Batch’s Homecoming: #ArtIsNotDead

In an overcrowded room filled with Texas Tech faculty and students, the Department of Communication Studies hosted an “Evening with Baron Batch” last week.

Natalie Morales/ The Hub@TTU

Natalie Morales/ The Hub@TTU

An alumnus who earned his communication studies degree in 2010, Batch, a former Tech football player, went on to play in the NFL for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He retired from football in 2013.

Since then, he has become a renowned artist and entrepreneur, creating his own brand called “Angry Man Salsa,” and founding Studio AM, an advertising agency.

Batch said his current career path was something he kept in mind while playing for the Steelers.

“I think it’s just really important to be in charge of who you are,” Batch said. “Usually I always have two concurrent timelines where if something doesn’t work, I don’t lose time; I can put something else in its place.”

He said growing up in the small town of Midland, Texas, taught him discipline and encouraged his ambitions.

“I wanted see more than West Texas,” Batch said.

He feels his communication studies degree is a good match for his current career path, even though he was uncertain about what he wanted to do after college.

“I knew that I wanted to have options,” Batch said. “And COMS is something that gives you the tools and the knowledge to not be one-dimensional. It makes you a very well-rounded professional.”

Having versatile skills should be everyone’s goal upon graduation, Batch said. So although he did not graduate with an art degree, he felt prepared going into the job market.

“It’s your job to take that and build yourself a career,” Batch said. “And that’s what I was able to do.”

Entrepreneurial lessons transfer into the classroom, stressed Batch while lecturing in several classes in the College of Media & Communication.

“It was cool to hear the professors say ‘We’ve touched on these different things, all the things you’ve touched on,'” Batch said. “‘That was the whole entire syllabus, and you touched on it all.’”

Batch said he lectured on actual experiences. He can now reflect back on theories he learned in college because he has seen them in practice.

Students were able to ask Batch questions and get great advice from a successful Tech alumnus.

Loren Page, a graduate student in the College of Media & Communication, had the opportunity to hear Batch speak during his visit.

“It was awesome to get to hear from a Texas Tech alum from communication studies, about his background in school and life lessons to the goals he continually sets for himself,” Page said.

Batch started his first company, Angry Man Salsa, while still playing in the NFL. Studio AM, his creative agency, came later.

“We specialize in the selling of ideas and experience,” Batch said. “I do a lot of experiential-based marketing.”

Although he doesn’t have any artistic training, he said, he taught himself.

“I knew nothing about it other than I needed paint, a tool to put the paint on, and a canvas,” Batch said.

Picture provided by pop.-x.com

Picture provided by pop.-x.com

One theme dominates his paintings: elephants.

A curious student asked why.

“I grew up in West Texas in a secluded area and didn’t have TV,” Batch said. “One day my mom brings home a box of National Geographics, and I’m looking through, and that was the first time I remember a feeling of the world rushing in.”

He said he realized his world, a little patch of land in West Texas, was small. As he continued flipping through the magazine pages, he stumbled upon one showing Indonesian elephants.

“The elephants gave me the feeling that I was meant for something more at a very young age,” he said. “I remember that distinctly. Since then, it has to come to mean many more things to not only me but others, and that is why, now, it represents community.”

He repetitively hand-painted elephants and gave his pictures away while in Pittsburgh.

Batch also hid paintings scavenger-hunt style over the course of a year. He still does “art drops,” meaning he sends out a tweet and then watches packs of people run through the city streets to find and grab his art.

“It’s wild because all of these people come from all their different lives, and they converge at this one point of an elephant,” Batch said. “And they meet each other over a shared experience.”

Batch said the workforce helped him understand who he is, and believes others will experience the same.

“When you get out there, that’s when you’re able to find your own process of how you work, and that’s when you know yourself,” Batch said.

Natalie Morales/ The Hub@TTU

Natalie Morales/ The Hub@TTU

It is normal to feel apprehensive about life after college, he said, but that is not the end of learning.

“When you’re transitioning, you really have to think about it as what type of person do you want to become… What do you want to learn? You have to be a student because you have no experience. You can’t act like because you were in college you’re qualified to do anything.”

Added Batch: “It’s all about wanting to learn and quickly correct mistakes but also bring an intangible value.”

 

 

About Natalie Morales

Natalie Morales, a senior Journalism student, graduates in May of 2016. She has always loved English classes, and writing, and is now pursuing it as a career. She hopes to get a job as a news reporter for a television station in West Texas so that she stays close to home. She wants to eventually be an anchor in a top market.