A few business items

I've been wanting to revamp the course evaluations this summer in response to concerns about how they don't encourage feedback appropriate to students studing off-campus. Erin has stepped in to help with this, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, please comment here or pass them on to Erin.

Another thing I've wanted to do (and this is the right place for it) is start a conversation about how one sets up a studio far from home for a short time, and also how the second and third years students' studio practice has (or has not) evolved after working with the facilities here. I think generating a student-authored guide to studio practice would be a very beneficial thing with which to welcome new students in the summer. Any thoughts?

This week's visitors

This week, the MFA in Ceramics, Painting and Sculptrue program at the University of the Arts welcomes Ellen Harvey to its Food for Thought series. A 1998 graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Harvey took part in the PS1 Institute for Contemporary Art’s National Studio Program. Her recent awards include a Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant for her exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy; Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant; and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2002. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Bad Mirror,” Galerie Gebruder Lehmanin, Dresden (Germany); “Mirror,” Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia; “New is Old,” Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (Poland); “Context is Everything,” Mullerdechiara Gallery, Berlin (Germany); and “A Whitney for the Whitney,” Philip Morris, New York. Selected group exhibitions include Gwangju Art Museum (Korea); Museum for Photography, Braunschweig (Germany); Wyspa Institute, Gdansk (Poland); Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; Studio Museum, New York; Prague Biennale (Turkey); Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art; and PS1 Museum, New York. Her 2,000- square-foot mosaic “Look Up, Not Down” commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit for the Queens Plaza subway station was installed in 2005.


The painting department is also playing host to artist and Tyler instructor Frank Bramblett . The photo above is of paintings from his exhibit at the Levy Gallery in Philadelphia, and more information can be found on his website.


Sculptors will have a chance to meet with Michael Grothusen, whose 2001 steel and wood sculpture, The Two of Us appears above.

As always, students and other interested parties are encouraged to use this blog to comment on the lectures and critiques.

Visitors for the week of July 24

This week, the MFA in Ceramics, Painting and Sculptrue program at the University of the Arts welcomes Ellen Harvey to its Food for Thought series. A 1998 graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Harvey took part in the PS1 Institute for Contemporary Art’s National Studio Program. Her recent awards include a Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant for her exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy; Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant; and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2002. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Bad Mirror,” Galerie Gebruder Lehmanin, Dresden (Germany); “Mirror,” Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia; “New is Old,” Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (Poland); “Context is Everything,” Mullerdechiara Gallery, Berlin (Germany); and “A Whitney for the Whitney,” Philip Morris, New York. Selected group exhibitions include Gwangju Art Museum (Korea); Museum for Photography, Braunschweig (Germany); Wyspa Institute, Gdansk (Poland); Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; Studio Museum, New York; Prague Biennale (Turkey); Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art; and PS1 Museum, New York. Her 2,000- square-foot mosaic “Look Up, Not Down” commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit for the Queens Plaza subway station was installed in 2005.

The painting department is also playing host to artist and Tyler instructor Frank Bramblett .

Sculptors will have a chance to meet with Michael Grothusen.

As always, students and other interested parties are encouraged to use this blog to comment on the lectures and critiques.

Jack Risley (and a slew of others)

Jack Risley visited the MFA program in Ceramics, Painting & Sculpture on Wednesday, July 12, discussing his work and performing exclamatory titles. The talented Mr. Risley played his cards close to his vest throughout the talk, often eschewing interpretation for deadpan description, only occasionally dropping tidbits of information that were not illustrated on the screen before us. Others must talk, and for their thoughts about Risley's forms (coincidently framed in a discourse of hybridity), you can look at this piece Nancy Princenthal banged out for Art in America

With some many artists' lectures in two days (Robert Goodman and Gerry Nichols spoke to painters, Dick Torchia to seminar students, Matt Courtney talked to Ceramic Sculptors...I figure that's about five hours of lectures between 9am Tuesday and 11am Thursday) there's a lot to chew on. Who will comment first?

