Download - THE LAY OF THE LAND: Folio Fall 2009
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FOLIOA Biannual Publication For MassArt Alumni And Friends
FALL · VOL 10 2009
exploring the inner and outer landscapeThe LAy OF The LAnd
From Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley to the Northwest, from Olmsted’s
Franklin Park to Boston’s South End, from the terrain of the
Surrealists to Louisiana and the Arctic, alumni, students, and faculty
at Massachusetts College of Art and Design covered considerable
ground. In the process they pondered environmental impact,
sheltered students from the elements, formed an enduring legacy,
and renovated a historic carriage house. No matter where they
landed, they made a lasting impression. Embrace the landscape
with this fall issue of Folio.
eXPLORe
The college’s Art of Landscape program,
funded by Bank of America, brings fifteen
third graders to Franklin Park’s Scarboro Pond
for four mornings of outdoor art-making with
their parents. Students are selected from the
Patrick Lyndon School in West Roxbury, the
Dr. William W. Henderson Inclusion Elementary
School in Dorchester, and the James M. Curley
School in Jamaica Plain. Amy Sallen, visual
arts teacher at the Lyndon School, art
education students from MassArt, and mem-
bers of the National Park Service guide par-
ticipants in their study of the park’s changing
seasons. “It’s a good self-confidence booster.
Many want to take further art classes,”
says Sallen.
As participants engage with Franklin Park,
they also learn about Frederick Law Olmsted,
the renowned landscape architect who
created the largest jewel in the Emerald
Necklace. “The most powerful part of the
program is students engaging in side-by-side
art-making with their parents,” says Leslie
Wu Foley, director of MassArt’s Center for
Art and Community Partnerships.
Another group of students also derived benefit
from their surroundings, which were altered to
meet their needs.
In Boston’s South End, ten students in the
master of architecture program brightened
the urban landscape as part of its first com-
munity design-build program. They built a
colorful bus shelter for students at the William
Carter School, a public education program for
students with intensive special needs.
“The project really highlighted one of the core
goals of our program, which is community ser-
vice and teaching students leadership through
that service,” says Patricia Seitz, professor of
architecture and head of the master of archi-
tecture program. “The school is thrilled.”
Architecture students learned how to work
with clients, design and alter a design, create
technical drawings, collaborate, and lead a
project. The shelter’s design includes recycled
rainwater, which is channeled into overlapping
pools that create sensory learning experiences
for Carter School students; the water is then
repurposed for the school’s gardens.
“Freshly felled
trees”, Nem
ah, W
ashin
gto
n fro
m th
e series Saw
du
st Mo
un
tain
shAPIng—And BeIng shAPed By—uRBAn And RuRAL TABLeAuX
For centuries artists have engaged with the
landscape around them to reinvigorate them-
selves and deepen their practice. The tradition
is alive and well at Massachusetts College of
Art and Design.
TIMELESS TOPOgRAPhy
“Looking at nature is a very valuable thing for an artist.”
In summer 2009, master of architecture students designed and built a shelter at the William E. Carter School in Boston’s historic South End neighborhood.
Bricks and rocks unearthed during construc-
tion were reused to create pathways and
added to the water features, and bright trans-
lucent panels made of Polygal, a one hundred
percent recyclable material, allow the sun to
be used as a light source. “I hope the structure
will stimulate students in some way,” says
Jonathan Schluenz ’10G.
Eirik Johnson, assistant professor of photog-
raphy, is hoping to galvanize the public not by
changing their surroundings, but by pointing
out how industry has altered them.
He published Sawdust Mountain (Aperture)
in 2009. Through photography, the book
explores the environmental impact of the
timber and salmon industries in the Northwest.
“I hope with the book to use the Northwest to
illustrate larger issues concerning the relation-
ship between environmental and economic
interests within communities that can be seen
in a microcosm there,” says Johnson.
Johnson’s connection with the landscape of
the Northwest springs from how he was raised
in Seattle. “My family would go out into the
middle of the forest hunting chanterelles and
morels. We’d watch salmon come in to spawn,
and we would hike. As an artist, I’m interested
in showing how humans are changing the
landscape. I have an obligation to make work
that deals with some of these issues.”
In October the Henry Art Gallery at the
University of Washington will feature a solo
exhibition of photographs from Sawdust
Mountain.
While Johnson’s Sawdust Mountain may bring
one face-to-face with pressing environmental
issues, two landscape programs set in the
Vermont and Arizona mountains encourage
bucolic escape.
Nancy McCarthy directs the college’s Art
New England program in the pastoral setting
of Bennington, VT. Art New England annually
offers three one-week, in-depth workshops
in a variety of mediums, including three land-
scape painting classes. Participants come from
throughout the United States; many are art
teachers. “Looking at nature is a very valuable
thing for an artist. They can absorb colors
under natural light and stimulate their senses,”
says McCarthy. She also is a painter and a
painting teacher.
