In the mid-1880's Paul Gauguin traveled to the rural town of Pont-Aven to escape the fashions and trends of the Parisian art scene. In Pont-Aven, Gauguin felt free from the constraints of Paris to experiment, invent and develop his work. This course is conceived in the spirit of Paul Gauguin.
In this course, students will develop a body of work based on the information and experiences they glean from their relocation to Pont-Aven. Students will develop an awareness of what they are formulating in drawing and painting and it's relationship to distant and recent history. Students will document their experiences in journals, sketchbooks and photographs. This information will be used as subject matter in their body of work. Students will draw and paint from a number of sources such as observation, photography, and mass media.
Although this course will be taught from a painter's perspective, students will be encouraged to extend the medium beyond "oil on canvas" as well as explore other media. Students will be encouraged to question the medium and its position in the Western continuum as well as its psychological impact on the viewer.
With the co-instructor's direct, studio based mentoring, challenges will be offered to students at all levels. Beginning level work will address the formal qualities of an artwork such as line, shape, value, texture, color, and perspective with intense observational and interpretive "interior and exterior" projects in painting and drawing. Intermediate level students will learn work from observation and a selection of conceptual topics that include the Pont-Aven rural and urban settings, life and visual environment. Students working at a more advanced level will learn to (in relation to the course format) paint and draw from a self-directed approach in combine with peers and faculty.
All students will learn, in the studio environment to critique their work, as well as their peers in individual and group sessions. All course work will be subject to rigorous critique, and students will be available to discuss their work and practice on a daily basis. Students will learn to present their work for portfolio review, and prepare their paintings/drawing for installation and gallery exhibitions.
All students in will be exposed to slides that cover imagery from the Post Impressionist epic, to concurrent contemporary work by living artists. Included in the studio sessions will be slide presentations with discussions addressing pertinent Q and A on technical, material and conceptual issues. All levels will participate in the integration and survey of Historical and Studio relevant topics.
Paul Paiement (Cypress College) and Bob Alderette (USC), 3 credits

Students will explore sequences in the unconscious and how they are related to their experiences, dreams, visions, etc. We will work with dreams, journals and other personal materials. Much theory today focuses on politics or other world events. Personal narratives are common in literature, but are lacking in the much visual art. This course will take the opposite approach. The students will read a short Alchemical text called "The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz". The class will use the alchemical model as a way of exploring processes occurring in the unconscious. We will focus on experiences in the life of the students and develop narratives that show a progression or sequence. The goal of the class will be to help students make art from their own lives in a meaningful way. Students will make a series of drawings or books. Other options such as paintings, a performance, or film may be discussed with the professor. All students will be required to keep journal. The first hour of each class will focus on readings and the journals. We will discuss artists who work from personal series of events such as Carolee Schneemann and Anselm Kiefer.
Ann McCoy, 3 credits

This class will explore the Occidental versus the Oriental approach to a sequence. An example would be a Warhol series of multiple images as opposed to a Tibetan image of multiple Buddhas. We will explore ideas about sequences beginning with the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, and Indian philosophical concepts like Anakanta. Students will look at the idea of a sequence as a pilgrimage. and examine how they are viewed in both the east and the west. The notion of the personal and the transpersonal will be discussed. The class will focus on monuments like Borobudur, texts like the Canterbury Tales, and pilgrimage literature from France and the local countryside. We will discuss the vision quests and pilgrimages Joseph Beuys took with students in the 70's. Students will create a pilgrimage using their personal life experience. A series of readings will be presented in the first hour of each class. Students may work with video, performance, drawings, journals and books. The professor is open to student requests. The class will take advantage of monuments around the school and the Celtic past. The work of Indian artist Nalini Malini will be discussed.
Ann McCoy, 3 credits

This course will use the "body" (corporeal, political, imagined,) as the primary material for creative exploration. Performance actions (movement, voice, stillness, endurance, etc.) combined with installation practices and object/prop manipulation will give us the tools to create hybrid experiences that can address concepts of self, cultural assimilation/displacement and site (landscape and architecture) articulation. Documentation strategies (video/audio/archive) will also be developed to create records of these temporal moments. Historical precedents and contemporary strategies will be addressed but this is a studio class and we will be actively developing pieces, interventions and actions that will take advantage of Pont-Aven and the surrounding environs.
Some of the questions we'll explore:
How can I use my corporeality as material, gesture and marker?
How can voice be used as a tool?
What strategies can shift and elevate the body's movements and actions from the mundane to the intentional, from the pragmatic to the poetic?
How can I script/score performance work?
Can architectural histories and functions be poetically "unearthed" by a temporal, performative intervention?
How can a staged/orchestrated action become a catalyst for discussion and positive civic exchange?
David Eckard (Pacific Northwest College of Art) 3 credits

