Studio Visit - Fall 2019

Images are after studio meeting with Makeda.

2019 Fall Semester

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Program Support

Academic Advisor: Oliver Wasow, is a fine art photographer currently living and working in Rhinebeck, NY. He received his BA from Hunter College and his Master’s Degree from the Transart Institute in Austria. His work is currently represented by Theodore:Art Gallery in NYC. Wasow has had a number of one person exhibitions, including shows at Theodore:Art, Josh Baer Gallery, Janet Borden Gallery, Tom Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, and the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. His work has also been included in numerous national and international group shows, including such benchmark exhibitions as ‘Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Image World,’ at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC, and ‘The Photography of Invention,’ at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. His photographs are included in a number of private collections and are also represented in various prominent public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC and The Milwaukee Art Museum. Reviews of his work have been featured in most major art publications, including, among others, Art Forum, ArtNews and The New York Times. He has been the recipient of various grants and awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant in 1999 and, in 2000, his second New York State Council on the Arts Grant.

Artist Mentor: ? - website

Documents

Forms:

Artist Mentor Form

Independent Study Forms

Group 4 Residency

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Group Critiques

Room 213: Anne Barnes, Steven Cabral, Cicely Carew, Tracy Gaan, Marc Morin

Small Group Leaders: Deb Todd Wheeler, Jan Avgikos, Sarah Ernst, Taylor Hayes

Individual Meetings: Matt Sanders, Juan Santos, Amanda Fischetti, Tayler Hayes, Caitlin Daly, Michelle Side, Kelsy Patnaude, Deb Todd Wheeler, Laurel Sparks, Oliver Wasow

Seminars

Critical Theory IV, Jan Avgikos

Elective Seminar: Word and Image, Deb Todd Wheeler

Visual images and words - written or spoken - are inextricably intertwined in the life and work of the contemporary artist. We use text as an element, in our own paintings, performances, and artist books. Increasingly we read art criticism and essays written by artists, as well by scholars, critics, and art historians. Not only is writing a significant form of self-expression for many artists today, the ability to write has also become an increasingly important practical skill necessary for success in our chosen field.

This seminar will address “real world” skills and situations by concentrating on the written thesis and artist talk required for graduation. For context, we will consider artists who write (books, letters, diaries, essays), as well as artists who use words significantly in their own visual work (Jenny Holzer, Lesley Dill, and the Gerlovins, among others). As artists we write about our projects for fundraising or self-promotional situations: grant proposals, cover letters, artist statements. For exhibitions and publication (on paper or on websites), we generate wall text, image captions, and project narratives. As artist/educators, we write course descriptions, reports, letters of recommendation, and applications for funding. Finally, as artists and as educators, we speak about our work often – whether during studio visits, in classrooms, and at professional conferences.

A course outline and suggested book list will be provided at our first meeting. Practical exercises will include in-class writing, brainstorming, and discussion. A representative from Lesley’s Center for Academic Achievement will visit to introduce us to the university’s on-line and on-campus tutorial services, a useful resource. Highly recommended for purchase: A Short Guide to Writing about Artby Sylvan Barnet (latest edition). Highly recommended as a resource (in library): Stiles and Selz, editors, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artist’s Writings.

For our first meeting, please bring multiple copies of your current artist’s statement (one for each fellow student plus one for me) and a list of topics you wish to cover in your artist’s talk. You will also need a notebook or sketchbook for our in-class writing exercises.

