EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Erin Fields: Well, hello everyone, and happy time zones to everyone listening, no matter where you may be.
Welcome to The Summit Ahead, a podcast for future graduate students brought to you by the West Virginia University Office of Graduate Admissions.
I’m your host, Erin Fields, and I invite you to join me over the course of the show’s season as I chat with higher education professionals at West Virginia University who will be giving their best tips, tricks, and insights on topics important to consider when applying for graduate school.
So hey, everyone, another month, another episode. Today I am bringing on Joseph Lupo, Professor of Art here at West Virginia University, who is here to chat with me about the School of Art and Design. Fun fact: his work has been a part of over eighty solo and group exhibitions and has been featured at various places all over the country, including the International Print Center of New York, the Contemporary Art Workshops in Chicago, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Indianapolis Art Center, and a Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta.
Well hello, Joe. It is so good to have you on the show with me today.
Joseph Lupo: It’s great to be here!
Erin Fields: How about we start by you telling us a little bit about yourself? Maybe your position at the university, your career, or fun things you like to do in your spare time?
Joseph Lupo: Sure! I am a professor of art in the school of Art and Design at the College of Creative Arts here at WVU. I’m also the graduate program coordinator as well.
Mainly, what I do is teach in the print-making program and teach print-making classes. I would say a fun fact about me is that I like to run. I’ve run a couple of marathons in my life.
Erin Fields: Oh snap!
Joseph Lupo: Yeah! And I do a lot of art workshops with elementary schools and public schools here in town, so that’s something I’ve evolved over the years. And one of the things that I think is true when you’re a creative person is that your outside interests can merge with what you do. I’ve got students who always ask me, “What are your hobbies?” and it’s like, “Um…art!” and comics, that’s also part of what I do. So those are the other interests that I have that also overlap with my work.
Erin Fields: What is your favorite comic book character?
Joseph Lupo: So, growing up, and still, Iron Man was and is my favorite comic book character. I definitely grew up reading Marvel comics. The funny thing is, I was born in the late 70s, and so when I was reading Iron Man as a kid, part of the appeal of him was that no one else was reading him. To see the movies and see Iron Man turned into this pivotal person and see little kids wearing Iron Man shirts and stuff when I was a kid, a big part of the reason I read it was because nobody else was reading it. Everyone else was reading Wolverine and X-Men comics. But now, definitely, I still like to read Iron Man, but I definitely read a lot more independent self-published comics. I’ve been getting a lot into those over the last ten or fifteen years.
Erin Fields: I actually went to my first Comic-Con last summer and I loved getting to see all the individually published comics and artwork, it was very cool.
Joseph Lupo: It’s just such a huge world, right? There’s such a diversity of voices now, and stories. Nothing against superhero comics, I love them. But there’s just so much to look at and read with independent, self-published books.
Erin Fields: Right. So how did you get started in your career in art? What inspired you to pursue a career in the arts?
Joseph Lupo: I think that my backstory in the arts is probably like a lot of people’s backstory in the arts when your family and your parents aren’t artists. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and my parents had regular blue-collar jobs. Even though the Art Institute of Chicago was like 20 minutes away, I think I went there once on a school trip. I was always drawing, I drew all the time, and I knew I wanted to do something in the arts but I had no idea what that meant. I just assumed it meant working for Disney or Marvel or something like that.
And then I went to college, and like most people who become interested in printmaking, or even some of the other arts, like sculpture I think is like this… in high school, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things in the arts. So you learn about photography, really basic graphic design and drawing. Maybe ceramics. So I didn’t know anything about printmaking either.
I went to college and my printmaking professor was also my drawing professor, and he saw that I could draw really well. So freshman year he was like, “Oh! Why don’t you come upstairs to the print shop, because there’s a lot of overlap between printmaking and drawing.” So from there, there were just a lot of things about the way that printmaking works and the way that I process imagery and information works. There are a lot of steps involved, but I’m really happy with following steps. And there’s a lot of repetition involved which I’m very happy with repeating things, and there’s a lot of delayed gratification in printmaking. As opposed to painting, where you make a mark and you see the mark. Again, I’m very happy with delayed gratification.
