Marketing and Communications Intern for the Loeb Center, Marc Garraud ’27, chats with Alumni-in-Residence guest John Abodeely ’01 to discuss what his path was like after graduating from Amherst College and offers advice on how students can best position themselves for careers in the arts
The transcription below has been edited for clarity.
Marc
Welcome back to the On Air Podcast. My name is Marc Garraud, Amherst College class of ’27, and I am the new Marketing and Communications intern here at the Loeb Center. Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Abodeely, the CEO of Oolite Arts, an organization dedicated to supporting and empowering artists in Miami and beyond. I hope you enjoy the talk.
Welcome, everyone who is listening. My name is Marc Garraud, and I’m here with our alumni in honor, John Abodeely, the class of 2001. Before we start, I just want to say welcome back. We are so excited to have you back. How does it feel to be back here at Amherst College?
John
Oh, it’s always kind of a trip to walk around campus and just see how it’s evolved over the years and have all kinds of weird memories come back. But it’s fun. It’s really fun.
Marc
Yeah. Sounds good. To start off, I want to continue tradition from our past Marketing and Communications intern, my friend Ava Zielinski, class of ’25. And I want to start with the question: give us your elevator pitch. Basically, if someone you respected jumped in an elevator with you or a street interviewer came up to you and asked you, what do you do? How would you say it? And how would you explain yourself in your work?
John
Yeah, I would say my job fundamentally is to help artists make art, to launch artists’ careers, to provide whatever resources, knowledge that I can provide, to help our creatives bring their visions to life.
Marc
Nice, short and simple. It’s great.
John
Elevator.
Marc
Yeah. Next question I have, doing a little bit of research on you. I saw you majored in biology and fine arts, which is a very, very interesting mix. And I just was wondering, how did that mix influence the way you think about arts, leadership, and creativity?
John
That’s an interesting question. So I think that one of the things that’s really valuable about understanding the sciences is their rigidity. My take on the double major was that they’re two completely different methodologies of doing the same thing, which is understanding truth or approaching the truth, and so in science, you narrow your question down to the smallest possible aperture and you eliminate as many variables as possible.
And in the arts, the opposite is true. Absolutely everything is on the table. And both of these things are trying to sort of figure out the world or understand the world or understand truth. And so I think one of the things that I take from my biology major, way back when, is a certain kind of rigidity of producing and rigidity of project management, and a method of approaching work that is about control, for better or worse.
I do that in my administrative job. And what I love about the arts, though, is the absolute chaos that they operate with, the way that anything is on the table at any time. And it’s an incredibly adventurous pursuit.
Marc
Yeah. That sounds exactly like how you said it. Just the craziness of science and the, I guess, the craziness of arts too, trying to put it together.
John
Yeah.
Marc
Great. Yeah. Taking a little bit of a backtrack back to your Amherst days. I know, as a student, I know thinking about what happens after you graduate and going into the job force and trying to figure that stuff out can be a little stressful. So I would ask, for me, but also speaking for my other students, what did your path look like right after graduating from Amherst? Did you have a clear sense of direction, or was it just all over the place?
John
Yeah, it was a mess. I drove around the country with a friend who wanted to land in Seattle. I had friends–I lived in the Zu and the co-op, and so some of my co-op friends were like, “You don’t have a plan. Why don’t you just come out to Seattle with us? We’ll get a house, we’ll set up a co-op. It’ll be fun.” So I drove out west, we drove all up and down the country, and I saw a lot of the country with a woman named Adrienne, and then dropped her off at her summer job. And I went to find my friends who were shacking up in somebody’s parents’ house for the summer. And then when the fall came, we found a rental and I tried to get a job, and the only job I could get was an IHOP graveyard shift.
And so, no, I had absolutely no plan. I didn’t know anything. I was leaning much more on the arts than on the biology degree, because the arts were something that really helped me, I don’t know, resolve a lot of things about who I was in the world and who I wanted to be, and I was really excited about the freedom the arts afforded me. So I was leaning more on the arts.
