Spring 2010 Courses
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Art and Imaginations of Space. [Art History/Critical Studies]
In this course, we will explore a variety of chartings of psychophysical landscapes with the object of suggesting new approaches to studio practices. Course readings will traverse a range of conceptual, cultural, and geopolitical viewpoints, and a variety of media in which map-making and space-imagining have been undertaken. Audiovisual media (film, sound-art, the internet) will be an important focus, but not an exclusive one. We will draw from Western cultural critics and philosophers who have taken up questions of space and how we inhabit it (Walter Benjamin, Edward Soja, Henri Lefebre, Guy Debord), but we will also give at least equal attention to other approaches: post-colonial, queer, and feminist, for example. Our archive will be wide-ranging; possibilities include: Persian rugs; Asian and Australian-Aboriginal sand-drawings; music notation; internet sites; star-maps. Special attention will be given to how space has been mapped through sound, from French village bells to Janet Cardiff’s sound-walks and prison installations. As an adjunct to the course, we will screen films featuring space and mapping, whether in relation to colonial projects or to undoing these; whether in order to anchor and orient us as cultural subjects or to disorient us, to disrupt our psycho-spatial coordinates, and to urge us to question our conditioned senses of ‘direction.’ Film possibilities include: Gabbeh (Iran); Pepe le Moko (France) and The Battle of Algiers (Italy/Algeria); The Saragossa Manuscript (Poland); The Tracker (Australia); The Searchers (USA); Head On (Australia); The Wizard of Oz (USA);Gerry (USA); The Blair Witch Project (USA); The Bourne Identity (USA); Peggy and Fred in Hell (USA).
You Are Here [Painting, Drawing]
How does our sensory understanding of place inform our work? This class focuses on using the body as the tool for exploration of place, both literally and metaphorically. We’ll approach the idea of mapping by using the body as a starting point: in an age of Googlemaps and GPS systems, how do we chart the physical, intimate and ephemeral interactions with place? Through various painting and drawing exercises, we’ll look at the figure as narrator, how external information (weather, color, sound, texture) informs our work, tracking movement and expression, sequential drawing, identity and personal history, and go deeper into the idea of visually representing internal and external states. Our goal is to explore figuration beyond traditional forms and to experiment with temporal and sense based data in our work.
Dahlia Elsayed
Image and Text [Painting, Drawing, Installation]
Maps communicate information by using images and text, and both are equally important tools to understanding location and direction. Inspired by the binary nature of maps, this class explores the fluid boundaries between visual art and writing, and the fusion of text and image as devices of visual communication. How does text make comprehensible what seems elusive and abstract? We will experiment with the combinative power of words alongside or integrated into image, from the meaning of the words themselves to the way they are visually depicted. We will look at compositional strategies, how text augments the visual concepts of mapping, and by using your own writing or found text we will explore ideas of contemporary cartography through painting, drawing and installation. Our objective is to move deeper into the interdisciplinary possibilities of your artistic practice.
Dahlia Elsayed
Personal Landscapes - 3D models and maquettes [Sculpture, Installation, Site-specific Work]
This class investigates the various ways artists have worked with the landscape - both historically and in the present day - in a formal as well as conceptual way. The artificial character of landscape images is a significant topic in contemporary art. We will look at the work of artists as Hans Op de Beeck, Marine Hugonnier, Tinka Pittoors, Monica Struder/Christophe van den Berg, Rapedius/Rindfeish, Bodys Isek Kingeles, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller etc. The goal in this class is to come to a personal artistic interpretation of the modern-day landscape. The surroundings of Pont Aven and our travels to European cities will be the starting point for models, maquettes and sculptures. From the maquettes we’ll explore further steps with other media (photography, video, drawing, etc.). We will use a variety of techniques and materials in sculptural, installation and site-specific work.
Hedwig Brouckaert
UN / RE / MAPPING [Sculpture, Assemblage, Installation, Site-specific Work]
In this 3D class, mapping is understood in the broadest sense of the term, as diagrams of both spatial and temporal relationships. We will explore systems as a basis for making work and experiment with rules, data, chance, action, collaboration and other processes that often lead to surprising images. We will work with a wide variety of materials and techniques and interdisciplinary is encouraged. We will look at contemporary artists whose work is ‘rule-based’ and art that specifically deals with mapping time and space, (On Kawara, Tehching Hsieh, Tatsuo Miyajima, Fishli & Weiss, Mark Manders, Georges Perec, and John Cage amongst others). Through assignments, readings and regular critiques by peers and faculty, the class seeks to assist students in finding and refining their own visual language.
