Artist Forrest Gerke grew up in a low-income household with two artist parents. He had dreams of going to art school to become a hand illustrator, but his parents were clear that he would have to find his own way to pay for tuition. Rather than take out loans, Gerke follows a path that would leave him debt-free at the end of his four-year degree. This includes transferring from a lower-cost school after a year and working full-time while taking a full course load.

As a result of his financial prudence, Gerke is eventually able to move to New York where he now has his own apartment with a home studio. He shares what he has learned throughout the process and why, despite the years of hard work, he doesn’t regret a thing.

 

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Transcript

Nikki: I’m Nikki Nolan and this is A Matter of Life and Debt, a show about people in the United States and their student debt. Today’s episode: A Reality of No Student Debt. I talk with artist Forrest Gerke around a new subject matter for the show: what it is like to live with no student debt.

The part that I’ve found the most remarkable during our conversation was the difference of what happened to him versus the other guests after he graduated, because he wasn’t worried about making loan payments. He was able to move to New York City with $5,000, two suitcases, a guitar and a dream.
This is his story.

Welcome to the podcast.

Forrest: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Nikki:  I’m so excited to be here too. So I have brought you here to talk a little bit about student debt.  Usually how I start off the show is like how much student debt do you have?

Forrest: I have $0 in student debt.

Nikki: Is that because you’ve never had debt or is it because you’ve paid it off?

Forrest: it’s because I, I never had any to begin with. So I somehow made it through school without having to take out loans.

Nikki: So how did you do that? Like what did you do to like, not accrue debt?

Forrest: I had a very strict budget that I stayed to and I worked full-time while I was in school full-time. So I spent  probably 35 to 40 hours a week working in call centers when I was in school. And then I was taking a full credit load at the same time. So I did a lot of work and I didn’t sleep very much.

And I still managed to have way too much fun in between.

I didn’t grow up with a lot of money and I think that my parents did a pretty good job of explaining to me the financial obligation and burden that school would be for me. And, and so when I was 15, I got my first job and I’ve pretty much been working ever since.  I saved all of my money.

And  so for my first couple of years of school, like I had actually done enough to save up enough money for the year ahead each year. That was something I will credit my mother for that. Because she’s really good at saving and managing money, and setting up budgets.  I was actually able to do that for my first couple of years of school – just paying it, paying a year ahead. All the money that I would make after that was to go to the next semester or the next year.

Nikki: You said  your parents sat you down. What did they tell you about? Like, what were some of the real things that they told you to consider financially?

Forrest: I mean, they let me know that with their financial situation, that they wouldn’t be able to pay for things up front. They offered me as much help as they could. And so I was definitely grateful for that, but the majority of the burden was  on me for the financial side of it. So that was something that’s- I think just having that knowledge up front when I was about 15, starting to think about college was really helpful. And so when I was working, I had a job at the local movie theater. I grew up in a really small town. So that was like, that was a really cool job to have.

But yeah, I just,  I didn’t spend my money. I saved most of it. And I tried to be really thoughtful about  how I was spending things. And so then my first couple of years of school, I continued working,  but I was really good at just living pretty modestly. So like I used to have a $25 a week grocery budget.

Nikki: Oh my God. Yeah. I can spend $25-

Forrest: -on lunch. Yeah.

Nikki: -turning my head and looking at something I’m like, oh, $25 gone.

Forrest: Yeah. I mean, and this was like 2003, so it was, I mean, a little bit different than now, but still that was- for most people that I knew,  I was spending way less money and just living,  very minimally. But yeah, it was something that I think looking  at the benefits that I got from making those sacrifices upfront and,  not having to go into debt for school, I think it was worth eating like tortillas and beans for three years.

I think a lot of that is because my parents were just pretty upfront with how the world works. And so, I think that they gave me a concept that going to school was important and having an education would be something that would be valuable to me in a lot of ways.

