CAA News Today
Sarah Krupp and Meghan O’Connor
posted by CAA — April 16, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Sarah Krupp and Meghan O’Connor discuss shifting from a BFA to a BA as faculty.
Sarah Krupp is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska. She teaches 2D & 3D Design, all levels of Sculpture, and sometimes Art Appreciation. Sarah can generally be found coated in a mixture of wood, plaster and metal dust.
Since 2007, Meghan O’Connor has been teaching a combination of foundations and printmaking courses; currently at Wayne State College, one of Meghan’s biggest challenges is removing all the cat hair before discussing craftsmanship with her students.
Kelly Murdoch-Kitt and Denielle Emans
posted by CAA — April 09, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, assistant professor at University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art and Design, and Denielle Emans, assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s campus in Qatar, discuss virtual cross-cultural collaborations.
Justin Lincoln and Amy Alexander
posted by CAA — April 02, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Justin Lincoln and Amy Alexander discuss programming in the arts.
Justin Lincoln is associate professor in New Genres and Digital Art at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington where he is bringing the indie/DIY ethos to get his students involved with new media.
Amy Alexander is an associate professor in Visual Arts at UC San Diego. Her teaching bounces around the overlaps of tech art, public art, expanded cinema, and performance and is sprinkled with occasional bursts of unabashed geekery.
Jolene Powell and Richard Danford
posted by CAA — March 26, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Jolene Powell and Richard Danford discuss teaching study abroad.
Jolene Powell is McCoy Professor of Art and Director of Gallery 310 at Marietta College teaching courses in all levels studio art in drawing, painting, printmaking, and occasional special topics classes. Her favorite learning opportunities happen when she can take students to actual artwork and add an experiential components to her classes.
Richard Danford is Vice-President for Student Life at Marietta College, where he previously served as associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese. He spent two years living in Madrid, where he taught English and pursued doctoral coursework in Spanish linguistics. He has led multiple short-term study abroad courses to both Spain and Brazil, focusing on everything from language to civilization and culture to human geography to the Masters of Spanish Painting.
Elizabeth Moran and Erica Molesworth
posted by CAA — March 19, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Elizabeth Moran and Erica Molesworth discuss teaching dark room to digital natives.
Elizabeth Moran is an artist and lecturer in the Art, Media, and Technology program at Parsons School of Design. Her work investigates how varying belief systems that inform our understanding of recorded evidence.
Erica Molesworth is an artist and lecturer in photography at California College of the Arts and at San Francisco Art Institute; she is interested in the expanded field of photography and its intersection with moving images and digital media.
An Interview with Artist Serhat Tanyolacar on Censorship at Polk State College
posted by CAA — March 15, 2018
Serhat Tanyolacar, Death of Innocence, 2018. Courtesy the artist’s website. serhattanyolacar.com
In January, Serhat Tanyolacar, an adjunct faculty member in the art department at Polk State College in Florida, was invited to submit artwork to an open faculty show. The work he submitted, Death of Innocence, was subsequently rejected by the college as being “too controversial” to display. The artwork juxtaposes sexually explicit images of political figures such as Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos and Vladimir Putin —”the world as it is” in Tanyolacar’s words—with “the world as we could be,” featuring artists, poets, and writers, like T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh, Neal Cassady, Sylvia Plath, Bertolt Brecht, Nâzim Hikmet, and fictional characters such as Atticus Finch and Cyrano de Bergerac.
CAA media and content manager Joelle Te Paske spoke recently with Tanyolacar via phone about his experience.
“As you may already know, three months ago, all Polk State College art faculty received an email from Holly Scoggins, the art department head. Basically, we were being asked to participate in an art faculty exhibition on the Lakeland campus. There was no criteria listed.”
Tanyolacar said he responded the same day in an email with pictures of two of his works, including Death of Innocence, and was assured verbally by Scoggins, ‘We always support controversial work.’ As Tanyolacar explains, “To be extremely honest, I don’t think she looked at the work until the very last moment. This is what I feel.”