This course will address issues of place as a springboard for visual imagery. The experience of living abroad and working in a foreign land has the potential to inspire new ways of thinking and seeing. We will examine the Pont-Aven region, taking a close look at its natural and unique habitats, ecosystems, rugged coastline and culture. Students will become increasingly familiar with the area and may work in a variety of mediums; including drawing, painting, sculpture, found objects, digital film and photography involving and using found and natural materials from the region, further connecting the imagery and students to place. Use of natural materials will be encouraged for outdoor sculptural pieces where a more organic process may occur in terms of the piece’s evolution and final state. Journal writing, extensive sketchbooks and mapping will serve as data collections to use on site and later in the studio. Students may have an opportunity for site-specific sculptural work. We will examine the work of artists who have used place and some of the above mentioned ideas as metaphor important to their work including among others: Robert Smithson, Andy Goldsworthy, Tom Uttech, Mary Frank, Richard Misrach, Susan Rothenberg, Fairfield Porter, Arno Minkenen, Nancy Holt, Ed Ruscha, Altoon Sultan, Fischli & Weiss, Anslem Keifer, Deborah Butterfield, David Bates and Shirin Neshat.
Susan Brearey (The Putney School) 3 credits

This course will involve visual elements of light, mood and weather involving visual responses to living and working in Pont-Aven. Students may work in a variety of mediums, creating three distinct bodies of work during the course of the term. We will examine ways of looking at the landscape and light specific to Pont-Aven and the surrounding areas. Students will keep visual and written journals during the term and present them in class weekly as a way to further connect with each other and learn from each others various studio work, approach and process. An example theme might be; a series of abstract paintings related to a sense of depth and light on the horizon in Brittany. Students will create one body of work using monoprint techniques mid-term. We will look at the work of traditional and non-traditional approaches to working from the landscape from North American and European perspectives. Such artists will include among others; Joseph Beuys, April Gornik, Richard Tuttle, Robert Ryman, Alex Katz, Robert Smithson, Rackstraw Downes, Anselm Keifer, Richard Misrach, Tom Uttech, Edgar Degas and Paul Gaugin.
Susan Brearey (The Putney School) 3 credits

Photography in its various uses in multiple fields of society, ranging from everyday life snapshots to global media, advertisement, star system, politics, documentary or the digital boom, is one of the most pervasive medium of the Twentieth Century and a real terrain where questions of meaning and representations are at stake. After a short introduction of the history of the medium, the course proposes to observe the works of contemporary artists since the 60's using photography and focus on the observation of their different positions, discourses, aesthetic and conceptual choices. Through this lens numerous topics in contemporary art and in culture in general will be discussed with the students: reproducibility as a specificity of the medium, the documentary aspect of the medium and its relationship to the "real", photomontage, semiotic of pictures, conceptual works, image in relation to identity, body and performance, etc.
Anne Julie Raccoursier (Geneva Artist) 3 credits

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.
Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities) 3 credits

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.
Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities) 3 credits

Advanced students will elaborate their knowledge base of French society and institutions through literature, film and immersion in Brittany's unique history. Working independently and in groups, students write essays on special topics in French, conduct oral presentations, watch and discuss French film and produce a log of local correspondence by interviewing local artists. This course is junior/senior (third or fourth year) level French and meets requirements for French majors and minors with 45 contact hours in Liberal Arts. Study Trips to major European art capitals are integrated into the French curriculum and are led by the professors
Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities) 3 credits

A painting and mixed media course designed to distill the visual and sensual experiences of the west coast of Brittany into rigorous contemporary forms, avoiding the picturesque. Projects will focus on the mutability of light and color, eliminating the decorative, and learning to create tension, power and poetic expression with meaningful formal choices. As a result of our daily and changing psychology, what one sees and does not see can be entirely different each time the same visual stimulus is encountered. The visual world has endless gifts for the artist to transform, and we will hone the ability to distinguish resonant color and scale relationships out of the complicated fields of information in the landscape and town of Pont-Aven and in the new context of art and environment that we will encounter on our trips to Berlin, Paris, and London. Subject matter for work will also include contemporary attitudes toward viewing and making art and the effect of media on societal and personal psychology. Traditional oil panting techniques, glazing, wax, and collage along with unconventional materials from hardware stores and other found materials from the area will be explored. The rectangle will be revered, exploited, and challenged. PASCA's unique ability to combine installation, inventive work on paper, painting and conceptual art will inspire students to experiment broadly with media. Readings, on site work, slide presentations, and discussions will augment studio projects.
Instructor Kathleen Loe (Anderson Ranch Art Center) 3 credits