So, in college, you start to learn about what’s out there, and what the possibilities are. But the more I learned about what it means to be an academic artist, and teaching, I got opportunities to teach high school kids and workshops as an undergraduate student, and once I understood what that meant, I realized that’s exactly what I want to do. And then every decision after that became about how I could position myself better in order to get a full-time academic teaching job.
Erin Fields: It is really a process, and it reminds me of how important connecting and networking really is throughout the whole process.
Joseph Lupo: Yes. And printmaking, and the arts in general, but printmaking is kind of like this. We have regional and national organizations that really help to create that community to meet like-minded people your age and also people that have been doing it for 30 years. Those workshops, conferences, and organizations kind of help level the opportunities to meet those kinds of different levels of people. So it is huge to network. Anyone who says, “Oh, I did this on my own.” is either outright lying to you or they’re just delusional.
Everybody has had to rely on somebody, to meet somebody else, to open a door. But vice versa, that’s the other exciting thing, that you also get the opportunity to do that for someone. So that’s a huge part of it, is building that community.
Erin Fields: Right, I remember in our graduate admissions video that I usually show when I’m giving the visitor’s center presentation, there’s a girl in there and she’s like, “I came here to study printmaking, specifically under Joe Lupo!”. And I’m like, “Ahh!!”
Joseph Lupo: I do remember that also. And that’s the other thing about the next level of graduate school. Because you get to go to conferences and meet people and because hopefully your faculty is also connected, you get to do some research and see who would make sense for you to work under.
Erin Fields: You received your BFA from Bradley University, and then you received your MFA from the University of Georgia. So how did you end up here in Morgantown at WVU?
Joseph Lupo: Yeah. So, the short answer is that the job brought me here! But the other part about that though is that the printmaking program specifically at WVU has a legacy to it. Going all the way back to the 70s, with Will Petersen, that helped to really give the printmaking program a lot of national attention. It’s got a history, it’s got a great shop.
In the 90s, there were artists like Carmon Colangelo, who became the chair of the program. He brought one of the conferences to Morgantown, which again, created a lot of exposure. And then Sergio Soave was the head after that. So that was another big appeal to coming here was being able to be a part of a printmaking program that has a legacy to it. The facilities are amazing, so that was a big draw as well.
And you know, just in terms of the region. Pittsburgh has a lot of printmaking that’s really great, Eastern Ohio has a lot of printmaking and printmaking programs that are really easy to get to. So there's just a really great location here to have access to a lot of different kinds of opportunities.
Erin Fields: Yeah, Pittsburgh is a really great location. You’re a man from Chicago wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat right now.
Joseph Lupo: Yeah. I grew up being a Sox fan, but I’ve been here long enough that I can watch the Pirates way easier. But I think there are a lot of similarities to the ways that Sox fans feel nationally and the way that Pirates fans feel. So I think I can really identify with that for sure.
Erin Fields: So you’re very involved with printmaking, as we’ve heard. Do you have a favorite class that you like to teach? Do you teach other classes outside of printmaking at the School of Art and Design?
Joseph Lupo: I used to teach drawing classes when I got here. As the printmaking program grew back and the numbers went up, I really started to focus on teaching printmaking classes. I do teach at the graduate level, in a teaching practicum, and technical practices class, which is a lot of fun to teach. We get to talk about a lot of different topics varying from strategies for teaching and creating curriculum and strategies for dealing with students and the various challenges in that.
Teaching art is such a complicated thing in general. That’s one of the great challenges about teaching it because it’s so personalized and individualized.
Erin Fields: Right, and it’s very broad while also being very niche.
Joseph Lupo: Right, so you have to have these different strategies for knowing “Alright these are the overarching things I want to teach” but then knowing that with each student, you’re really focusing on helping them find their artistic voice.
So I really like talking about all of that and hearing how students are thinking about all of that and hearing about their own experiences in undergraduate school. Then we also talk about the professional practices side of reaching out to galleries and writing grant applications. That’s a ton of fun to teach, and I really look forward to teaching that.
So I do really love that. And then here on the undergraduate side with printmaking, it would be like trying to pick your favorite child.
Erin Fields: You just don’t do it publicly!
Joseph Lupo: Especially not on a podcast! But the really great thing about teaching undergraduate art is that you’re just watching that development and comfort level happen right before your eyes. Like I said, most students know nothing about printmaking coming in. So going from zero to just one semester, where now they’re really comfortable with the shop, they’re really comfortable with the tools, they’re comfortable with the chemicals that we use, there’s much more control and predictability about how they’re using the medium. Watching that happen and being a part of that is always really really exciting.