But, I think that they really tried to help me understand  the freedom that you can have with, if you’re not in debt. And so, before I went  to college, like my parents had gone through a period where they had  some debts that they had incurred for their own businesses that they were running and they had to work really hard to aggressively pay them down, to kind of get themselves back into a better financial situation. And so I think just because they had gone through that in their own lives, like when I was a preteen, by the time we started having these conversations about college and,  looking forward to my upcoming adult life, I think that they really, they wanted to give me something that- a  benefit that they had learned from their own,  difficulty in those choices that they had had to deal with with- paying off large sums of money in pretty aggressive ways.

So I’m grateful to them for that. Cause  they did not sugarcoat it. They did not pretend that like life was going to be easy. But they encouraged me to do what I felt I was the most passionate about it and the most interested in. And then we just, we problem solved to find ways to pay for it.

Nikki: Usually I ask because usually people have debt, but you have no debt- what was the impact of debt? So I think what I’m going to ask you is like,  after you graduated,  and you had no debt, what was that like?

Forrest: I mean, I think my first reaction to graduating and not having to do basically two full-time jobs at the same time was that I had a lot of time left over.  So my undergraduate degrees were in fine arts.  And my first year and a half out of school,  only working 40 hours a week,  I just felt like that was softball. It was so easy.<

And so I started doing an artist residency with this little cooperative gallery in the town that I was living in at the time, Fort Collins, Colorado. And so that really helped me launch and develop my studio practice that set up good habits and gave me a lot of foundation to build from  later on in the in the years since then, as well.

Nikki: I’m so jealous.  When I hear that, like people get a focus on  things that are important.

Forrest: I mean, and that’s not to say that, that I was just-  it was all smooth sailing. I mean, I graduated in December of 2008, so right after the economy crashed. And so  there were definite plans that I had for internship programs that I’d applied to with like art museums all over the country. And I applied to almost 30 programs, I think, in the late summer of 2008. And then by the time I graduated in December, like almost all of them had shut down except for three or four. So they became super competitive and it was much harder to get into them. So it just, so there was, there was a big reset that I had to do after that.

But I also think, like, not having a ton of debt to worry about in that- even though it was a stressful time and there was a lot of uncertainty-   it still kind of lightened the burden, not having to worry about that part of things.

Nikki: Yeah. ‘ 08 was like a rough year. I’m going to- to say the least. ’08 with  a degree in art was-

Forrest: Yeah. No, I definitely questioned some of my life choices at that point.

Nikki: I  feel like this is a good transition . I just want to know more about you.

Forrest: Yeah, so I,  ever since I was a really young kid, I always wanted to be an artist. And so that’s something that there’s like videotapes of me when I was four, talking about  wanting to either be an illustrator and make children’s books, or like be an animator for the Disney company. Which is now like not a thing that people do by hand.  But  in like the late eighties, that seemed really cool cause that was when all of the- that golden age of all those Disney films came out. So I think that was inspiring to me. But yeah, I always kind of kept with that. And so I gratefully had parents that encouraged me to pursue those interests and they never.

I mean, they were both creative people themselves. Like my mom’s a potter and my dad is a musician and a photographer. And so, I was never discouraged from pursuing that. But definitely when I got into high school and I started taking it more seriously,  that was something that I talked to my art teachers about that I eventually wanted to study art for college.  And so,  with the limited resources in my poorly funded arts program in the small town where I grew up,  I tried to at least get as much advice from people there as I could to kind of help steer  what I would do for portfolios of the things I should work on and get used to.

Nikki: Is there any advice that you got from them that was actually helpful? Sorry to stop you. I just…

Forrest: Oh, no, no, no, no. Actually, no, I did not get very much advice and any that I might’ve gotten was definitely not useful. But I was, at least,  In all of the art classes and I was even part of like the art club at my high school. And we did  fundraisers. We did  henna tattoos for people before prom, so that we could save up our money to go on a trip to the Denver Art Museum. That was like our big trip.

Cause we had to  drive clear across the state of Colorado, so it was like a six hour drive. And then we had to pay for motel and stuff. So it was like, that was a really big deal. And we paid for most of that through doing henna tattoos for the prom.

I mean, it was cultural appropriation at its finest. It was a bunch of white kids doing this thing that we had no idea what the actual cultural background was, but  that happens a lot in the arts,  unfortunately.

