2008 Commencement Remarks

May 21, 2008

Good morning. First, I will ask the assembled faculty, trustees, alumni, and guests to join me in acknowledging the Class of 2008.

Now, students—or should I say “almost-graduates”—we’re going to have plenty of opportunities to cheer for you this morning. So let me ask you now to join me in welcoming to UArts—and more importantly, in saying thank you—to the people who are here today to celebrate with you. They have been with you every step of the way these last four years and for many years before that! You wouldn’t be here without them.

Class of 2008, I want you to bring this house down for your parents, your friends, your brothers and sisters, your grandparents—everyone who helped you to get here today.

It’s a real privilege for me to be here with you this morning. After all, this is still my first year: I’m only a freshman! Thanks letting me crash the party.

But truly, it is an honor to share this day with you. Why do I say that? What does it mean to say that you are honored to be with someone?

Usually, one says that one is honored to be in the presence of another because of what that other person has accomplished—and more, because what that other person has accomplished is extraordinary in some way, awe-inspiring, worthy of respect.

You—each and every one of you—have accomplished something remarkable here over these last few years.

And I don’t mean making it through four years of UArts alive!

No, what is remarkable about your time here is that you have made something—indeed, you have become makers. You have confronted the emptiness of a canvas, a stage, a page, a screen and you have filled it. You have given form and voice to inchoate ideas and emotion. And you have done so, often, without even realizing that what you have done and are doing is extraordinary.

I don’t mean that what you make is always extraordinary—though, having spent a year with you, I must tell, it often is.

Rather it is the act, the fact of making that is extraordinary. You see, most of us are afraid of emptiness, afraid of what it asks of us, afraid of failing to fill it. We are, most of us, very happy to let others fill the silence or the darkness.

But you: you are drawn to that emptiness, you are compelled to put yourself, your talent, your vision into it, knowing all the time that you might fail, that your words or images, your shapes or sounds or movements might not be clear or strong enough, might be swallowed up, or, worse, misunderstood.

To return to that emptiness again and again, to take up a paintbrush or a camera or to step onto a stage, again and again: that requires extraordinary courage and commitment. You—all of you—have that courage, you have that determination. And to possess those qualities is, quite simply, to be a maker, to be an artist. 
And that is remarkable. I am honored to be in the presence today of such a remarkable group of makers, of true artists.

So, courage and commitment are what you bring with you to this room, to this moment. And you will carry them with you beyond this room, beyond this moment. But courage and commitment—talent, craft, skill: these are only tools. The challenge you all face as makers, as artists is not summoning up courage or applying technical skill. No: the true challenge for you lies elsewhere.

I’d like to read something to you that John Ruskin wrote. Ruskin was a philosopher and art historian in Victorian England. 
You can consider this your final liberal arts assignment.

Here’s what Ruskin said about artists. And though he speaks about painters, his words are applicable, I think, to artists of all kinds—to actors, designers, dancers, illustrators, musicians—to all of the artists we educate here, no matter their means of expression.

Ruskin said, “He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting… has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just as much towards being… a great painter, as a man who has learnt to express himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being a great poet. The language [of the painter] is, indeed, more difficult of acquirement… and possesses more power of delighting the sense… but it is nevertheless nothing more than language… It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the … greatness… of the painter… is to be finally determined.”

Ruskin is issuing a challenge to the artist. It is the challenge that faces all of you as you prepare to leave this place. You have the language. You have the technical skills. You have the courage and the dedication. Now you must decide what it is that you will say, about what, and why. You must decide what it is that you will make and what that will mean.

Your fearlessness, your creative intelligence are desperately needed in the world. And I don’t mean only in your professions, in galleries and theaters and design agencies and dance companies.

You must also bring your courage, your skill, and your insight with you to your neighborhoods, to the multiple communities of which you are a member, to the larger world that may seem distant from you and your everyday concerns but nonetheless affects you every day in myriad ways.

You must do this because there are emptinesses all around you—not only on the canvas or the stage—and these emptinesses are opportunities—perhaps, indeed, responsibilities—for the artist, for the maker who has the courage and creativity to try to fill them.

I know that you are ready, I know that you are able. I know that we—your teachers, your families, the leaders of this institution—couldn’t be prouder. And could not look forward with greater excitement and anticipation to what you will make.