TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I’m committed to smudging the borders between artistic disciplines. So I get inspired by all kinds of things: the puppets that Paul Klee made for his son, the masks that Saul Steinberg fashioned from paper bags, the self-portraits that Arthur Tress made by photographing his own shadow, the obtuse wisdom of Leonard Cohen, Hopi Katsinas, the Epic of Gilgamesh. I love opera and comic strips.
For twenty years I have worked on the administrative staff of Dance Exchange, founded by choreographer Liz Lerman. I often think of my work with this maverick organization and its visionary founder as my graduate education in the arts. This education has marked me with a set of values that I try to share through my own teaching: Curiosity opens more doors than certitude. People make art to comprehend and the more we comprehend the more we unearth the incomprehensible. Art grows not by secrecy and specialization by sharing its methods and mixing its means. Embarking on a process without knowing its outcome is a powerful path to discovery and a tremendous exercise in human freedom. Art is a lifelong experience and artistry can evolve and emerge at any age.
My teaching emphasizes process, practice, and aesthetics. I encourage students to maintain a state of inquiry. I strive to prod discovery by asking good questions.
Photo: Corinne Diop
For twenty years I have worked on the administrative staff of Dance Exchange, founded by choreographer Liz Lerman. I often think of my work with this maverick organization and its visionary founder as my graduate education in the arts. This education has marked me with a set of values that I try to share through my own teaching: Curiosity opens more doors than certitude. People make art to comprehend and the more we comprehend the more we unearth the incomprehensible. Art grows not by secrecy and specialization by sharing its methods and mixing its means. Embarking on a process without knowing its outcome is a powerful path to discovery and a tremendous exercise in human freedom. Art is a lifelong experience and artistry can evolve and emerge at any age.
My teaching emphasizes process, practice, and aesthetics. I encourage students to maintain a state of inquiry. I strive to prod discovery by asking good questions.
Photo: Corinne Diop
WHAT I TEACH
Ideas in Contemporary Photography
A course combining art history-style study of trends in photography from the 1970s to the present with studio-style assignments in which students emulate aspects of the work they are studying.
Ideas in Contemporary Portraiture
Contemporary life challenges fixed notions of identity, individuality, and selfhood. Contemporary photo portraiture follows suit, employing fragmentation, masquerade, social context, public/private, and intimate/anonymous. We will look at stimulating examples of contemporary portraiture and explore these ideas in our own photographs.
Text and the Photographic Image
Words and photos can yield unique meanings when combined. With key reference points from contemporary work combining text and image as well as reading in theory, students explore the artistic potential of combining text with photography exploring diverse approaches to the ancient, contemporary act of synthesizing these two modes of expression. (Available as multi week course or short-form lecture/workshop.)
Critique is Creative Seminar
This course engages students as they develop and track a substantial artistic project over the course of a semester, using Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process and its principles as a core method in which students not only give and receive feedback, but custom-design a curriculum and research plan shaped to their artistic path.
Creativity in Theory and Practice
A course introducing major ideas in the field of creativity studies, drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies. Students engage in creative projects as a practicum related to these ideas. (Course can be structured for photography or interdisciplinary focus.)
Provoking Creativity: A Course in Interdisciplinary Collaboration
(Course developed and taught in collaboration with theater artist Catherine Mueller)
Through a sequence of cumulative assignments, students engage in a series of collaborations throughout the course, experiencing multiple scenarios of content, form, intention, outcome, evaluation, and communication. Students work in pairs, designing directives for one another and responding to directives received, generating individual and collective bodies of work.
A course combining art history-style study of trends in photography from the 1970s to the present with studio-style assignments in which students emulate aspects of the work they are studying.
Ideas in Contemporary Portraiture
Contemporary life challenges fixed notions of identity, individuality, and selfhood. Contemporary photo portraiture follows suit, employing fragmentation, masquerade, social context, public/private, and intimate/anonymous. We will look at stimulating examples of contemporary portraiture and explore these ideas in our own photographs.
Text and the Photographic Image
Words and photos can yield unique meanings when combined. With key reference points from contemporary work combining text and image as well as reading in theory, students explore the artistic potential of combining text with photography exploring diverse approaches to the ancient, contemporary act of synthesizing these two modes of expression. (Available as multi week course or short-form lecture/workshop.)
Critique is Creative Seminar
This course engages students as they develop and track a substantial artistic project over the course of a semester, using Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process and its principles as a core method in which students not only give and receive feedback, but custom-design a curriculum and research plan shaped to their artistic path.
Creativity in Theory and Practice
A course introducing major ideas in the field of creativity studies, drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies. Students engage in creative projects as a practicum related to these ideas. (Course can be structured for photography or interdisciplinary focus.)
Provoking Creativity: A Course in Interdisciplinary Collaboration
(Course developed and taught in collaboration with theater artist Catherine Mueller)
Through a sequence of cumulative assignments, students engage in a series of collaborations throughout the course, experiencing multiple scenarios of content, form, intention, outcome, evaluation, and communication. Students work in pairs, designing directives for one another and responding to directives received, generating individual and collective bodies of work.