Documents and Images

Artist Talks and Final Grad Presentations, June 2019

Group 5 Residency Requirements, Jan 2020

Professional Development Seminar Packet

Group 3 Residency

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Group Critiques

Group H: Caroline MacMoran, Kay Myers, Elise Thrasher, Isidro Pentzke, Marc Morin

Small Group Leaders: Deborah Davidson, Peter Rostovsky, Christian Pierce

Individual Meetings: Peter Rostovsky, Shawn Quirk, Jaclyn Poeschl, Stuart Steck, Oliver Wasow

Seminars

Makida Best

Critical Theory I: Dominant Paradigms and Diverse Tactics
This course considers some emergent and dominant paradigms in contemporary cultural
production. Blurring the boundaries between diverse creative disciplines, as well as aesthetic
contemplation and political intervention, it traces a path through some of the key
conversations animating our visual and practical field. Throughout, a focus will be maintained
on how these discourses and debates overlap with popular culture, politics, technology and
social concerns. Through a series of challenging readings and discussions, students will be asked
to articulate complex artistic positions in response to this important cultural and historical
moment.

Instructor: Stuart Steck for the past two decades, has worked as both a curator and academic.  Although he was originally trained in the field of decorative arts, his current interests focus on postwar art and critical theory.  He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the Art Institute of Boston since 1998.  In addition to serving on the faculty at AIB, he has also held teaching positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Boston University, and Suffolk University.  Most recently, Steck co-curated the video exhibition Israel from Within and Without.  He has also published essays on Ellsworth Kelly and Sung Ho Kim, with whom he collaborated on an architectural project.  Steck is currently the producer of the Short Attention Span Digital Video Festival and the founding president of the Visual Culture Consortium, Boston.  Over the years, Steck has received research grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Boston University Humanities Foundation. Steck received his BA in History from Cornell University and his PhD in Art History from Boston University.

Elective Seminar: Rethinking Appropriation: Art in the Age of the Digital Archive

This Seminar will explore the many ways in which artists incorporate pre-existing intellectual property into their own artwork. In addition to providing an historical context for understanding appropriative strategies, emphasis will be placed on examining the profound effect the current shift from analog to digital technologies is having on creative practice. Among the many topics to be explored will be the act of mixing and re-contextualizing fragments of digital culture, the related issues of image authorship and copyright, and the increasing importance of the Internet archive and curatorial strategies in visual culture. This seminar is intended to be of interest to artists working in ALL media; photographers, painters, sculptors and time-based artists alike. Students should read the following PDF before the first seminar: https://www.eff.org/pages/selling-wine-without-bottles-economy-mind-global-net

Instructor: Oliver Wasow is a fine art photographer currently living and working in Rhinebeck, NY. He received his BA from Hunter College and his Master’s Degree from the Transart Institute in Austria. His work is currently represented by Theodore:Art Gallery in NYC. Wasow has had a number of one person exhibitions, including shows at Theodore:Art, Josh Baer Gallery, Janet Borden Gallery, Tom Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, and the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. His work has also been included in numerous national and international group shows, including such benchmark exhibitions as ‘Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Image World,’ at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC, and ‘The Photography of Invention,’ at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. His photographs are included in a number of private collections and are also represented in various prominent public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC and The Milwaukee Art Museum. Reviews of his work have been featured in most major art publications, including, among others, Art Forum, ArtNews and The New York Times. He has been the recipient of various grants and awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant in 1999 and, in 2000, his second New York State Council on the Arts Grant.

Documents and Images

Spring 2018 Notes

Visiting Artists Talks and Final Grad Presentations


2018 Fall Semester

in

Program Support

Academic Advisor: Jan Avgikos is an art critic and historian who is based in New York City. She is a Contributing Editor with Artforum International magazine, where she regularly publishes reviews. She is widely published and her writings appear internationally in magazines, museum catalogues, and anthologies of critical writing. Recent and forthcoming texts include a monograph on Katy Grannan (Aperture Books), and essay on Roni Horn for Dia’s ongoing series of collected lectures from the Robert Lehman series. Recent and forthcoming catalogue essays include Lili Dujourie (for the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels) and Matts Leiderstam (for the Magasin in Stockholm).She is a recipient of the Frank Jewett Mather, awarded by the College Art Association for distinction in arts criticism, and was a Mellon Fellow in graduate studies in art history at Columbia University. Ms. Avgikos is an adjunct member of the faculty for the graduate visual arts program at Columbia University, and the graduate visual arts program at NYU. She is also a professor at the School for the Visual Arts in Manhattan. In addition, she lectures regularly for the Dia Foundation for contemporary arts and at Sotheby’s in their graduate American Art program.