In March 2010 Barbara Bosworth, professor
of photography, will teach a ten-day land-
scape photography class at Sunglow Ranch
in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains. The
course will help artists develop an eye for the
uniqueness of a place, as well as the ability to
compose images that capture subtleties and
reflect their personal interpretation of the
environment.
“Freshly felled
trees”, Nem
ah, W
ashin
gto
n fro
m th
e series Saw
du
st Mo
un
tain
Art New England, Vermont
Two new leaders are invigorating
Massachusetts College of Art and Design:
Hunter O’Hanian, vice president for institu-
tional advancement and executive director
of the MassArt Foundation, and Karen
Townsend, dean of admissions.
O’Hanian was president of the Anderson Ranch
Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado;
Townsend was director of admissions at Maine
College of Art (MECA) in Portland, Maine.
O’Hanian spent the last fourteen years running
arts organizations. “I’m excited to be back in
a more urban environment,” says O’Hanian,
whose view previously included bears and
herds of elk. “I want to strengthen the good
work that has been done in the development
area and help create more opportunities for
students and alumni.”
Townsend has devoted her career to higher
education and also is an active art practitioner.
“I’d like to build a broader connection with
Boston schools, foster relationships with teach-
ers locally and nationally, and achieve a good
balance of in-state and out-of-state students,”
says Townsend. She works on her painting
when she can.
dReAM
LAVIsh LeAdeRshIPfresh faces bring vast experience
Mark Ferguson ’88 passed away in 2008. His
family, including his wife Eleanor Li ’87 and
her sister Priscilla Li, established the Mark
Ferguson Scholarship to honor his love of
creating sculptures from cast glass and to
enable students to work with cast glass. “We
had such a great experience at Massachusetts
College of Art and Design. We’re hoping the
scholarship will go to someone as passionate
as Mark was about casting,” says Li, who met
Ferguson at MassArt in 1986 when she was
studying fashion design. They married in 1989
and have two children, Leah and Hayden.
Ferguson became interested in glass as a
high school student when his mother began
creating stained glass.
Despite the fact that dyslexia made reading
a struggle, Ferguson also was an ardent — and
non-traditional at twenty-four — student and
teacher. Ferguson relished his relationship
with Alan Klein, professor of fine arts 3D, who,
dReAMsays Li, really encouraged him. “Mark was
hard working, funny, and sarcastic. He was
one of the few people in the country who used
hot poured glass as the main thrust of their
expression,” says Klein.
In addition to being a teaching assistant
at MassArt, Ferguson was a faculty member
at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, NY; an adjunct
sculpture faculty member at Hartford
Art School in Connecticut; and a visiting
artist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. He earned his MFA from Rhode
Island School of Design in 1990 and returned
to MassArt in 2002 as a visiting artist.
Over the course of a long and successful
career, Ferguson made pint glasses for artist
Matthew Barney, cast glass sculpture for pop
artist Jim Dine, and exhibited nationally and
internationally. “Mark was conceptual and
really into surrealism,” says Li.
Ferguson’s friend Hirokazu Fukawa remembers
Ferguson’s Small Homage to de Chirico. The
work refers to the illogical juxtaposition of
objects in the Italian Surrealist’s painting Song
of Love. “A sense of the absence of man is
present in both de Chirico’s
and Ferguson’s works. Both
descend into subjectivity
beneath a façade/figure;
nostalgic, yet, no one
is there,” wrote Fukawa.
Ferguson’s work is a testament to his talent
for cast glass. A letter he wrote to a friend
in 2002 expresses his spirit: “The important
point to life is not how long it is but rather how
well it is lived … There is no greater pursuit in
life, come win or lose, than the pursuit of one’s
dreams … Far too many live their lives without
a dream,” he wrote.
Ferguson lived his dreams, and, fittingly, the
Mark Ferguson Scholarship will help MassArt
students do the same.
ReFLecTIng A LIFe In gLAssthe mark ferguson scholarship
dOnOR PORTRAIT
“The important point to life is not how long it is but rather how well it is lived…”
FAcuLTy FOcus
Jane Marsching, associate professor,
studio foundation, describes herself as an
experimental media artist. Marsching has a
BA in photography from Hampshire College
and an MFA in photography and related
media from the School of Visual Arts.
cOLd cOMFORT jane marsching addresses climate change
She has been teaching freshmen the funda-
mentals of visual language, video, and digital
imaging, and graduate students contemporary
art practices at Massachusetts College of Art
and Design for five years.
Outside the classroom Marsching is working
on what she calls a “Greek chorale adapta-
tion of the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC).” Released in 2007, the report assesses
the risks of climate change and includes
predictions about its impact.
