Third-year Eskenazi School student Julian Clensy developed his animated short film “Television is Here to Stay” in in the Fall of 2023 in Visiting Assistant Professor of Digital Art Dominick Rivers’ SOAD S-210 Digital Art: Survey & Practice course, where he was introduced to the editing software Blender. Rivers encouraged his student to submit the piece to the Noli Me Tangere film festival in London, where it was accepted, enjoying its world premiere in October alongside Rivers’ short film “Stone and Mystics.”
It's not their only point in common. Both Clensy and Rivers are the first member of their family to attend college, a similarity they only discovered this week. In class the topic never came up.
“We mostly just talked about how life was going in general,” said Rivers. “We'd do a good vibe check.”
When he was taking Rivers’ course, Clensy had recently transferred out of a computer science major, which he’d chosen “because I definitely felt some pressure from relatives and others close to me to land on something that would make a lot of money,” he said. “So, landing in a class like video art where I could do something esoteric, and make these weird pieces…I didn’t tell my parents.”
Nonetheless, they both assert, the older generation have been generally supportive, and not just financially. Although it took a little longer to share 'Television is Here to Stay' with his parents, Clensy workshopped his film with one of his grandmothers throughout the process of making it.
Rivers' family demonstrate curiosity and enthusiasm for seemingly esoteric creative endeavors too. “I have an uncle who works in a steel mill whose son makes animatronic robots and he wants to go to college for that. That’s Arduino, programming, he’s entirely self-taught, and his dad is encouraging it, saying, ‘Stay away from the steel mill’.
“Yes, we’re making light-hearted, goofy things,” continued Rivers, “but there are practical skills there—whether it’s simple video editing, media marketing -- these are valuable skills.”
“I’m in the same shoes,” said Clensy. “My dad wouldn’t want me to do a physical labor job. He’s an electrician and he always tells me about back pain and things like that. He doesn’t want me to have a job like that, but at the same time, to have a more technical, computer job, focused on those concrete skills. And yes, we gain those in video art—skills that can be applied to branding, media marketing, not to mention all the software we learn.”
“My father fully supported me in terms of emotional support,” said Rivers,” but he always said, ‘If you go to college just don’t major in religion or philosophy, because you won’t get a job.’ Then I majored in art, and even beyond that, became an art professor! I spent time working in the post office in New York and saving up to afford to go to school, so I was happy I was able to do it.
“I’ll be honest,” Rivers continued, “the only thing that made it possible was having amazing professors with patience and understanding who fostered that creativity and that drive who were willing to take a chance on me, and say, ‘You know what, here’s the space, here are the materials, go nuts, we’ll check in on you in two weeks’.”
According to Clensy, his own professor extended him the same freedom.
“Yeah, Dominick would let me brainstorm up any idea that I had. I mean, he’d offer some guidance along the way, but if I had an idea I was really passionate about, he’d be like, ‘Alright man, go work on it, send me a proposal eventually’.”
“Yours was a very unique situation,” responded Rivers. “I mean typically, it’s like project one, project two…Julian was like, ‘Hey I want to do this and it’s going to be a little more extreme. Are you cool with this?’ and showed me some sketches and a thirty-second clip and I was like, ‘Go nuts, have fun.’ And of course, the result is 'Television is Here to Stay'.”
Since his film premiered in London, Clensy has mustered his courage to share it with his parents. That their hard work has given him the spaciousness to explore intellectually and creatively at IU is not lost on him. “I feel really blessed to be a first-gen college student,” said Clensy. "I'm only able to be here taking these classes because my parents and grandparents worked really hard to secure a future for their kids and grandkids."
Read a profile of Julian Clensy, third-year Comprehensive Design major in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, here.