Nikki:

Forrest: Yeah. I mean, so I actually had a really specific plan  when I got out of high school that I had to amend. But  I thought that I really wanted to go to a school that had a traditional hand-drawn illustration program. And so those are- a lot of schools that had programs like that in the past, kind of replace them with modern graphic arts programs.

And so I really wanted to go to a school that had that. There was a school in Utah, which was the state next door to me, that had a program like that that was really respected. And so I thought, well, this is what I want to do with my life. I know everything at 18. I am super smart.

I couldn’t afford to go to that school in Utah with out-of-state tuition. So I went to a cheaper school for a year, had a miserable time. It just, it was a very bad fit for me for a lot of reasons. But it encouraged me to kind of reassess my goals. And so I realized that I still wanted to do art, but I wasn’t as- it wasn’t as important to me to necessarily do that specific program.

And so I transferred back in state to a school in Colorado, Colorado State University. And I did the painting program there. And about halfway through my time there, I also added an art history degree because I was like,  I just really wanted to be that lucrative in my choices of what to do.

I went to CSU and actually had a great time there. It was for being not like famously in art school, it’s more like an engineering and sciences kind of school. They still had a really big art program, with lots of different concentrations and, tons of other students. And so  I really, I felt like I got the most out of it that was available to me there. Cause there was just, there were just like a lot of really great professors and different things to try. So,  I was able to do like some really good foundational skills. And learn about  sculpture and printmaking and, pottery and things like that. In addition to the painting coursework that I did.

Nikki: What made  you decide to go to that first school? And then what things did you sort of decide upon that made you go to Colorado State?

Forrest: Yeah, I mean, it does have a lot to do with finances. I really wanted to go to  one of those schools that had the traditional illustration program, but I knew that going to a private art school was just out of the question, financially for me. And, and so the school that I was aiming to go to in Utah was a state school. So if I could have lived there for a year to establish residency, then it would have been much more affordable, with in-state tuition. And so that directed a lot of my choice to go to that specific school. It wasn’t like I had some strong desire to live in Salt Lake City. But, which I mean not to knock Salt Lake City. It’s actually, there’s some pretty cool stuff there . , it just, it really had a lot to do with finance.

Nikki: So what did you want to be while you were in college?  What was  your dream of what life was going to be after you graduated?  What were you working for?

Forrest: Oh, I mean, like,  when I first started college I had these really hippy-dippy ideas that I would like become a painter slash yoga instructor. Which is, I mean, not to knock it. I know people who are both of those things and it’s, it’s great. But it’s also,  that’s a really hard thing to  make a living at and get insurance and  pay your bills  on time.

So, but yeah, that was kind of like my naive goal. I think as I continued through school, I, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I did know that it was important for me to keep pursuing art. And I think since I had that experience during school of, you know, doing my full load of art classes and studio work and working full-time.  It wasn’t a stretch for me to think of  moving forward into the future and maybe having a day job that wasn’t art-related, but something that would help me sustain my studio practice. And so, even though I don’t think I was mature enough to have really like fleshed it out in that way yet, I still think that it kind of, it helped me put that balance into my head. And so by the time I actually finished with school, like that was a place that I could go.

I had a job, out of school with Constant Contact which was an email marketing, or they still are an email marketing, tech company. But it was  a really fun job to have. I really liked the people that I worked with. And then when I was there, most of my clients that I dealt with were  small businesses and nonprofit organizations. And so it was just really cool to kind of hear from these people who were using this tool that I was supporting to kind of help them  live their dreams and make  their business goals happen.

I think it just, it put me in a mindset that made me a little bit more open to the idea of balancing a day job with my creative work. But, hoping to someday find a happy medium  where I could. include both of those things in my life.  It was kind of a lucky job to get right out of school.

Nikki: What’s happened since then?  You’ve worked at Constant Contact and  I know you now live in New York City. Can you bridge the gap for me?  What has happened between then and now-

Forrest: Yeah. So, I mean, I will say that, yeah, so this probably relates very much to the topic of the podcast with debt.  But when I was 25, I decided- I’d been out of school for like a year and a half- and I decided that I wanted to try living in New York City. Like that was always kind of my dream.

