Jacob Wolos '17

Choose to

get your hands dirty.

Jacob Wolos

Hometown: Galloway, N.J.
Class Year: 2017
Major: Visual Arts with a concentration in Sculpture


 

Jacob Wolos in 2022, smiling in a selfie

Jacob Wolos has been artsy since before Stockton and still is after graduating five years ago. See how he evolved since then, and why he has chosen to reject labels and create art in a different way. 

 

Jacob Wolos (2017)

Jacob Wolos in 2017

Why did you choose Stockton?

The Galloway area is home to me. I'm now 23, but I've been studying on-and-off at Stockton since I was 16 after a family friend invited me to sit in on one of his classes. From there, I was introduced to other professors who took me under their wing. I was able to take a variety of classes from Philosophy and Physics to Anthropology and Literature, before enrolling full-time. The Visual Arts program hooked me. The professors and students here are amazing. 

Why did you choose your major?

Professors like Jed Morfit, Wendel White and Mariana Smith showed me what could be possible in the arts, and I haven't looked back since.

When you first graduated, did you expect to do sound engineering or more sculptures/physical art?

I chose Visual Arts because it had always been in my orbit, and I met with some of the professors in the Art department who were interested in cultivating that. They were like, “you could do a traditional Visual Arts route, or you can talk about visual and physical art as sort of the same thing as music.”

At the end of the day, art is art, whether it’s physical, movement, or sound-based. My time at Stockton was with two advisors who were able to cultivate my sculptural interests in a non-restrictive way. I’m thankful for the people that I worked with because they allowed me to hone in on communicating in more abstract ways and that unlocked something that really helped my music.

Getting out of school, I was able to write my music in a more spatial way. The program helped me see music differently. Even before the program, I knew that I wanted my music to feel like a painting. When I went into the program though, I wanted to make my paintings feel like music. The program really melded them in some weird way, and I still think that sculpture is intertwined with music, even if I’m not doing that currently.

Since COVID-19 upended many lives, we wanted to give you the opportunity to reflect on your life pre-and-post-2020. How has your artistic expression been affected by the pandemic?

I am a very collaborative artist, which presented a challenge for me in 2020. I thoroughly believe that community makes us greater than we could be by ourselves. I’ve always been drawn to work with people in different fields of art because they’re coming from an entirely different vantage point than me. 

So, writing, playing, and performing music on my own was a great challenge, but like, I can’t kick and scream about it. I have no other option, so I had to just mine that. 

I finished an album that I started pre-pandemic in 2020 and sort of got to process everything that was happening, including what relationships look like in the pandemic. I then spent the bottom of 2020 to now writing a book of poetry.

It was a good challenge of embracing exactly what you’re talking about and pull inward. When you write words, you generally write them by yourself; it can be a collaborative process, but usually, it comes from a very personal place.

The chapbook sort of encompasses a year of living in the pandemic and, in the same way that I write music, kind of hones in on the moments of the sacred and what it looks like when it isn’t grandiose.

Do you prefer either art medium you have mentioned?

Music is inescapable for me, but I love the other stuff too. I see them as necessary facets of meditation for me. I had a brief period this winter where it was hard to live here; you know, the world has not been easy on us at all and continues to not be easy. I had a moment where I realized that I make things and projects that are so rooted in language and thought. I then found myself grabbing some paper and watercolors and creating art for a couple of weeks as a meditative practice. It helped because I was so focused on what I was doing that I couldn’t get into my head.

I had a moment where I was considering being a “capital ‘p’” painter again for that reprieve, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think that they all play a role in each other. Even the poetry doesn’t feel divorced from my music-making, it feels like a part of it. They’re all just connected parts of me.

I’m not the title itself: I’m not a “sculptor,” “painter,” or “musician,” I’m just me and there’s something very relieving about that. So often in the arts, you want to work long enough to earn a title. I had to learn how to determine that for myself like no one was going to give me a title but me. And on the other side of that, I deserve to also not want that title and to just want to create."
Jacob Wolos, '17

What is your next goal? Do you see yourself coming back to the nest or another university for graduate school?

I’m starting a new program this Fall! I’m starting at Rutgers University-Camden and pursuing my Master of Art in English & Media Studies with a concentration in Social Justice, which is a new thing that they’re offering. It seems very professional-driven and meant to put you in creative spaces in NGOs (non-governmental organizations) or non-profits. I’m very excited to start.

What advice would you give students who are interested in possibly transitioning to another career/industry?

Journaling, I think. Write to yourself; trying to understand the meaning of that is a lifelong journey. It can feel very performative and like a waste of time, especially if you feel like you write too formally to really get your thoughts out. Then just don’t write that way! We think in language, so you should have access to making your own language and thoughts permanently nearby.

Jacob Wolos in 2022, smiling in a selfie