This course will refine each student's process of recognizing, retaining, and converting to form their responses to nature, art, literature, film, and the popular media. Partnering with great work from other art forms, the artist can increase the complexity of emotional content in their work and use the energy from this collaboration to expand their own conceptual facilities. Students will work material from the observed world through an abstracting lens, revealing a deeper level of meaning and mystery in their work. Using poet Robert Bly's statement that "the further a poem gets from its initial worldly circumstances without breaking the thread, the more content it has", work will be pushed to an edge of expressive ambiguity, expanding communicative power by losing much literal association in favor of metaphorical association. The idea and intention will dictate the material and form, processes will move from an initial literal response to subject matter to one that is more elusive, authentic, and interesting by virtue of a nimble use of metaphor, symbol, and inventive combinations of material. Reading, writing on both one's own and others' art, and discussing artists, writers, and filmmakers choices will be part of the studio process. The contemporary work we see in Berlin, Paris and London will initiate projects and writing assignments related to the course projects. Their expanding conceptual platform will enable students to experience these international contemporary venues with a broader understanding and a more fluid sense of multi-disciplinary approach to media.
Instructor Kathleen Loe (Anderson Ranch Art Center) 3 credits

A course focusing on the history of modern and contemporary French criticism and aesthetic philosophy. Reading and frequent discussion will animate this class which seeks to explore the roots and philosophical bases of contemporary art criticism. A thematic look at Contemporary Art since World War II and up to the current day. The course will explore how specific artists grappled with topics ranging from Feminism and technology, to semiotics, war, politics (particularly the 2008 U.S. general election), globalism, and comedy. Each session will be thematic and consist of a lecture, a presentation of work by 3-4 artists and a discussion of how their work was relevant to the issue at hand. Students will be expected to contribute to discussions at the conclusion of each presentation. Some of the artists we will explore include: Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, Krystof Wodicko, Barbara Kruger, Yves Klein, Olafur Eliasson, Luc Tuymans, and David Hammons. Students will be evaluated based on their class discussions, a review of an exhibition seen in Paris or during one of our trips, and a final paper.
Instructor George Magalios (The Sophia Group, Sculpture Conglomerate International) 3 credits

A multidisciplinary approach to understanding the dynamic between performance, documentation, and the art of photography where the photographer becomes performer and the resulting photographs are depictions of scenes in fictional performances. This course is designed to teach three basic concepts: 1. the role of the sitter/model/performer as subject in the subject-object relationship of portraiture and other forms of photography; 2. The role of the photographer in setting up a mise-en-scene and tableau in creating a picture; 3. The role that documentation, the simulacrum of the event, plays in art history and in the mediasphere. This course is a combination of photographic techniques and concepts along with performance art's related activities and issues. Work will be conducted using digital photography and the manipulation of images using digital medial will also be a key element in this course. Students will be asked to create pictures using the landscape in and around Pont-Aven, as well as sites explored during travels, for their images. Students will be evaluated based on their participation in class discussions and 4 projects.
Instructor George Magalios (The Sophia Group, Sculpture Conglomerate International)3 credits

This course will look at the concept of journal, diary, and mark as way to develop work that captures transience, arrests time and records movement. We will incorporate accumulation, layering, habitual actions, entropy and systems of organization into mixed media works that will evolve or dissolve with our creative interventions and repeated actions. This course is not media specific and the concepts can be applied through drawing, sculpture, painting and photo.
Some of the questions we'll explore:
What are the best methods and strategies to poetically capture temporal incidents?
How are these best displayed/presented to evoke that moment?
What is the role of a souvenir? What can "souvenir" be?
What are new possibilities for Diary? Journal? Memento?
Is it possible to effectively translate private experience into public expression?
Is it possible to gain authorship over the accidental? What new materials and techniques can be developed to record actions, layer experiences and gather the moment?
Instructor David Eckard (Pacific Northwest College of Art) 3 Credits

This course explores the ethical implications of the appropriated image inherent within the practice of photography or more specifically Pinhole camera construction and implementation. Light tight vessels made of found materials from specific locations within Pont-Aven and areas traversed during the study trips to London and Berlin, will be converted into pinhole cameras. While consciously rejecting the use of a manufactured lens, the student is to embrace the soft, sensual dream like qualities revealed through the use of a technique dating back to the fourth century B.C.
Instructor William Kofmehl (Robert Morris University) 3 credits

"If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing it badly." -G K Chesterton.
"Sometimes a thing worth doing is worth overdoing." - David Letterman.

