WRITING
Here In Mississippi
Here In Mississippi
2013
Here in Mississippi, where I have taught for the past year, the holy trinity for most is family, football, and church. This model of the trinity presents me with a unique teaching opportunity in a region dominated by sports and Baptists. Many of my students are able to accept only two of three dominant search modes for universal understanding. Theology, Science, and Art strive to order the raw data of our perceptions into familiar structures. I see no conflict between the three, but many a young Mississippi student cannot reconcile faith and evolution, or self-expression and service to community. I have taught college art in New Jersey, Indiana, Kentucky and Mississippi, and in each state I encounter a common challenge: in order to teach effectively, I must learn the cultural language that my students speak as I speak to them in the language of contemporary visual arts.
I received my MFA in Visual Arts from the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University, my Post-Baccalaureate in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and my BA in History from Reed College. My real education began, though, as the child of a painter. I was born in New York City and raised within a small colony of New York artists. Years later, while pursuing my undergraduate degree in American history, I would spend all of my available time in the art department's sculpture studio. When I graduated from Reed College, I traveled back east and became an executive correspondent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After a few years in Washington, DC, I decided to head back to school for an advanced degree in the visual arts. For some reason, perhaps it was the influence of my childhood, I eschewed the sculptural focus of my undergraduate years and began to paint. When I applied to the Maryland Institute College of Art, I met with then head of the Hoffberger School of Painting, Grace Hartigan. Given her place in the cannon of American Abstract Expressionism, it was a momentous opportunity for me. Ms. Hartigan gave my paintings a hard five-second look and said, "You are a sculptor." And that was that. I saw myself, saw my aesthetic leanings clearly, and accepted them.
At Maryland Institute College of Art, I came into contact with the poet and critic John Yau and, after earning my Post-Baccalaureate, I followed him to Rutgers University to pursue my MFA in Visual Arts. I found myself in a visual arts program chock full of abstract painters. I met my husband at Rutgers; he is a painter. Everywhere I go, as I stick to my sculptural core, I encounter painting and I deeply enjoy the conversation that surrounds it. Still, I am a sculptor. I am a bit of an island: a sculptor raised by painters, educated with painters, married to a painter.
I support the ethos that boundaries are constructed and to be challenged. This notion extends to the structure of any given object. A sweater might be somethingnotasweater; a painting in fact a sculpture. I work conceptually, that is, I begin with an idea or impulse and then search for the right means to bring it about. I am not loyal to any material or process rather, I resist what is given and try to identify the essential.
One of my guiding impulses is to mark a material history as well as to excavate an object buried within itself, obscured by the naming process. I think that is the condition of being alive, of growth. We grow over ourselves and accrue new titles that obscure our former states. The self morphs, but where we have been, that information is stored. And this applies not only to the personal, but to formal and historical narratives as well.
My students unfold as they gather. They reveal themselves as those selves stretch to incorporate (or resist) new experience. I allow for who they are right now. And then I ask them who they might become. I remember my own transitions as shifts of weight that require firm platforms for launching and landing. My students launch and land each in his or her own way. I assist them.
I received my MFA in Visual Arts from the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University, my Post-Baccalaureate in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and my BA in History from Reed College. My real education began, though, as the child of a painter. I was born in New York City and raised within a small colony of New York artists. Years later, while pursuing my undergraduate degree in American history, I would spend all of my available time in the art department's sculpture studio. When I graduated from Reed College, I traveled back east and became an executive correspondent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After a few years in Washington, DC, I decided to head back to school for an advanced degree in the visual arts. For some reason, perhaps it was the influence of my childhood, I eschewed the sculptural focus of my undergraduate years and began to paint. When I applied to the Maryland Institute College of Art, I met with then head of the Hoffberger School of Painting, Grace Hartigan. Given her place in the cannon of American Abstract Expressionism, it was a momentous opportunity for me. Ms. Hartigan gave my paintings a hard five-second look and said, "You are a sculptor." And that was that. I saw myself, saw my aesthetic leanings clearly, and accepted them.
At Maryland Institute College of Art, I came into contact with the poet and critic John Yau and, after earning my Post-Baccalaureate, I followed him to Rutgers University to pursue my MFA in Visual Arts. I found myself in a visual arts program chock full of abstract painters. I met my husband at Rutgers; he is a painter. Everywhere I go, as I stick to my sculptural core, I encounter painting and I deeply enjoy the conversation that surrounds it. Still, I am a sculptor. I am a bit of an island: a sculptor raised by painters, educated with painters, married to a painter.
I support the ethos that boundaries are constructed and to be challenged. This notion extends to the structure of any given object. A sweater might be somethingnotasweater; a painting in fact a sculpture. I work conceptually, that is, I begin with an idea or impulse and then search for the right means to bring it about. I am not loyal to any material or process rather, I resist what is given and try to identify the essential.
One of my guiding impulses is to mark a material history as well as to excavate an object buried within itself, obscured by the naming process. I think that is the condition of being alive, of growth. We grow over ourselves and accrue new titles that obscure our former states. The self morphs, but where we have been, that information is stored. And this applies not only to the personal, but to formal and historical narratives as well.
My students unfold as they gather. They reveal themselves as those selves stretch to incorporate (or resist) new experience. I allow for who they are right now. And then I ask them who they might become. I remember my own transitions as shifts of weight that require firm platforms for launching and landing. My students launch and land each in his or her own way. I assist them.
