expectations of students
I expect and ask for different things from beginners and graduate students. From beginners I ask for courage and persistence since the materials we use are often recalcitrant and their struggles with these materials are exposed. I try to honor the learning experience and direct them toward self-observation and self-teaching.
I expect a full-bore engagement from our advanced and graduate students. I expect them to look around, to look beyond the practice of their colleagues here to the world of art practitioners. I try to wean them from making art as assignments and help them make art from their hearts and passions.
I think probably in any class I have, at any level, I ask for a full commitment, a full engagement, a high degree of consciousness, and a concerted effort to grow and take risks. philosophy of teaching
I feel we are facilitators, and that the students must learn to discern what is valuable in any discourse. I feel that there is not a right and a wrong way to make art, but that we need to examine our visual language to see if it is communicating. I feel there is room for many divergent styles of art and that to some extent making art in close quarters (as in our studios) can homogenize work. I try to encourage critical evaluative thinking that will pinpoint why choices are being made and what the premises are underlying those choices. I encourage self-educating, looking, observing, journal keeping, reading, and questioning. I believe questions may be one of our most important endeavors.
what students should learn from me
On the one hand, everything technical I can teach them. Technical knowledge in my field was infrequently written about; even now the sources for information are often word of mouth. School is a wonderfully rich banquet for this kind of material.
On the other hand, I hope that they get from me some examples of how to live and do the work: why it is important, what integrity means, how far one must push the work, what the choices say when we make them. I ask every student what I ask myself: what is your job as an artist? How are you going to accomplish it?
personal creative practice
I primarily create installation and sculpture which often has an installational component. I try to speak with the materials I use, to use the range and dynamic of their voices. This has led to some unconventional uses of materials and space. My work tends to be reductive and abstract, but with strong references to whatever is being addressed- an emotion, a place, a body part, but always with a leaning toward the whole sentence and not just the word.
I make vessels for pure pleasure and they are
indeed pleasure vessels, full of unbridled mischief.
awards & recognitions
Residency at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony; Faculty Research Grant for SPLIT HOUSE; Horowitz Fellow, Claremont, CA.
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