I came to New York to visit when I was in college several times and fell in love with it. And so I kind of had a dream of trying to live here, but, but I think that was something that seemed really out there to me just because it, cause I knew New York was going to be expensive. I didn’t know anybody in New York.

I didn’t have any family or friends there. I didn’t have like any work connections lined up. But I think because I did not have debt, I was able to take some risks financially.

When I worked at Constant Contact, they had these sign-on bonuses. Like if you referred somebody  who worked there for 90 days, you’d get like a $2,500 bonus. So I recommended, I think two or three people, who ended up working there.  I was able to save up like $5,000 that way.  That was my little nest egg to move to New York.  I moved here in the late spring of 2010 and it was super cliche.

It was, you know, like three bucks, two bags, one me.  I came here with two suitcases and a guitar and $5,000 and just hoped for the best.  My first couple of years in the city were really difficult financially.  I had a few different, just,  crappy jobs  and it was, and I was really sacrificing, like, I mean, I- it was a big financial risk to come here. And I knew that at any moment,  if things didn’t work out, I’d have to go back and  live with my parents for awhile in my hometown. Which is something that did not appeal to me at all.

I think that was a good incentive to just make it work and so,  but if I would’ve had loan payments to worry about,  I don’t think that I could have been as risky  and done that.  fast forward, 10 years later, I’m still in New York. I still really love living here.  And I’ve had jobs in the tech industry over that time that have  kind of sustained me. And definitely  they’ve upgraded over time. So,  in the last few years I’m able to live in an apartment by myself. And I have a studio in my living room that has been a really productive space for me.

And I’ve been getting a lot of artwork done. And I’ve found like a good balance between  the day jobs that I have and my studio practice. And  also like trying to promote my work online and get things out into the world. And sometimes, put things into juried shows.

I’ve done a couple of those since I’ve been here too. But yeah, I mean, a lot of that I credit  the ability to do that with not having to, you know, have the responsibility  of loan payments the whole time. And compared to a lot of my friends  and, people that I’ve worked with over the years, when I just see how that’s changed their decision-making, I’m really grateful that I was able to  make a lot of sacrifices and work my butt off on the front end of things, which was not easy. I’m not gonna tell anybody that it was fun. There were times that I resented it a lot when I was doing it. But , for that relatively short time period in my life where it’s like,  you’re young and stupid and you bounce back anyway.

Like, I mean, yes. Put all of your suffering in on your early twenties. You’re going to do it anyways, so you may as well just like make it worthwhile. But yeah, so,  now I’m in my mid-thirties and  I’m really living a life that’s kind of-  it aligns with the dreams that I had for myself when I was younger.

And of course, it’s the reality of things have been a little bit different in terms of  the types of work that I do.  But I’m still living in a place that I love and I’m able to be inspired by all of the great museums and galleries and just,  culture that’s all over the place here.

And, and I’m able to have a studio, and make artwork, and do things that I’m really proud of.  For me, I just, I feel like it’s been a fulfillment of a lot of my hopes and my dreams that I had when I was younger, but it definitely,  it’s been a ton of work. But totally worth it. Yeah. Where should we go from here? I’m sorry. I kind of lost my-

Nikki: No, no, no, no.  I think you’re, I mean, I think you hit on all of the points that it was like, what were your dreams and where are you now? And it sounds like you had some dreams, maybe they were a little bit more abstract when you were younger, but as you manifested through college, you realized this kind of- you’re going to need this balance of  work to support your art.

And you are very realistic and grounded in  your pursuits. So with all of this life experience that you have gotten, if you could  turn back and tell your younger self something,  some advice to get them through or anything. You know, if you had a time machine, you could go back and tell your younger self some advice. What would you tell yourself?

Forrest: Oh plenty. If I could tell a younger person who’s in art school or has ambitions to do something with creative work in their life, I would just say  learn what you can about managing yourself as a small business.  Understand how to do your own bookkeeping. Understand the basics of  invoicing  and figuring out ways to promote yourself and to make a website. And, now,  especially I think with Instagram and different social platforms that are really useful to artists they-  of course those didn’t exist  when I was in college  cause I’m not young- but I mean, just  understanding  that there’s always going to be things to learn and resources to reach out to. And so I just think that if I would have known a little bit more about managing myself as a small business, I think  I could have gone more quickly  into some of the areas that  I’ve gotten into more recently.

