We were lucky to catch up with Wujian Wang recently and have shared our conversation below.

Wujian, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I have been working as a digital art teacher for 3 years in New York City. When I moved to NYC, I spent 2 month reading art job descriptions and sending 10-20 applications per day. I was searching for jobs such as photographer, photo editor, studio assistant, gallery specialist, and K-12 art teacher. The job hunting was not easy and it was the most difficult time in my early career. I tried many job posting website including LinkedIn, and Indeed. However, the reply rate is extremely low.

Then I started to researching NYC public school websites. I always have a great passion teaching art and I know NYC public school system is experiencing teacher shortage for a long time. To my surprise, the reply rate for art teacher job is much higher the other jobs. Eventually, I found a great position that fit my profession, photographic and electronic media, in Manhattan. My recommendation for art students is that if you love teaching and talking to young students, being an art teacher will help you earn a full-time living in a big city while doing art and inspiring the next generations.

Wujian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a K-12 digital art teacher, I believe creative teaching and learning environment should be open-minded, informing, anti-racism, interactive, and fun. Art Education is a two-way inspiring process. While teaching art to students with various cultural backgrounds and multi-languages (Chinese, English, Spanish, Russian) , students’ artwork and stories would also become my inspirations for new body of work.

I am a visual and conceptual artist who breaks barriers among people and helps the lost recall intimate feelings and walk out of their interior camouflage. In my photography, I recall the conscious and unconscious moments in daily life that are humorous, sensual, and spontaneously performed, and I show people how beautiful and powerful their bodies can be and free them from conventional social rules.

My artwork focuses on conveying emotions and unearthing intimate feelings. I apply my vision of painting to photography, animation and video art, incorporating oil-like tones, cinematic compositions, poetic sound design and whimsical plots. In my photography, women and nature are the main sources of inspiration. They are elegant, sensitive, mysterious, and at the same time strong, loving and vigorous.
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Technology blinds us with overwhelming constant images and news. Global Pandemic isolate individuals and challenges the traditional social methods. Because of this people start to fail to connect physically and emotionally. Others hide deeply and build firm boundaries between each other.

Working internationally without having any family members in the U.S. increases my sense of isolation and awareness of barriers. Since friendships here have been difficult to build, there has been an increase in people connecting in my response. The result is to begin paying deep attention to my surroundings people and still life. Exploring & animating conscious and unconscious still life help me create friendship bounds with my surroundings and decipher hidden feelings. By doing so, I evoke people’s intimate and genuine emotions such as true happy, lost, gloomy, shy, or vulnerable.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I was in art schools, many art instructors told me certain fixed rules or opinions about certain type of art Which are not true or bias. From my own art making practice and experiences, I learned that there is no “right way” to create art and all art is intertwined. For example, when I was young, a teacher told me not to use black in painting and not to use curvy lines everywhere on my drawings. Later I found out that there are many oil paintings in the museums including wonderful presentation of black color and many drawing masterpieces are made of only circular lines.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I enjoy every moment researching, exploring, and creating artwork while inspiring the next generations!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wujianwang-infiniteart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wujianwang/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wujian-wang-ba506a173/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wujianwang3543