Anne Lilly

The narrow path of the self-taught only leads so far! Such was true for me at least, after twenty-five years of serious art-making. Diligence about educating myself never fully addressed my lack of solid intellectual grounding. In the fall of 2022, I knew I wanted to enter a low residency MFA program to try and improve this situation. After researching the numerous options offered in New England, I chose Clark for the quality and diversity of its faculty and their ability to meet every student just where they are. This was communicated to me by several recent graduates. Their enthusiasm about the program and vibrant bond with each other were also convincing, as was the very good value of its tuition. 

Over my two years at Clark, I was blown away by what happened to my inner and outer selves. Thoughtful questioning during the residency critiques; provocative lectures and conversations with other students; the forced march through critical theory readings and our probing discussions of them; the insistent drumbeat of monthly papers to conceive, research and write; the monthly responses from each of my advisors on how to take the writing further; and the honest, penetrating insights and suggestions of each of my studio mentors — all these experiences combined to break up crusty habits of mind and allow fresh ideas into the realm of possibility.

I completed the Clark MFA in January 2025. Those four semesters changed me as an artist and as a person, because they enlarged my practice and deepened my thinking. My core faculty encouraged me to invite different parts of myself into the art-making process, and to recognize, admit, and utilize contradiction in my work and in myself. The classes, lectures, and readings oriented me professionally within the vast landscape of approaches in contemporary art — which in turn has made me more open to and interested in ideas and concerns that lie outside my own particular province. And all those monthly papers built confidence in my ability to discern, explore, and give critical language to experiences of art that magnetize me. These transformations simply could not have happened through self-instruction, and it was the intelligent, creative, dedicated faculty constituting the Clark MFA program who got me out of my own way.