Michael Oliveri, an Art X professor, wants to teach students to be successful as well as creative. EVAN STICHLER/Staff

Michael Oliveri’s frustration grows as the University’s art school does not.

“I think that the vision that I have for art and the art school might be a bit different and it’s taking too long to get it,” said Oliveri, an Art X professor. “So at times I’d like to leave and find a place that’s more progressive and have the backing, people supporting.”

Oliveri’s discrepancies begin with the rigidity of the art department, guiding students down inflexible paths.

“We have an art school and we try to teach everybody to be an artist,” he said. “Go and be an artist and go get a show in a gallery. Hopefully you get shows in museums, hopefully you’ll sell your work, you know, hopefully all of that right?”

But with only about 1 percent of students attaining that goal and another 2 percent earning teaching jobs, Oliveri said the majority of students are at a loss.

“And so that’s problematic,” he said. “And so I think what we’re doing, is we’re living in a system that thinks in a very old-fashioned way.”

This may explain Oliveri’s choice to teach Art X — the most open-ended area available to art students.

“It’s an idea and then they have the freedom to make it with whatever they want,” Oliveri said. “So we’re not, you know, we’re not requiring them to make a sculpture, a painting, a photograph, a video. It could be any or all of them, and it could be a combination of them.”

Benjamin Wills, a fourth-time student of Oliveri’s, also saw those advantages after a major debate with photography.

“I’m 25 and I’m in no position to ever say that every creative idea that I want to do, I can express through photography,” he said. “So why should I go into photo when I can always do photo while I’m in Art X? I can’t do Art X-based projects when I’m in photo. It opens it up.”

While Art X remains the most yielding major in terms of medium, the unadaptive structure of the art department as a whole leaves it a financial burden to the University, Oliveri said.

“We haven’t figured out how to create an environment where we’re an asset,” Oliveri said. “Like where we’ve taken teaching creativity and teaching how to be creative and how to implement that into other areas of the school.”

Oliveri pushes his own classes to create interdisciplinary relationships in order to pursue interests outside of art, in turn, benefiting their art careers.

“If we were able to create relationships with the med school, or relationships with engineering or relationships with business school or whatever, then all of a sudden the students would start to see the potential for what they’re learning has different applications,” Oliveri said.

While the art school as a whole has not moved toward this idea, Oliveri’s students have.

“If somebody was really into dogs or something, he would tell them to go start working over in the vet clinic and do something with dogs and just keep working with dogs and researching on dogs and explaining dogs or whatever,” Wills said. “Until finally one day you’re like, ‘Oh hey, there’s a really cool idea for a piece I can do.’”

Wills’ research for Oliveri’s class involves writing letters to incarcerated people in prisons around the world.

“I’ve become really involved in metals work and working with prisoners,” Wills said. “There’s not really any departments for metals and prisoners.”

The problem that Wills and other directionless artists face lies in the lack of interconnectivity between majors.

If these connections were made, as at Stanford and M.I.T., a giant feedback loop would follow, Oliveri said.

“You then have support from other areas, professional fields, that support the art school and funding, and on and on,” he said. “So then it doesn’t become such a liability to the University and we become more of an asset, you know. There’s a growth pattern that can happen.”

In this way, the art school is no longer a blemish on the University’s finances, and artists can explore the microscopy labs and engineering departments as Oliveri has, he said.

“He’s the kind of person that there really isn’t a boundary that he hasn’t stepped over,” said Jim Barsness, a fellow Art X professor.

Instead of waiting for the University to start moving forward, Oliveri has already led his art across many disciplines — and hopes to do the same for his students.

“I would say that his classes differ for everybody and he kind of just starts spending one-on-one time with everybody,” Wills said. “His classes are like a continuous conversation that ultimately turns into a really cool project.”

These conversations never yield direct solutions however, making his students spend a lot of time thinking and problem-solving — also mirrored in his own art.

“And then the art is, for me it’s trying to capture a bit more of the sublime,” Oliveri said. “So really not answering any questions, but getting you, trying to get the viewer, trying to get somebody — or even a lot of times, just for me, in a way that’s the practice of getting into and in between space. So your viewer is posed with more questions than answers.”

Oliveri also leaves fellow faculty members with more questions than answers.

“I’ll present him a problem and pretty soon he’s giving me 12 different solutions to the problem,” Barsness said. “For me, it’s like I want him to solve my problem, but instead he actually made my problem 12 times worse by giving me 12 different scenarios or possibilities. So I think that that’s one of my very favorite things about Michael, even though it’s frustrating, is that to him an idea is something to explore indefinitely.”