning cartoons with his dad at the kitchen table. With the daunting task of choosing a career inching nearer and nearer as high school graduation loomed over him, Smith informed his favorite art teacher — notably, the only one with whom he didn’t have a “combative relationship” — he was considering applying to a graphic arts position at one of the largest companies in the world. “I’m thinking about putting in an application to Disney,” Smith said. The room went still. “You would never make it at Disney.” Self-doubt flooded Smith’s mind and panic set in. But his teacher quickly clarified that his comment wasn’t a poor evaluation of Smith’s talent, it was quite the opposite; he thought Smith’s imagination would be stifled in such a bureaucratic corporation. He ed
successfully Smith out
of
talkapplying.
“And bless him,” Smith said. “Because my life turned out so much better the way it did.” Smith, now 63, has since fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a successful cartoonist, widely known for his “BONE” comic book series. Inspired by characters he drew during his five years creating comic
strips for The Lantern as an Ohio State student, Smith launched “THORN: The Complete Proto-BONE College Strips 19821986” Oct. 18 on Kickstarter, where fans can see the original designs that provoked Smith to create the popular “BONE” series. However, success stories like these may not feel achievable for many artistic college students. According to Data USA, 964,792 total health degrees were awarded in 2021, along with 860,674 degrees in business and 556,813 in liberal arts and sciences. For visual and performing arts degrees, that number drops to 149,047. E.J. Westlake, the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts chair, said the contrast is likely due to utilitarian values in American culture, which have deemed the arts as unnecessary and unproductive. “What people forget about studying the arts is that there are all of these transferable skills,” Westlake said. “On the one hand, you can make a career as an artist, and on the other hand, the things that you learn doing art end up being things that today’s corporations, today’s employers, really, really value.” Laura Lisbon, the Department of Art chair and professor, agreed the skills developed in pursuing an arts degree are invaluable. “It’s the truth that art stretches one’s mind toward problem-solving differently, opens a space for empathy and understanding other perspectives, all the things that we would
COURTESY OF KATHLEEN GLOSAN
Jeff Smith (right) signing a fan’s tattoo of Fone Bone, the main character of Smith’s “BONE” series, during a book signing on his “Dawn of Man” National Tour in April.
hope our best leaders have,” Lisbon said. “Art is actually very central to creative inquiry, to thinking about communities, thinking about the world and the oppor-
tunity to do that at the university is so wonderful.”
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