Marsching began her career at Aperture
as a book editor, where she worked on
interdisciplinary teams of writers and
photographers. As she developed an interest
in research, writing, and language, multimedia
followed naturally.
Marsching’s recent work has centered on the
Arctic; her current focus on climate change
isn’t much of a leap considering that global
warming is transforming the formerly frozen
frontier into slush.
The IPCC report raised questions for
Marsching that she is addressing in her long-
term work in progress, An Uncertain Land,
which will include twelve-person vocals and
multi-screen video. She will examine how
policy makers try to define the scientific
language of uncertainty. The Greek chorus
will act as translators of the complex transfor-
mations the climate is bringing to our planet
and culture.
“We have gotten better at recycling and using
fluorescent light bulbs … but still, the problem
seems so huge, so out of our hands … that
it’s easier to turn away or indulge in cynical
dystopic visions,” says Marsching, who
believes that most people are scared—yet
bored—by the topic of climate change.
The artist sees a need for something more
catalytic and transformative than the act of
changing a light bulb. She wants to explore
how art, spectacle, and collaboration with
scientists could spark a sense of wonder,
interest, and a desire to take action.
We need the kind of unifying magic, says
Marsching, which President Kennedy
employed to inspire the United States to
reach the moon. “The poetry of his language
and rhetoric was a kind of art form,” says
Marsching. “We have an engine of creativity
today, which we can see in the massive
entertainment industry as well as in so many
other places. Can it be diverted to another
kind of activist effort?”
As diverse as Marsching’s work can be, a
common thread runs through it. “It’s about
stories—putting them together and seeing the
relationships between them,” says Marsching.
“the problem seems so huge, so out of our hands, and getting ever more complex...”
Jane D. Marsching, Mike supervising Naomi building a balloon umiak, Austfonna Glacier, Svalbard, Norway, 2006, Courtesy Miller Block Gallery
esIt’s all a matter of perspective for Weathersby.
As owner of company Environmental Services
(ES), he turns his work as a handyman into art.
The conceptual artist, whose work focuses on
the transcendence of the ordinary, received the
Foster Prize in 2003 from Boston’s Institute
of Contemporary Art.
Where you see a pile of invoices, Douglas
Weathersby MFA ’02 pictures a collage.
And all those tools and supplies you have
lying around your studio? He envisions
an installation.
ALuMnI FOcus
he’s AT yOuR seRVIcedouglas weathersby takes environmental services to the masur museum
The handyman is artist-in-residence at the
Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana,
where as part of The Human Nest Project in
Residence, he’s working with JDE Construction
to renovate the museum’s carriage house,
turning it into temporary living quarters
for visiting artists and curators. As Weathersby
works—and documents his work—he’s unearth-
ing his next work of art. At press time he’s
not sure exactly what will coalesce; perhaps
an installation that depicts the history of
the museum through its advertising. “So
far I’ve found some pretty nice older desk
lamps. Nothing really, really exciting,” says
Weathersby. Yet. There’s still a big pile of
junk to sort through.
ES
Inau
gu
ral R
etro
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tive
an
d S
tora
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Loft
, co
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“The show referenced the move because I literally brought everything from my studio and stored it in the gallery for the show.”
Weathersby inhabits a temporary office and
art space in the downstairs of the carriage
house, and in a sense, he himself is an exhibit:
the site is open to the public. His white ES
van, which he parks in front of the museum,
features signage advertising the project.
The artist also is collaborating with Emily Jahn,
the museum’s curator of education, on several
projects for children. “I’ll have them help with
projects in my studio,” says Weathersby. “I’ll
tell the children what I do, talk about it func-
tionally, and then talk about appropriation and
collage. Maybe we’ll make collages out of some
museum invitations.”
Collages are frequently part of his work. A
24-foot long collage and mural of Weathersby’s
former art studio covered in invoices was part
of “Douglas Weathersby: The ES Inaugural
Retrospective and Storage Loft,” exhibited at
the Judi Rotenberg Gallery in January 2009.
The show also included a photo from his
house, which he moved into in January, and
a structure featuring stairs and shelving
made of debris from the studio he could no
longer afford when he bought his home. “The
show referenced the move because I literally
brought everything from my studio and stored
it in the gallery for the show,” says Weathersby.
He’ll cap off his residency at the Masur
Museum with an exhibition, talk, and recep-
tion, after which he’ll return his van to its usual
function: advertising ES and ferrying him to
clients whose homes may later appear as part
of an installation.
ES Virtual Home Office, Atlanta Ed., ink jet prints, office supplies, 2007
Lewis Morris SIM ’11 feels a bit like a prodigal
son. His mother, talented in drawing, yearned
to attend Rhode Island School of Design in
Providence, Rhode Island, where Morris was
raised. She never finished high school. Neither
did Morris’s brother. “If you come from the
inner city, college isn’t really an option,” says
Morris. To have come so far can sometimes
feel scary.
