SECAC 2024 presentation in Atlanta
SECAC 2024 Annual Conference
October 23 – 26 at the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center
Atlanta, Georgia
SECAC (formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference) is a non-profit organization that promotes the study and practice of the visual arts in higher education on a national basis. SECAC facilitates cooperation and fosters on-going dialog about pertinent creative, scholarly and educational issues among teachers and administrators in universities, colleges, community colleges, professional art schools, and museums; and among independent artists and scholars.
On Thursday, October 24, I joined Dr. Elissa Graff, Dean of Faculty and Chair of General Education at the Kentucky College of Art + Design, during a session entitled From How to Why: Examining the Pedagogical Evolution of Studio Instruction. During this session, I made the presentation, Purpose and process: Simultaneous student development of meaning and manner in studio art electives, with the following abstract:
Between foundations and capstone courses lie studio art electives that engage students’ individual creative interests. At many undergraduate institutions, these courses encourage students to develop artmaking skills while pursuing important conceptual or material emphases. These students often align studio elective selections with departmental programs or platforms designed to advance future professional endeavors. In these electives, art professors are tasked with providing process-related studio-art instruction while concurrently encouraging students to embrace and promote cultural, community-oriented, or socially relevant ideas.
This presentation explores these phenomena as presented and experienced in two studio art electives at the Kentucky College of Art + Design (KyCAD): STU221 (Silkscreen: Text as Image) and STU327 (Collage + Assemblage, Curating Chance). It will show examples of assignments that instruct students about process while simultaneously asking them to identify, research, and present their core ideas. In many cases, these ideas are either loosely defined or set out as experiments created to evaluate reactions and collect feedback. We will see how professors and students balance understanding ways of working while fashioning artworks that mirror the vital postmodern themes that they care about.
I also had my digitized Super 8 film Cervidae featured in the 2024 SECAC Juried Exhibition at the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries at Georgia State University.
SECAC, P.O. Box 9773, Wilmington, DC 19809
secacart.org