Like now I’m selling work on my websites and I have kind of  an e-commerce set up there. And, I take in portrait commissions and I sell prints of other work.  And so  that’s something that,  running an online store, although it’s not rocket science, it definitely still takes a lot of effort and know-how.

Like, I didn’t know anything about having to set up a payment processor and how to collect taxes for transactions that require taxes. And I didn’t know about  the ways that you’d have to find shipping vendors to send things. And how to  deal with invoicing and payments, and things like that.

I just think that , although that’s not the glamorous side of doing creative work and it’s definitely not, at least not for me, it’s not the fun side of it, it is essential. And it’s necessary if you want  to do that as a business. And so,  I would just say if I would’ve known about these things when I was younger,  it wouldn’t have killed me to like, take a couple of business classes when I was in college. Or, just to take like an accounting class just to do basic financial math,  or learn how to use Excel.  That’s something that I did not know how to do out of college. And I’ve had to learn the hard way since.

But yeah, I mean, I think that otherwise there’s just a lot of- I think the good things that I got out of my arts education were, you know, the ability to be broad-minded about things, to accept critique and feedback, and to be able to  use that to kind of build new iterations of your own work and your own process, and to really be open to learning from others.

So that was all kind of baked into the experience that I had in the program. And I think that that’s  still very relevant. And there’s still artists that I know, and people that are entrepreneurs who are doing things that I find really impressive and interesting.

Now I’m not as timid to pick somebody’s brain and just be like, okay, I really like what you’re doing here with your website. Can I ask you a few questions about that? And, cause like when people have asked me about things that I’ve done,  I feel fine sharing any knowledge that I have. Like, I don’t feel  like that’s proprietary or anything. I think that there’s enough within the arts.  There’s enough for us all to do that we don’t have to be competing with each other necessarily. So  I’m always happy to  learn from other people’s techniques. And then if they have questions about mine to share that with them. But yeah, for young people, especially young people in art school or people who-  and that’s not to say that art school is necessary  to become an artist.

Like, for me, I’m really glad that I did it. And there were a lot of really useful tools that I think I got from the experience, but in no way, do I think it’s required. So for other people who might be listening to this who are interested in doing creative work, I would just say the best thing that I got out of my art school experience was a community of people where I learned from a lot of diverse ways of thinking and diverse ways of problem solving and doing things.

Anybody can find a community of people to learn from.  I just think  that’s really essential and  even now that I’ve been out of school for a long time, I still have people in my life that I can get feedback from and  ask them to look at my work and tell me,  to give me honest opinions about things. And to look at a website that I’m creating. And to tell me if it works or if something could be tweaked or improved.  I just think it’s really good to set yourself up in a community of like-minded people, but people who are enough different from you, that you can gain things that you wouldn’t find out on your own.

Nikki: Well,  we’ve come to the end. Is there anything that you would like  to plug?

Forrest: Yeah, I mean, if anybody would like to see my work and  buy some of it on my website, I’m happy to direct them there. It’s my website is just my name Forrest Gerke. So forrestgerke.com. And I’m also on Instagram. If you just look up my name there, @ForrestGerkeStudio.  It’s on there.

But yeah, I mean, and also I welcome anybody’s feedback about my website or my Instagram, since we were just talking about the necessity of feedback. So definitely feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think.

Nikki: Thank you so much for being on the show. This has been lovely.

Forrest: Well, it’s my pleasure. It was really fun talking to you.

Nikki:  Matter of Life and Debt is produced by me Nikki Nolan.  

Special thanks to Efe Akmen for creating the music and mastering the audio. 

Additional support and thanks to Sarah Thibault  who writes the information and transcripts about each episode. 

This podcast would not have been possible without them. 

Visit our website for more information matteroflifeanddebt.com, where you can listen, read transcripts, get additional context of the subjects you just heard about, and subscribe- absolutely for free. That website again, matteroflifeanddebt.com. Thanks again for listening.

 

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