So everything that happened after that was sort of an accident. Like, I struggled to find any job, so I was like really happy when I landed the IHOP job. Not that it was something I necessarily wanted, but it gave me a good income, gave me something to do.
A lot of weird adventures working IHOP, graveyard shift, that were really fun.
Marc
I can imagine.
John
Yeah, great stories to this day. And then I was volunteering for the Queer Film Festival. Randomly a lesbian filmmaker friend was like, “Hey, go do this while you’re out there”. So I was volunteering with them every minute I wasn’t at the IHOP job. And from that, I sort of stumbled into the nonprofit arts. So no, there was no plan. It was just stumbling forward. And then after that, it was like, well, I know these people, and they offered me a job. And then I knew these other people, and they offered me a job in DC. So I moved out to DC. So it all just was–everything I’ve done has been this kind of lucky, fumbling-forward kind of vibe.
I did figure out at some point in my career, probably around the time when I was working at the Kennedy Center in DC and getting an MBA, that when I wanted a new job, I just needed to come up with a short list of things I wanted out of the job. I didn’t necessarily know the title, I didn’t know the organization, I didn’t know the exact role. But I had a sense of like, I wanted to feel like this. I wanted to be like this. I want to have this kind of impact on the world. I want to make this kind of money, whatever it is. And I would come up with these short lists. And I did that, leaving the Kennedy Center when I got a job for the Obama administration. And when I left the Obama administration, when I got this new job in Miami. I had a short list of things. I was like, I wanted to have these characteristics. And that’s been helpful, but that’s the closest I’ve ever come to a plan when it’s not a plan.
Marc
Wow, that’s super interesting. It gives me a little bit of reassurance. You don’t have to have it all figured out.
But, yeah, kind of bouncing off of that. Before I met with you, I talked to a lot of my friends who major in arts and have that passion because me, I’m a psych/math major, so I’m not really in the field in terms of the arts. I just talked to my friend Chris. I talked to him a lot before meeting with you, and I just asked them for some questions that they would have asked you if they were in my shoes. And a lot of the common themes of the questions they asked had to do with employment after graduation. I know we just talked about a little bit, but on top of employment, like getting a job that can give you a livable wage in the art subject field.
So, in the theme of that, what would you recommend current students who want to pursue careers in similar fields to do now to best position themselves when they enter this job market?
John
Yeah. In the arts?
Marc
Yeah.
John
Yeah. Okay. So I think there’s one of three tacks you’re going to take of your interest in the arts. You’re going to be an artist producing work, or you’re going to work in the nonprofit cultural space, like I do, or you’re going to work in a market-based cultural space, like a gallery, an art fair, or something like that. That might be a concert venue or a concert company if you’re in the music space, but things like that.
And so I think a lot of Amherst students are going to have a lot of the qualities you need to succeed, like, you’re going to have great training, right? So you guys are getting a great education. You have a good work ethic. You’re smart and you’re inherently intelligent or have some kind of inherent set of talents that outcompete a lot of kids your age, ight. And so all of those things are going to serve you really well. And I wouldn’t sweat too much. You will compete well, if it’s an Amherst student listening to this. You’re naturally going to compete well.
But I think if you’re going to be in any of those spaces, a couple things, like for artists, I would say be careful about who you get in bed with, right? Don’t go for an MFA too quick. Make sure, like REALLY vet those programs and pick the program that’s going to give you what you want. Don’t work with the gallerist too quick because some gallerists are amazing for your career, and some are not amazing for your career, so vet them carefully. And get out there and make a lot of work. Do it like it’s your job. Make a lot of friends, put up shows by yourself, do some DIY stuff. If an institution like mine isn’t going to put you on their walls as quickly as you want, just mount your own show.