Artist Mentor: Max Razdow - website

Documents

Forms:

Collection of Papers:

Group 2: June Residency 15-24, 2018

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Group Critiques

Group F: Alex Gerasev, Taylor Hayes, Joe Sasarak, Anne Barnes, Marc Morin

Small Group: Laurel Sparks, Tomashi Jackson, Resident Grads: Michael Dorn, Elyse Kotakis

Individual Meetings: Peter Rostovsky, Jan Avgikos, Elyse Kotakis, Hilary Tait Nord, Michael King, Amanda Herzog, Tessa Click, Tomashi Jackson, Deborah Davidson, Sunanda K Sanyal

Seminars

Critical Theory II: Dominant Paradigms and Diverse Tactics
This course considers some emergent and dominant paradigms in contemporary cultural
production. Blurring the boundaries between diverse creative disciplines, as well as aesthetic
contemplation and political intervention, it traces a path through some of the key
conversations animating our visual and practical field. Throughout, a focus will be maintained
on how these discourses and debates overlap with popular culture, politics, technology and
social concerns. Through a series of challenging readings and discussions, students will be asked
to articulate complex artistic positions in response to this important cultural and historical
moment.

Instructor: Peter Rostovsky is a Russian-born artist who works in a variety of disciplines that include painting, sculpture, installation and digital art. His many projects attempt to bridge the gap between painting and conceptual art while remaining attentive to painting’s history and especially to its encounter with new technologies. Recently, Rostovsky has expanded his practice to explore e-books, graphic novels and comics as hybrid forms that integrate writing and visual imagery. His work has been shown widely both in the United States and abroad and has been exhibited at such venues as The Walker Art Center, MCA Santa Barbara, PS1/MOMA, Artpace, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The ICA Philadelphia, the Blanton Museum of Art, S.M.A.K., and a host of private galleries. In addition to his artistic practice, Rostovsky also writes art criticism under the pen name David Geers. Focusing on the convergence of art, politics and technology, his writing has appeared in October, Fillip, Bomb, The Third Rail Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail and Frieze.  He currently teaches at New York University and Parsons New School.

Elective Seminar: "What For?: What Contemporary Work Are We Making and Why?" –This twelve hour graduate painting seminar intimately explores the studio work of participants to facilitate an ongoing group inquiry into the subjects and methods that drive us to paint with commitment. During the term we will explore common texts in the forms of essays, poetry, and artists’ interviews. Each student will be assigned texts (and local organizations when appropriate) in response to the expressed focus of their current projects. The seminar will also include field trips to local institutions relevant to our efforts.

Instructor: Tomashi Jackson is this semester’s Visiting Faculty.  Jackson’s multi-media practice works across painting, video, textile, and the sculptural. Examining the relationship between the aesthetic and the political, Jackson creates layers of content which bridge historical actions with shifting artistic structures. Her work has been shown at venues such as MoMA PS1, the New Museum, Mass MoCA, and the Walker Art Center. Jackson is represented by Tilton Gallery in New York.
 

Documents and Images

Fall 2018 Notes

Visiting Artists Talks and Final Grad Presentations

Instagram Notes

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/arts/design/cindy-sherman-instagram.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/arts/art-auction-instagram.html

Ben Davis

 

2018 Spring Semester

in

Program Support

Academic Advisor: Peter Rostovsky is a Russian-born artist who works in a variety of disciplines that include painting, sculpture, installation and digital art. His many projects attempt to bridge the gap between painting and conceptual art while remaining attentive to painting’s history and especially to its encounter with new technologies. Recently, Rostovsky has expanded his practice to explore e-books, graphic novels and comics as hybrid forms that integrate writing and visual imagery. His work has been shown widely both in the United States and abroad and has been exhibited at such venues as The Walker Art Center, MCA Santa Barbara, PS1/MOMA, Artpace, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The ICA Philadelphia, the Blanton Museum of Art, S.M.A.K., and a host of private galleries. In addition to his artistic practice, Rostovsky also writes art criticism under the pen name David Geers. Focusing on the convergence of art, politics and technology, his writing has appeared in October, Fillip, Bomb, The Third Rail Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail and Frieze.  He currently teaches at New York University and Parsons New School.