Hedwig Brouckaert
French Language, Literature and Culture Level I
A serious class for complete beginners. Students live with French families and have frequent contact with the people of Pont-Aven through social and artistic exchanges. Classroom work will explore the language needs of the encounters and focus on French as it is used in everyday situations. Basic grammar and vocabulary will be covered through exercises, homework and discussion. Conversational skills will be emphasized, as students move out of the classroom on a regular basis to open-air markets, cafes, and field trips to engage in real conversation. Students study with textbooks custom designed by the teacher and focus on vocabulary for daily life in France, and especially for artists.
Laure Collier
French Language, Literature and Culture Level II
Intermediate students will improve their French through exercises like reading required books, oral presentations, listening to French music, watching French movies... Students will study with textbooks on different topics written by the teacher which focuses on specific vocabulary, and especially for artists. All courses are junior/senior (third or fourth year) art school level courses. They meet the NASAD required contact hours of 90 for a studio course and 45 for Liberal Arts. Study Trips are considered part of the curriculum and are led by the professors.
Laure Collier
View Current Faculty Biographies
Barbara McBane, PhD.
Barbara McBane is the Head of Critical Studies at the Pont-Aven School of Art. Working with the Academic Director, she creates each semester’s theme and designs the Critical Studies courses that form its conceptual foundation. From 2006-2009, she taught film-related courses for the Women and Gender Studies Program at the University of California, Davis. She has also taught film history and theory for the Film and Digital Media Department at UC Santa Cruz, and film post-production courses for Ardmore Studios, Dublin, Ireland and the UCLA Department of Film and Television. Before earning a PhD degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in the History of Consciousness program, Barbara worked for many years in film production and post-production on a wide range of projects: feature films and documentaries; experimental films and art-based projects and events. Her film credits include several Academy-Award winning films in her craft specialty of sound post-production/editing.
Hedwig Brouckaert
Hedwig Brouckaert (1973 Chile) is a Belgian artist living in Ghent (Flanders) and NYC. She obtained an MFA from the University of California, Davis after completing a Master’s Degree in Sculpture and a Postgraduate Degree at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Belgium. Over the years she received several Artist Grants from the Flemish Government in Belgium, and fellowships of Yaddo, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Anderson Ranch, Virginia Center for the Arts, Ragdale Foundation, R. M.MacNamara Foundation and Vermont Studio Center. Brouckaert shows regularly in Europe and the US and is represented by Gallery Jan Dhaese in Belgium and Radical Gallery in Switzerland. Her artistic practice consists of sculpture, installation, drawing and digital media (animated drawing and large scale prints). Hedwig Brouckaert has taught beginning through advanced level courses of drawing and sculpture at numerous institutions, including Art Academies in Belgium (Tielt, Ghent), the University of California, Davis and Montana State University in Bozeman.
Dahlia Elsayed
Dahlia Elsayed combines text and imagery to create visually narrative paintings that document internal and external geographies. Her work, influenced by conceptual art, comics, and landscape painting, is informed by autobiography and environment, to create illustrated documents of places and memories. Her paintings, prints and artist books have been shown at galleries and art institutions throughout the United States and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Clementine Gallery and the Jersey City Museum. Her work is in the public collections of the US Department of State, Johnson & Johnson Corporation, The Jersey City Museum, The Newark Museum, Newark Public Library, New Jersey State Museum, amongst others. Dahlia has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, Visual Studies Workshop, Women's Studio Workshop, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The NJ State Council on the Arts. She received her MFA from Columbia University, and lives and works in New Jersey.
Susan Working
Susan Working is the Academic Director of the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art. She was the director of the Furniture Design and Sculpture Programs and the Visiting Artist Program at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village Colorado from 2002- 2009. Her current work as both artist and arts administrator at PASCA has focused on the combining of wood with other media such as painting and digital media and on the collaborative process. Her hybrid sculptures combining studio furniture, drawings and prints have been exhibited at the Salone Internazionale de Mobile, Milan, Italy, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York and in galleries across the U.S.
Susan received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She has taught at California College of the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design and Anderson Ranch Arts Center.
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