Three Questions with Jen Agosta
Design Media Arts student Jen Agosta credits her UCLA education with opening doors for her career
After years of working as a musician and freelance graphic designer while attending community colleges in the Pacific Northwest, Jen Agosta decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue a degree in design and media art at UCLA in order to take her career to the next level. As a nontraditional student, the process of transferring was challenging, but worth it. She credits her UCLA education with opening doors that she never knew were there for her and inspiring her to continue her artistic practice. This spring, Jen Agosta sat down with UCLA Arts to discuss her journey to UCLA and the experiences she has had over the past two years in the Department of Design Media Arts (DMA).
What was your journey to UCLA Design Media Arts like, and why did you feel like this program was for you?
When I found the DMA program I felt like it was made for me. I had never found a program that encompassed all the things that I wanted to study. DMA is so multifaceted, and you're not only encouraged, but required to take many classes in several mediums, so it's not just all animation, or all web, or all graphic design, it’s also game design, 3D form, and many other theoretical topics related to design. I wanted to be able to explore different mediums while also having my mind open to things that maybe I didn't even know existed. This program has really done that. This is not necessarily an aesthetic program. It is more of a conceptual program. There is kind of Bauhaus mentality that it doesn't matter what medium you're working in, it's about what ideas you are trying to convey. Then, it’s about determining what medium you would like to use to express your message.
I have a music background, so my personal creative practice involved playing music, writing music, and performing. My commercial practice involved graphic design and web development for small businesses. I also had a lot of odd jobs. I bartended. I waited tables. I was really cobbling a lot of things together to have a flexible life so I could work on personal projects and go on tour when I had the opportunity. When I found UCLA and the DMA program, I was living and working in Portland. Prior to that, every year I had said, “I want to go back to school this year, I want to go back to school this year.” When I found this program I decided, now is the time, and UCLA is the place. It took me a couple of years to get things organized in my life, move to LA, and go through the application process. It was the only program I applied to.
I started preparing myself to transfer, or at least to make myself a viable candidate because I didn't know what my transcripts would look like to a university that mostly serves people who are straight out of high school. My grades have always been good, but being a non-traditional student, it's hard to fit all of that into a college application. It's hard to fit into a cookie cutter scholarship application, as well. One of the things that really helped me was taking summer classes in the department before I applied. I was able to talk to the teachers and get advice about what they would be looking for in a portfolio. Noa Kaplan and Gareth Walsh, both of whom earned their MFAs from the department, were the two teachers that I had, and not only were their classes great, but they both took time after class to talk to me and advise me on my portfolio.
Is there a class you’ve taken that has been particularly impactful for you?
I'm a songwriter, and I've been writing music since I was 14 years old. All of my music is very personal. It's very cryptic. It's very melancholy, and I got to a place where I was just tired of singing sad songs. I came realize that I wanted to start making work that was not about me, myself, in my head, in my body, and my everything. Instead, I wanted to start making work about my relationship to the world or maybe not even about me at all, just about my observations in the world.
I took Rebeca Mendez's Word & Image class, which was focused on shooting landscapes and telling the story of landscape. We had to choose a location to dedicate our ten weeks to documenting and writing about it. What an assignment to get you out of yourself! It was a wonderful opportunity that allowed me to research, delve into a topic, and get obsessed for ten weeks. It also helped me understand how research can deeply inform your work to create projects that keep giving and continue shifting.
What’s next for you?
I came here having made the calculated decision to not freelance anymore. I thought, “I want to go work for a company, and I want to get a job in an office and have medical benefits.” What I'm coming to realize is that I can’t sweep my life as an artist away. If anything, my education has really put a fire under me to continue my creative practice. There are so many things that I want to make. That, in and of itself, is super exciting and has really opened up a lot of possibilities for me.
I still do want to work for a company, to get a job, and I feel like I have options. I can make a job, or I can go get a job. I have a lot to learn from just diving into the industry as it exists currently. As designers we hold this incredibly powerful tool of communication and influence. The question is, what are you going to use your powers for? I believe in using my powers for good. And, being somebody who is kind of sleazed out by the music industry, I want to reimagine what marketing people in music can look like. A lot of the marketing is geared towards a certain kind of consumer, a certain kind of gaze, and that continues to sculpt the way these industries look. The message is that if you're a woman, your job is to be an ornament. If you're man, your job is to be a thinker. It's incredibly important to sculpt a new image. We need to not only give different people a voice, but to think about how we photograph them. How we design typography for them? How do we lay it out? What are the questions we ask? What is the story we want to tell?
We often hear that life is short and we’re often asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” What I would prefer to say is life is long, and rather than ask “what do you want to do when you grow up,” I want to ask “what do you want to do next?” Because there's going to be a lot of nexts, and those nexts might lead you somewhere you didn't even know existed. I want to have a goal in mind, but not be so closed-minded that I don't allow for serendipitous opportunities to come to fruition because it might yield a life that is even more beautiful than the one I was shooting for.
What’s next is always the question at hand, and UCLA has been such an incredible springboard, not only for my confidence, but also for my network and for what I think is actually possible. Now I can think of myself as somebody that could work at an international level. Before, my thought process was “how am I going to get a job in Portland?” Now I think, “what amazing job is out there that I just haven't found yet, and is it in a city that I want to live in, and what is that city, and when are we leaving?”
Getting to UCLA, and getting in, was such a fight in a lot of ways. Wondering, "Am I the right person?" Figuring out what I needed to do practically was complicated, but I also wondered if I had what UCLA was looking for. But once I got in and began pursuing my education here, I feel like I have been ice-skating my way to success. It has been a completely life changing experience. It’s not just that doors are opening or that I'm exploring things that I didn't even know existed, but also that I have a sense of confidence that I've never had before, and I have encouragement from an institution that I've never had before, and I have mentorship that I've never had before. Things that I never thought were going to be a part of my life are, and opportunities that I never imagined for myself are now within my grasp.
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