I think those are a few good tips for people who want to be professional artists in the nonprofit space, or even the for-profit space. Although admittedly, I have not worked in the for-profit cultural space, so take this with a grain of salt. I would say, show up, be thorough, be persistent. Everything you needed to do to succeed at Amherst, bring that to the workplace. Bring that to the office. I think you’ll do great.
Marc
Nice. Thank you, I appreciate that, and I assume whoever’s listening also appreciates it. Now, I think either one or two more questions.
Taking a big step back in terms of arts and the bigger picture of the world, especially the world we live in today. I would ask you, how do you see art as a form of speech or protest, given the current divided state of our country, as someone in your position, a leader in the arts?
John
Yeah, I love that question. And I think there’s probably a couple areas, in which I think the arts make a unique contribution in a national conversation.
The first is, you know, the arts are in some way coded or shrouded speech, right? They’re they’re speech translated into esthetics somehow. Sound or visuals. And so I think they have a power to communicate something that one, words don’t always communicate or don’t succeed at communicating. And two, something that can be coded, perhaps hidden, or perhaps, shrouded in some way. And so they can sometimes take risks that we cannot necessarily take risks, ourselves as people in regular speech. At times of volatility, partisanship, whatever is happening. So I think there’s a power in how the arts communicate. And they can succeed in ways that we necessarily maybe cannot right now. So I think that’s really powerful.
Number two, I think that artists are oftentimes as cultural arbiters and cultural creators, cultural torchbearers, speak about things that those of us in institutional settings, or those of us, I don’t know how to say it, like those of us, maybe just on the corporate side or something,don’t have the courage to say. And so artists kind of keep us honest and keep us ethical and keep us accountable to our values as humans, and play an absolutely vital role in society during difficult times as well.
I think those are probably primary ways, but at the end of the day, one thing I’ll add to that then is–we sometimes–there’s a lot of people out there that think that the arts are something that you’re supposed to tackle or fund or invest in or give time to when you’re more pressing problems have been resolved. And I think the arts are absolutely the opposite.
And I think if you look at the way the arts, the role the arts play in our society, they absolutely are the opposite of that. Meaning, the arts are something we lean on because of the challenges of our day-to-day, right? The cave paintings in Lascaux were not something that were painted when all of the hunting that had to be done was over, right? They were painted at the end of a day. And so the role that the arts play in our lives, that the respite that they give us, the reflective moment that they give us, the communal shared experience that they give us. All of these things make us stronger and more resilient, and they make us smarter, and they make us calmer. And I think that those are absolutely necessary things on a day-to-day basis. And that’s particularly true in a time of, say, heightened anxiety, which I will call today.
Marc
Definitely so. Wow, thank you for that insight. That’s great insight. Final question. I know that was a bomb I just dropped on you, the last one. So, to take it back, a little more fun. You can go any way you want with this. If you go back and give your college self one piece of advice, what would it be, about anything?
John
I would say, don’t sweat it so much. Enjoy the ride. The unknowns that you are about to enter into, say, as you leave senior year. The challenges that you will inevitably face as a human in the world, enjoy the ride. There’s a lot to it that is terrifying, but terrifying is just another way to say, like, you are on a wild adventure, enjoy the ride.
I think it’s so easy to be afraid of what comes next. And I’m not going to pretend like even at my age today, in middle age, I do indeed experience those anxieties. But my better self enjoys the ride. And if somebody just needs to hear that, I’m happy to be the message bearer for that one. You’re going to face a lot of unknowns, and it’s going to be scary, but it’s kind of like a roller coaster. So enjoy the ride.
Marc
Nice. Well, thank you so much, John. It was an honor talking with you. I wish you luck with the rest of your time here. I hope it’s great.
John
Thanks. This was fun, and I appreciate being included.
Marc
Yes, sir. Thank you. See you guys next time. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with John Abodeely. Stay tuned for our next episode of On Air, where we’ll continue exploring inspiring career journeys and creative paths. See y’all next time!