And then their junior and senior year, when they’re really self-motivated and making their own work, seeing that happen where they’re going from being dependent on projects and having you tell them what’s working and what’s not working, or what to do, to go into that last year, where they flip a switch and all of a sudden they’ve found their voice, they’ve found their artistic language, and they’re just rolling on their own and they’re making really advanced work. That’s also just amazing to watch happen as well.
Erin Fields: Yeah I was just going to ask you about that, if there was a moment that came to your mind whenever you just saw the lightbulb go off and you saw a student find their voice and find their original style.
Joseph Lupo: Yes, it happens so frequently it’s hard to pinpoint one person. But the way that it usually happens is because printmaking offers different kinds of processes in media. We have silk screen and relief and relief and intaglio. With each process, you are making work and images in really specific and different ways.
And a lot of times the way that a student naturally makes work is suited to one process, but not the other processes. So they have to get through learning the other ones, and then they get to the one that they’re suited for and it’s like “Oh, this is what I’m suited for.” And then, like I said, watching them struggle and knowing that they’re going to figure this out. I’ve got a long-term view of things that they can’t know, they can’t see. Because they just see that this isn’t working, and this isn’t working, and this isn’t working. Or, all of a sudden this worked, but I don’t even understand why.
And then it’s always that second-semester junior year, first-semester senior year, and for whatever reason, besides the fact that they’ve just been toiling away at it for two and a half years or whatever, but seeing that switch flip, it’s always amazing. And they’re always so excited. And then once it happens they’re just running with it and they just hit this groove and it’s amazing.
And that happens with graduate students as well. They could be struggling and they’re unlearning a lot in their first year. You’re experimenting with a bunch of stuff in a whole new shop and a whole new environment. That second year, things are kind of starting to come together, and then that third year, it’s like BAM! And things just happen and you couldn’t have seen it that second year. It’s always incredible to watch it come together.
Erin Fields: Right, it’s awesome to think about how when you’re in that moment you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. They don’t see what you’ve seen with other students. So they’re wondering if they’re going to flunk or not.
Joseph Lupo: Yes! And even when you tell them all the time, like, trust me. Trust yourself, keep working through this and it is going to happen. And even though you say that a gazillion times, it doesn’t happen for them until it actually happens for them.
Erin Fields: And then they’re like, “Oh, right.”
Joseph Lupo: Yeah, “I did have it in me the whole time.” It’s just about finding it and making enough work to find it.
Erin Fields: Do you have any specific research interest yourself, or any current projects that you’re working on?
Joseph Lupo: Yeah so this gets complicated but I’m going to try and keep this simple. So, my research, there are two kinds of avenues to my research. One is a very traditional, academic research into the history of American comics, and the history of the independent and self-published movement. I’m really interested in that. So I do a lot of research on that. Sometimes I write little articles or whatever about that.
But I’m also a practicing artist so my interest in comics also overlaps with my work. And one of the things that I’ve always been interested in with my work is the ways in which we create meaning. So somebody that believes in the sort of existential belief that everything is meaningless until we either individually or as a society say that that thing has meaning.
What I’m trying to do lately is appropriate comics, so I’ve been looking for comics that are in the public domain, and I use the imagery and the text, and I like to rearrange that information. Lately, I’ve been using the text and creating anagrams with the original text. I use a system that implies a narrative that never existed to begin with, and it never goes anywhere else.
So my whole thing is that instead of drawing a picture that’s about existentialism, I try to make work that puts the viewer into the process of creating meaning and trying to figure out, like “I understand that this is a figure doing something and this text kind of says something…”, but then that viewer is forced to try and make sense of it.
I’m trying to get enough work together to start applying for solo exhibitions. That’s where I’m at in this stage of the theories that I’ve been making right now.
Erin Fields: That’s so cool, can I apply to your program?
Joseph Lupo: The more the merrier!
Erin Fields: For real, I want to come down and watch someone make something and I want to see your work, Joe.
Joseph Lupo: The shop is open! We could do a video podcast!
Erin Fields: There you go, get someone else to be able to say that they came here specifically to study under you. So my last academic question would be what advice do you have for someone interested in wanting to pursue a graduate program here in the school of art and design, or maybe specifically printmaking?