But words comfort and guide the twenty-year-
old, as they have since he was sixteen and
competing in poetry slams across the country.
“My poetry has taken me a lot of places,” says
Morris. He is a four-time member of the
Providence Youth Poetry Slam Team. Their
performances have won the team appearances
at the Collegiate National Poetry Slam, Inc.
(CUPSI) finals at the Apollo Theater in Harlem
(they placed fifth), in San Jose, CA (they
placed second), and in Washington DC.
For five dollars you can purchase his latest
self-published collection, Anatomy of an
Adam, which reflects his current fascination
with religion.
Morris admires African American poet
Patricia Smith — especially her poem
“Skinhead” — which shows her ability to write
from another’s perspective. “They call me
skinhead, and I got my own beauty. It is
knife-scrawled across my back in sore, jagged
letters, it’s in the way my eyes snap away from
the obvious,” reads the poem, in which Smith
channels a neo-Nazi.
POeTRy In MOTIOnfor young artist, words drive filmmaking
sTudenT snAP
“My poetry has taken me a lot of places.”
More than forty alumni, students,
and friends of MassArt joined
President Kay Sloan last month
in the President’s Gallery, as she
thanked the college’s ever-growing
group of scholarship donors and
members of the Longwood Society.
After a welcome from new
Vice President for Institutional
Advancement Hunter O’Hanian and
a college update from President
Sloan, attendees heard compelling
stories from three of the scholarship
recipients:
- a photographer from South Africa
who was only able to attend
MassArt after receiving a new
scholarship specifically for talented
MFA students with financial need;
- a fashion major who spent the
summer at the Paris Fashion
Institute on a full scholarship,
and talked about the fashion
department’s excellent reputation
as well; and
- a senior animation student who
spent last summer interning at
Hasbro and has been able to take a
variety of unpaid internships due to
receiving generous scholarship aid.
Whether you are interested in
setting up a charitable gift annuity
that provides a steady stream of
income now, establishing a named
scholarship in your will, or exploring
other options, we can discuss what
might be best for you. Gifts of all
sizes are welcome. To learn more
about the MassArt Foundation’s
planned giving program, contact
Karin Blum at (617) 879-7080, or
email [email protected].
FuLL cIRcLeLearning — pass it on
Morris writes in what he imagines is Eve’s
voice in “Eve,” from Anatomy of an Adam.
You can see it in the following excerpt:
… I was given the other half of a man instead of
being created as a
whole being. I am ‘half.’ I am incomplete. I’d
rather give the rib
back, and become nothing and revert back
into a mere thought in the celestial conscious-
ness of my creator than be incomplete…
“Eve is every woman’s story,” says Morris, who
says the poem reflects the continued margin-
alization of women.
It is through words that Morris has found
his way into his artwork. Film is his second
favorite medium, and Morris is using
“Eve” to create a video for a SIM project.
Morris’s favorite director is Quentin Tarantino.
“The dialogue crackles and he gets you
interested immediately,” says Morris. He also
counts Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002) as one of
a few films he considers “flawless.”
When he’s not writing poetry or working on
films, Morris focuses on his screenplays.
“I like to create characters that have a dual
nature,” says Morris. “My goal is to get one
of my screenplays sold by the time I turn
twenty-two.”
Cover illustration of Anatomy of an Adam
621 HUNTINGTON AVENUE BOSTON, MA 02115 USA MassArt.edu
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PAIDBOSTON, MAPERMIT NO. 54162return service requested
10.30.09Alumni Homecoming Weekend
Generations of alumni return to campus
to catch up with old friends and honor this
year’s award winners at the second annual
Alumni Homecoming Weekend.
12.07.09Holiday Sale
The college’s annual holiday sale, open
December 7-12 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.,
features original works of glass, ceramics,
painting, jewelry, photography, sculpture,
fibers, and more. The sale benefits artists,
and a portion of the proceeds provides
financial support to students.
04.10.10Twenty-first Annual Benefit Art Auction
We are grateful to the generous artists,
buyers, and sponsors who helped raise
more than $500,000 at the twentieth
annual auction last spring. Funds raised
support student scholarships and academic
programs. Mark your calendar for the
auction on April 10, 2010.
For details on these and other events,
visit the alumni online community at
alumni.massart.edu.
Editor: Sonia Targontsidis MFA ’02; Copy: jot*, Kristen Paulson ’96; Design: Moth Design, Dan Rukas ’03; Photography: Jim Ferguson, Jörg Meyer, Anne Marie Stein, and Joel Veak
Holiday Sale jewelry
Homecoming 2008