In my years as a student at a top-tier LA art school, now more than a decade ago, we only spent a single class period openly discussing the practicalities, logistics, and pressures of what a “real” career as a contemporary artist actually looked like. I remember my classmates clamoring for honest advice in an academic environment that seemed designed to hide its internal mechanics behind an Oz-like shroud, pointing us instead to abstract, decoy concerns like semiotics and psychoanalysis. As if Freud or de Saussure could save you when you couldn’t pay your student loans back.

Established in 1912, the Hollywood Art Center School was LA’s first independent art school and one of its best-kept secrets for decades. Tucked away within a serene four-acre 1920s Spanish garden and estate along Highland Avenue near the Hollywood Bowl, the school ceased operations in 2000. In its final years, the school was in a severe state of disrepair, the buildings and grounds beautifully decaying within the picturesque setting of the Hollywood Hills.