Camera obscura Image is Reversed

As an artist who still has a foot stuck in the mud of skills, techniques and high-craft, I believe that there is merit in painting or constructing something "well;" that is having an ability to control one's medium. Though I do not believe it is integral to producing a successful work, I often wonder if, in our intensely stimulated culture, we overlook skill in favor of novelty or "originality." This idea came from the point in Dick Torchia's talk when he mentioned that the use of the camera obscura during the Renaissance was seen as cheating, and had the capability of discrediting one's work. This comes as a rather fresh thought today, in the age of Light Boxes, Digital Cameras, Projectors, and Photoshop, where artists are almost expected to use something extra to push their work beyond paint on canvas, or clay on a pedestal. If I were to paint two landscapes tomorrow, one plein-air, and one using a camera obscura, which would be the talk of the town? I doubt that it would be the standard landscape even if it was a "better" painting. I am not trying to say we should go back to the Academy model, I truly believe we should use any means necessary to develop our ideas most successfully, indeed whatever it takes. However I couldn't help noticing the discrepancy between eras, those previously scorned for innovation would be exalted in today's art world.

Painter Robert Goodman, July 11

Painter Robert Goodman will visit the University of the Arts Painting MFA program on Tuesday, July 11, to conduct short crits with students. Mr. Goodman earned his MFA from Tyler School of Art and his BFA from Cleveland Institute. His work was recently featured in New American Paintings, an exhibit in print curated by Alex Baker, and he has shown at the Fleisher Art Memorial (where he was a 2006 Fleisher Challenge Artist), and at the Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia.

More information on his work and links can be found on his web site.

Syd Carpenter

Ceramic Sculptor Syd Carpenter visits the MFA Program in Ceramics, Painting, & Sculpture on Wednesday July 5, 2006. Information about her work can be found here, at Swathmore University's site, here, at the Pew Fellowships in the Arts page, and at her page on Sande Webster Gallery's website.

Her current one-person exhibit at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Menagerie, is on view through August 13. You can follow this link to DCCA's homepage for more information and directions.

Movie Nights

An informal series of four screenings kicks off running through July kicks off Thursday, July 6 at 7pm at the University of the Arts.

Recognizing that art comes not only from art but also from other area of visual experience, this series of screenings explores the relationship between films and artworks in four artists’ practice. Artists will show films they found influential as a way to indirectly address the subjects that inform their work. (Some further thought on what it might mean to be influenced by something are here.)

Each event will take place in at the University of the Arts, 320 S. Broad St., Anderson Hall Room 212. All screenings are free.

Thursday, July 6 – Painter Jane Irish begins the series by introducing Different Sons (56 minutes). In the late summer of 1970, the VVAW organized Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal) a four day march by 100 Vietnam veterans from Morristown, N.J. to Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. This documentary records that event and the personal reminiscences of the participants. During the march, the veterans described their experiences in Vietnam to spectators and re-enacted scenes of civilian mistreatment which they had witnessed during the war. On the last day of the march the veterans were welcomed to Valley Forge by friends and relatives. In the closing ceremonies honoring those killed and wounded in Vietnam, the participants crush their plastic M-16 rifles and chant for peace. Ms. Irish's work has been involved with history - specifically the Viet Nam war - for some time, and she has exhibited widely. For more information about her recent show at the PA Academy, follow this link. To learn about Operation RAW, go here.

Thursday, July 13 – Filmmaker Joe Nanashe screens Even Dwarves Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970). Information about Mr. Nanashe's work can be found here here.


Tuesday, July 18 – Isaac Resnikoff screens Alone in the Wilderness (Dick Proenneke, 2004). Mr. Resnikoff's work is represented by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadlephia, and information about him can be found here.


Thursday, July 27 – Paul Falzone screens The Five Obstructions (Jorgen Leth, 2003). Directed by Lars von Trier, the film documents an experiment/interaction/game between him and his mentor, noted Danish experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth based on art/film school assignments in which students are given limitations that they must work within. If you haven't seen it, the film is a fascinating exploration of the tensions between form and content, between mentor and student, and between documentary and nondocumentary formats. It's also a really fun movie to watch