Initially, students will be confronted witha categorical delineation of Art Modes and Conventions throughout the 20th century in the form of video, film, and slide lecture/review. This will serve as an introduction to historical precedent and functionality of site-specificity. (i.e. the political, cultural, architectural, and economic implications of installing sculpture in a particular location.) The practice of site-specificity is actualized throughout the course in various locations, mostly determined by the individual student. The class will be in transit quite routinely as sites are explored around Brittany via hiking, bicycling, van, and boat. On occasion, the Professor sets forth rigid criteria and constraint as the students partake in tests of physical, mental, and emotional muscle.
Instructor William Kofmehl (Robert Morris University) 3 credits

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 market, the bakeries, and cafes to engage in real conversation - not classroom simulations. Students will study with textbooks written by the teacher which focuses on vocabulary for daily life in France, and especially for artists.
Instructor: Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities). 3 credits

Intermediate and advanced students will improve their French through exercises like reading required books, interviewing local artists, listening to French music, watching French movies... 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.
Instructor: Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities). 3 credits

This is an advanced painting studio workshop where students develop specific concepts, studio processes, and visual approaches. An essential intention of the course is to accent the student's responsibility to be conscious of and react to the information received in an independent and assertive way. Local ephemera are used as visual supplements. Expanding the resource base that each student evolves from is an essential element of the class. Students acquire the tools to address visually and verbally the complexity of their own interests within the context of contemporary art theory.
Instructor: Stuart Diamond (Massachusetts College of Art), 3 credits

With the current emphasis on technology in photography the alternative camera affords an opportunity to get back to the basics of light, subject and time, liberating the artist to concentrate on the essence of image making. The natural beauty and history of Brittany will inspire students to focus on the landscape and its constant transformation by natural occurrences, the intrusion of man or simply the use of an alternative photographic technique. Emphasis will be on the unique qualities of alternative cameras and their ability to transcend the ordinary. Alternative methods of depicting the landscape such as multiple image, manipulation, mixed media and use of the landscape as an installation possibility will be encouraged. Classes will include shooting assignments, readings, discussion and critiques. Students should be self-motivated and willing to push themselves to expand their own image making vision and process.
Instructor: Sally Pettibon (Ringling College of Art + Design), 3 credits

By accumulating drawn fragments, tracing unusual patterns, sketching the partially glimpsed from memory, saving a scrap of paper, or printing out a verbal oddity in a journal, artists mark time and incite ideas of form, content, and invention that fuel imaginative ambition and construct a personal language well beyond the moment of contact. Record keeping in From the Journal: Notation to Installation will generate a collection of 'notations' that will eventually employ installation, collaboration, scale and site resolutions at the end of term. Essentially a drawing class, students will rely on what can be drawn through observation, written notes, extensive plein air sketches, developed studies, collage, and mark making. The journal will house and ultimately expand an experimental body of work into unforeseen cross boundary applications. Traditional and non-traditional drawing mediums will be used.
Instructor: Dale Emmart, (Parsons New York) 3 credits

This course will look at the concept of journal, diary, and mark as way to develop work that captures transience, arrests time and records movement. We will incorporate accumulation, layering, habitual actions, entropy and systems of organization into mixed media works that will evolve or dissolve with our creative interventions and repeated actions. This course is not media specific and the concepts can be applied through drawing, sculpture, painting and photo. A strong, self-motivated discipline and the ability to "think outside of the box, rectangle and frame" are key components in this class.
Instructor: David Eckard (Pacific Northwest College of Art) 3 Credits

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 market, the bakeries, and cafes to engage in real conversation - not classroom simulations. Students will study with textbooks written by the teacher which focuses on vocabulary for daily life in France, and especially for artists.
Instructor: Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities). 3 credits

Intermediate and advanced students will improve their French through exercises like reading required books, interviewing local artists, listening to French music, watching French movies... 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.
Instructor: Carine Charof (PASCA resident French teacher and Head of Student Activities). 3 credits

Creating is taking chances; being in a new environment is exciting and edgy. This class is organic, flexibly formed around the input of students work. It is an advanced painting studio workshop where students develop specific concepts, studio processes, and visual approaches. An essential intention of the course is to accent the students' responsibility to be conscious of and react to the information received in an independent and assertive way. Local ephemera are used as visual supplements. Expanding the resource base that each student evolves from is an essential element of the class. Students acquire the tools to address visually and verbally the complexity of their own interests within the context of contemporary art theory.
Instructor: Stuart Diamond (Mass College of Art). 3 credits