Artist Mentor: Emily Eveleth - website

Documents

Forms: 

Collection of Papers:

Group 1: January Residency 5-14, 2018

in

Group Critiques

Group H: Caroline MacMoran, Kay Myers, Elise Thrasher, Isidro Pentzke, Marc Morin

Small Group Leaders: Deborah Davidson, Peter Rostovsky, Christian Pierce

Individual Meetings: Peter Rostovsky, Shawn Quirk, Jaclyn Poeschl, Stuart Steck, Oliver Wasow

Seminars

Critical Theory I: Dominant Paradigms and Diverse Tactics
This course considers some emergent and dominant paradigms in contemporary cultural
production. Blurring the boundaries between diverse creative disciplines, as well as aesthetic
contemplation and political intervention, it traces a path through some of the key
conversations animating our visual and practical field. Throughout, a focus will be maintained
on how these discourses and debates overlap with popular culture, politics, technology and
social concerns. Through a series of challenging readings and discussions, students will be asked
to articulate complex artistic positions in response to this important cultural and historical
moment.

Instructor: Stuart Steck for the past two decades, has worked as both a curator and academic.  Although he was originally trained in the field of decorative arts, his current interests focus on postwar art and critical theory.  He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the Art Institute of Boston since 1998.  In addition to serving on the faculty at AIB, he has also held teaching positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Boston University, and Suffolk University.  Most recently, Steck co-curated the video exhibition Israel from Within and Without.  He has also published essays on Ellsworth Kelly and Sung Ho Kim, with whom he collaborated on an architectural project.  Steck is currently the producer of the Short Attention Span Digital Video Festival and the founding president of the Visual Culture Consortium, Boston.  Over the years, Steck has received research grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Boston University Humanities Foundation. Steck received his BA in History from Cornell University and his PhD in Art History from Boston University.

Elective Seminar: Rethinking Appropriation: Art in the Age of the Digital Archive

This Seminar will explore the many ways in which artists incorporate pre-existing intellectual property into their own artwork. In addition to providing an historical context for understanding appropriative strategies, emphasis will be placed on examining the profound effect the current shift from analog to digital technologies is having on creative practice. Among the many topics to be explored will be the act of mixing and re-contextualizing fragments of digital culture, the related issues of image authorship and copyright, and the increasing importance of the Internet archive and curatorial strategies in visual culture. This seminar is intended to be of interest to artists working in ALL media; photographers, painters, sculptors and time-based artists alike. Students should read the following PDF before the first seminar: https://www.eff.org/pages/selling-wine-without-bottles-economy-mind-global-net

Instructor: Oliver Wasow is a fine art photographer currently living and working in Rhinebeck, NY. He received his BA from Hunter College and his Master’s Degree from the Transart Institute in Austria. His work is currently represented by Theodore:Art Gallery in NYC. Wasow has had a number of one person exhibitions, including shows at Theodore:Art, Josh Baer Gallery, Janet Borden Gallery, Tom Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, and the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. His work has also been included in numerous national and international group shows, including such benchmark exhibitions as ‘Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Image World,’ at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC, and ‘The Photography of Invention,’ at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. His photographs are included in a number of private collections and are also represented in various prominent public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC and The Milwaukee Art Museum. Reviews of his work have been featured in most major art publications, including, among others, Art Forum, ArtNews and The New York Times. He has been the recipient of various grants and awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant in 1999 and, in 2000, his second New York State Council on the Arts Grant.

Documents and Images

Spring 2018 Notes

Visiting Artists Talks and Final Grad Presentations

Different Arrangement