Joseph Lupo: Yeah! The start of that easily is the things that we touched on before, doing your research, asking colleagues, professors, and former professors who are the programs that we should be looking for, so that you can make sure that your work fits.
If you’re getting ready to apply here, in printmaking or just in any of our programs, and I get this question a lot in emails from prospective students, you have to put together a portfolio if you’re applying to the studio program. If you’re applying to art history or art education, you have to submit writing samples. So students always have questions about what the strategy is.
The answer is always, you put in the work that you think is the best representation of your work and your abilities. You never try to produce what you think we want to see. Because then if you don’t get in, then you don’t know if you put in the best pieces. You might think, “Maybe I should have used this sample instead because that was what I was really passionate about.” So always put forth the stuff that you think best represents you.
Erin Fields: Right, because then especially if you're not putting in what expresses yourself, then maybe you weren’t a good fit for that specific program to begin with.
Joseph Lupo: Right, and that's the other thing, right? So on the flip side, and you try to predict and you get in, then you’re here and both of us are like “This isn’t what either of us was expecting.” So it’s always best to put in work that’s your best.
The other thing is that we’re available! I’m always available as the graduate coordinator to answer any questions about any of the degree programs. Email is the easiest way and most effective way to contact me. But reach out. I always tell my students when they’re applying for graduate school to try to come up with some question, any question, that’s an excuse to reach out to them.
There’s a lot of information on websites, but there’s a lot that you can’t see on a website, like studio sizes and presses. So those are some good introductory questions to break the ice and just get a conversation started. And then especially in studio programs, if you can, I know this is easier said than done, especially if you’re out of school and you’re working, if you can go to campus and see our graduate studio and our printmaking studio and meet the other graduate students, that’s another really big part of that comfort level and feeling like “This is where I should be.”
So that’s a big thing, I think, that if you can you should definitely try to do that.
Erin Fields: Right. So, I’ve got some rapid-fire questions for you, Joe, are you ready?
Joseph Lupo: I think so.
Erin Fields: Okay. Number one: how do you drink your coffee?
Joseph Lupo: Oh, black. Without a doubt. French press, there are some really great West Virginia roasters. I think right now I’m on Mountain Roasters and just straight black.
Erin Fields: Amazing, a man of culture. Number two: what is your go-to karaoke song?
Joseph Lupo: Oh, it’s LL Cool J, “Mama Said Knock You Out”.
Erin Fields: What!? Out of all the questions that I ask people, that is my favorite one to ask because I feel like it tells so much about a person. I have so much respect for you.
Joseph Lupo: I started doing that with a friend of mine in graduate school. We would go to this place called Fox’s in Athens, Georgia, at least once a month. Towards the end, we may have been going on a more regular basis. And we would sing “Mama Said Knock You Out” and then I just continued that tradition.
Erin Fields: See, go to grad school, everyone, you might just find your go-to karaoke song.
Joseph Lupo: Exactly!
Erin Fields: Lastly: What is your Harry Potter Hogwarts house?
Joseph Lupo: Oh my gosh! So I have to admit, the only reason why I would know this is because my wife and my daughters are huge Harry Potter fans.
Erin Fields: Way to go, wife and daughters!
Joseph Lupo: Yes, holy cow! So I would, I don’t know if this is a standard answer. I would probably be Hufflepuff. I’m definitely not Slytherin. I think Gryffindor, I’m not heroic enough to be Gryffindor. And I don’t know, there’s something, in my opinion, about Hufflepuff, that I think I would land there. Something about being supportive.
Erin Fields: Most of my friends are Hufflepuffs too. I’m a Slytherin. So, I mean…
Joseph Lupo: I’ve got a daughter that I think would definitely say Slytherin in two seconds.
Erin Fields: Alright well great! We're good people, I like to think so anyway!
But thank you so much, Joe, for sharing your insights and your knowledge with us on the show today, in the School of Art and Design, and also for putting up with my speed round questions to keep you on your toes.
Today’s episode was brought to you by the West Virginia University Office of Graduate Admissions. For more information about graduate education at West Virginia University, please visit our website at www.graduateadmissions.wvu.edu.
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Thank you for listening and until next time, let’s go Mountaineers!