He continued: “Then, I waited. I didn’t hear anything until February 6th, and February 8th was the deadline. I received an email saying: ‘After review by the gallery committee’—and there was no committee, no nothing, until this moment—’the committee has decided Death of Innocence should not be displayed in the faculty art show. It will be too controversial to display at this time, and we would be happy for you to display some of your other artwork.'”
Subsequently Tanyolacar says he received criteria after the deadline, and then a phone call from the dean of academic affairs to schedule a meeting between himself, Scoggins, and the college president, Angela Garcia Falconetti. During the meeting Falconetti apologized, but maintained the work would not be shown.
“Meanwhile,” Tanyolacar continued, “I started receiving friend requests and messages from very disturbing individuals, on social media, on Facebook and Twitter, as well as private phone numbers. I think I received six or seven phone calls. I answered two of them, but nobody said anything.”
Tanyolacar has since reached out to FIRE, National Coalition Against Censorship, and PEN America for support on the issue. “Polk State should be an example.” he said. “[It’s] not only Polk State—other schools, other institutions, they are all dealing with academic freedom issues and oppression, but people chose to be passive and silent.”
FIRE and the National Coalition Against Censorship wrote to Falconetti last month, asking her to re-evaluate the decision, but a university spokesperson said they had no comment.
Summer Lopez, PEN America Senior Director of Free Expression Programs, issued the following statement:
Having provided no criteria for works to be included in their exhibit, Polk State College cannot retroactively determine that certain topics or viewpoints are off limits. Artistic freedom must be protected on our college campuses in particular, as it is there that open debate and the sharing of diverse viewpoints contributes most directly to intellectual growth and freedom. At a moment when universities around the country are struggling with deeply challenging issues around free expression and young people are actively engaging in public debate on these and other crucial matters, Polk State College does its students a disservice by suggesting they cannot handle a little controversial art in their hallways.
Tanyolacar is no stranger to controversy surrounding his work. He was also involved in a censorship debate in 2014, over a public artwork at the University of Iowa. He says: “I don’t give up on academia. I know that I have a voice in [it]. I take necessary risks. That’s a big part of my process, because otherwise, you cannot challenge the authority and display its flaws. That is my strategy—taking risks, and exposing the corruption, whether it is in academia or in politics.”
Read more: Polk State College deems explicit anti-Trump art “too controversial” for campus display (Tampa Bay Times)
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kelly Boehmer and Matt Toole
posted by CAA — March 12, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Kelly Boehmer and Matt Toole discuss teaching teaching 3D and sculpture.
Kelly Boehmer lives in Pooler, GA and teaches as a Lecturer at Georgia Southern University. She makes large-scale, soft sculpture installations (often depicting unicorns) and is a member of the performance art band, Glitter Chariot.
Matt Toole lives in Savannah, GA and was a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design from 2006 to 2016. He is a sculptor who works with a variety of materials and processes including performance works focusing on rituals associated with making.
Mandy Horton and Breuna Baine
posted by CAA — March 05, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Mandy Horton and Breuna Baine discuss the Bauhaus and the New Typography.
Horton is an associate professor at the University of Central Oklahoma whose specialty is in design history, she has developed multiple courses on this subject, including an award-winning History of Graphic Design online course and is director of the new Design History minor at UCO.
Baine is an associate professor of graphic design at Auburn University Montgomery.
Chris Ireland and Charles Siegfried
posted by CAA — February 19, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Chris Ireland, associate professor of art and art appreciation instructor at Tarleton State University in Texas, and Charles Siegfried, adjunct professor at Clackamas Community College & Portland State University, discuss teaching Introduction to Art to non-majors.
Joe Lupo and Carmon Colangelo
posted by CAA — February 12, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Joe Lupo, associate professor and graduate coordinator at West Virginia University, and Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University at St. Louis, discuss what makes a successful educator from the perspective of an administrator.