This studio course centers on observation and representation of the human figure. The approach will vary depending on selected environments; we'll use longer poses of the nude and costumed model with controlled lighting for close study in addition to more spontaneous sketches (b&w and color) at the open air market, cafes, Breton dances and other venues around town. The figure is our focus but important issues such composition, spatial and color relationships will be integrated into thinking and response. Although the class requires hours of direct observation, individual invention and interpretive approaches are encouraged. These investigations will include countless drawings and paintings on various supports using water-based and oil-based media. The semester body of work should reflect a rigorous synthesis of observation, understanding and interpretation of the people and place surrounding us.
Instructor: Melissa Ferreira (Rhode Island School of Design) 3 credits (Illustration or Intermediate/Advanced Painting)

Through analysis and comparison of color palettes of contemporary and historical painters, students will witness the effects created by an understanding of how to use color. Students will develop an understanding of the principles of color design - harmony, contrast, gradations, and dominance. The rules of design are focused on the all-encompassing goal of unity; the organization of discrete elements into a harmonious whole. Harmony is the result of relationships that imply a sense of order. In our study of color, once there is knowledge of how to mix and match color and a general sense of color systems and how to select from the color wheel, we begin to examine the patterns of relationships in color compositions. The problem is the same as that of composition: variety in unity. We try to create unity between our tones and keep that unity engaging with variety. With color there are no set rules. One has to develop a feeling for the harmony that is right in each work. Color perception and our response to color relationships are subjective processes. At the same time, you can learn technical control over the tones used through experience. The course is taught by a combination of texts covering information on color wheels, color systems, color theory, color mixing methods and tools. Examples of Historic and Contemporary painting are used with analysis of their color and how their use of color reflects upon their time. Color harmonies and hue relationships are examined, along with neutral or achromatic colors. Students learn how to mix and match color. Water-based paints, acrylic, gouache and water color are used. Acrylic mediums and gels are used to examine colors changing from opaque to translucent and transparent. Optical color mixing and layered color buildups are examined. References used are objects found in the village and the environment, paper, fabric, wallpaper, magazine photos and ads. Work is photocopied to examine color exercises in black, white, and gray.
Instructor: Stuart Diamond (Mass College of Art) 3 credits

Your semester in Brittany and other European locales will be a time to develop personal vision and artistic voice, translating the surroundings through finished illustrations as well as onto the pages of an illustrated journal. The journal in itself is a unique document of your travels and stay in Pont-Aven, a reflection of both fact and fiction, describing what you see from your own point of view. Your sketchbook will be home to observational drawings, color notes, compositional studies, random impressions along with diverse conceptual threads spun for our various assignments. The structured projects will include a cohesive series of narrative illustrations based on selected Breton myths/folklore, created for either children or adults. As with professional illustration assignments, work begins with multiple thumbnails, continuing with larger rough sketches using observational and photo reference before moving to the finished images. Valuable insight/information comes from a variety of character and situational studies of Breton costumes, traditional architecture and the surrounding landscape. Experimentation with techniques, materials and stylistic approaches is not only encouraged, it is required! Shorter assignments include an editorial on your perspective as an outsider coming to the quaint town of Pont-Aven, a whimsical interpretation of the unseen mystical forces at the Sacred Springs, edgy poster possibilities that give a fresh spin on familiar Breton cliches. There will be other illustrative exercises that push your conceptual limits, some as brief as an hour, to keep your problem solving faculties sharp and ready. We'll shape pieces that consider audience, style and substance whether in 2D or 3D forms. The class will also look at contemporary illustrators as we analyze what makes for strong and compelling communication en route to refining your visual language as artist/illustrator, one that may understood by those who may not share your spoken words.
Instructor: Melissa Ferreira (Rhode Island School of Design);3 credits (Illustration)

Photography in its various uses in multiple fields of society, ranging from everyday life snapshots to global media, advertisement, star system, politics, documentary or the digital boom, is one of the most pervasive medium of the Twentieth Century and a real terrain where questions of meaning and representations are at stake. The course proposes to observe the works of contemporary artists since the 60's using photography and focus on the observation of their different positions, discourses, aesthetic and conceptual choices. Through this lens numerous topics in contemporary art and in culture in general will be discussed with the students: reproducibility as a specificity of the medium, the documentary aspect of the medium and its relationship to the "real" photomontage, semiotic of pictures, conceptual works, image in relation to identity, body and performance, etc.
Instructor: Anne-Julie Raccoursier. 3 credits