Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Thursday's assignment, and more interviewing info

WHAT'S DUE FOR THURSDAY'S CLASS

1. Two or three images of your work (in digital form -- either pictures or scans) that you will post to your blog. These can be sketchy or preparatory images of work-in-progress -- it doesn't have to be finished work.

2. Contact info for your three potential artist interviewees, and at least five questions you intend to ask your artist (you might use the same five questions regardless of who you end up interviewing, but you also might have some questions that are specifically tailored to each potential artist. You will only need to conduct one interview for the purposes of this class, but as I said before, please have two fallback options.

The interview itself (not the transcript of the interview, but a recording of the interview itself) will be due in 1 1/2 weeks, at the beginning of class on Thursday, Sept. 8.

MORE INFO FOR YOUR ARTIST INTERVIEW

Your interview subject should be someone who is doing something you'd like to be doing, after you're out of school -- or perhaps simply someone whose work interests you on some level. You will be interviewing them about how they do their work -- not in terms of art technique (although if that interests you, that could be part of the interview), but how they've arranged their life so they can do work that is meaningful to them. Maybe they're not making their own artwork full time, but they've made space in their lives to feel their artistic impulses somehow.

How have they, logistically, made it work for them to do the sort of work that they're doing? How has their career progressed and developed?

Come to class with at least five potential questions to ask them. If you want to make an initial contact with them before now and then, that would probably be smart, but don't do the interview itself until we've had a chance to develop interview questions further. I'd recommend saying you'd like an interview of about 20 or 30 minutes. You can frame it like this:

"I am taking a class called Advanced Studio, and part of the aim of the class is to think about how, practically, we will pursue art-making after we graduate from school. One of the projects is to interview an artist about their career -- how it has progressed, and how they have managed to balance their work and their life. If you would be available for a 20 to 30 minute interview on that topic, I'd be very grateful." Obviously you can make it more specific to your target interviewee.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Link to Syllabus

If you want to download it, click below:

FNAR 380

FNAR 482

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Assignment for Tuesday


By Tuesday's class, you will need to have set up a blog (which you will be contributing to over the course of the semester, tracking your progress as you work toward JAPR of your BFA show). You need to have at least one post on your blog, answering the following three questions:

1. Why do you make art?

2. What is the function or role of an artist in today's culture? (This is your personal take on this, it doesn't have to be an "objective" or comprehensive analysis)

3. Who are three working artists you can think of, who you might contact to interview about their professional lives? You will only be contacting one, but I want you to have a couple fallback options if your first couple choices end up being unavailable.

For those of you who had to check out early because of the art history conflict, please listen to this interview by Maurice Sendak, which we listened to after you were gone. To my mind, Sendak talk about his work elegantly and well -- it's a sort of model for how an artist can talk about their work:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5386235

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for the Studio Class.

For next class, there are two things due:

1. A brief response paper (printed out) on this article about Annie Leibovitz's financial troubles. I want you to answer the following questions, and be prepared to discuss the article in class:

a. Do you have sympathy for Leibovitz? Why or why not?

b. What is Leibovitz's greatest source of collateral?

c. What does Art Capital Group do?

d. What are the decisions she made that seem to have gotten her into financial trouble?

Updates on the suit:

Leibovitz settles with Art Capital

Leibovitz sued again

2. Please come prepared to show some of your recent work to the class. This can be shown from computer, or you can show the actual art objects themselves. Give some though towards what your work is "about," and what you prefer to talk about when you talk about your art (do you prefer to talk about your art process? About the ideas behind the work? etc.)