SANZEN S T U D E N T
E X H I B I T
S P R I N G
2 0 1 5
SANZEN S T U D E N T
E X H I B I T
S P R I N G
2 0 1 5
The exhibited works focus on the journey of learning and the discovery process rather than on the actual product of the discovery. The value of the process is given a greater weight than the work itself, and with this regard the student are “liberated” from the conventional meanings related to production in order to produce a work of art that carries a greater value.
G I A N N I
R O S S I E L L O
FACULTY COORDINATOR
In Zen philosophy, SANZEN is a moment of spiritual encounter between master and disciple. SANZEN means to meditate together and is utilized to request kōan from the master or to respond to it. During the encounter, rational questions are usually not permitted since the passing of knowledge from the master to the disciple takes place heart to heart, far from logical categories. SANZEN is therefore an activity in which the instructor’s attention is placed on the life of the student. The encounter is an opportunity for students to raise questions, demonstrate his or her existence, and face communication challenges based on profound spiritual and personal matters with another human being. What happens during SANZEN is strictly confidential. SANZEN usually lasts 5 to 10 minutes and is concentrated on a principal question. The question is related only marginally to the problem: the great effort to clarify and pronounce the problem is the key to the learning process. We can reflect on how a solution lies on the opposite end of the problem. The instructor guides the student towards this direction, and the student seeks to reach it. One may feel confused, anxious, or frustrated along the way, but things come into focus if the practice is maintained. Through meditation we gain something every day, and by not meditating we can lose something every day.
DIVA INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
RICH MEDIA PODCAST PRODUCTION
S I M O N E
P I E R O T T I
INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
As a teacher of a creative art such as photography, I have experienced that each student needs to go through a personal path in his or her visual approach, which is a combination of time and self-understanding. The teacher becomes a sort of gardener; he or she is the person that decides the amount of water needed and the right place where to plant the seed. After the right time the seed grows, for some it is easier than for others but with the right amount of water and understanding, and the right soil for each plant, each seed become a solid tree. Each of the students that I present in this exhibition started off as a seed. Some had more experience than the others, but all of them carried the same creative energy in un unknown ground, that is a new city and a new experience. I established a dialogue with each one of them , we spent a lot of time understanding, listening, and respecting each other’s ideas and directions. This has been an important foundation for all represented projects.As an instructor, I deeply believe that for a student of any visual art it is fundamental to understand one’s own self before understanding others. In photography it is crucial, especially when the photographer uses other people as subjects. Vanessa Weego with Losing Touch With Reality is a perfect example. Her works reflects a deep understanding of her past and present. I am truly impressed by the creative process of her work, a strong initial frustration became a great creative energy to look within herself. In this past semester, she completely changed her way of using photography, from a medium to capture the world to a digital manipulation of her own self portraits. In her work Our Own Little America, Brooke Goldman leads us in a truthful journey through the chaotic and dysfunctional Florentine nightlife that in many cases seems to be designed specifically to please American students. Brooke has an amazing, analytical point of view of her own cultural background, she has been able to step out of her environment to create a real and intelligent piece of work. Prato 2015 has been made possible thanks to the extraordinary persistence of the student Susu Yan. This is one of the rare piecec of work that shows the daily life of the Chinese community in Prato. In order to gain access to a difficult context to document, she spent an incredible amount of time and energy in building up a solid network that would allow her to move easly within this little piece of China wrecked in Italy.
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
DIVA INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
VA N E S S A W E E G O Plysmouth State University
L o o s i n To u c h w i t h R e a l i t y Digital collage, ink jet print. 50x70 cm
DIVA I N T E R M E D I A T E
A D V A N C E D
D I G I T A L
BROOKE GOLDM A N Rochester Institute of Technology
Our Own Little America Ink jet digital prints 9x 0 cm
P H O T O G R A P H Y
DIVA INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
S U S U YA N Mizzou, University of Missouru, Columbia
Prato 2015 Ink jet digital prints 29x42 cm
J U R I
C I A N I
RICH MEDIA PODCAST PRODUCTION
During the Podcast Production class, students worked on SANZEN’s concept by meeting many artisans in Florence. Podcast are made by three parts: audio interview, image sequence, and video footage. Students created these interviews directly in the artisan workshops, focusing questions on the relationship between master and disciple. Artisans include Giannini book-binding, Atelier Artigianelli, Duccio Banchi bronze and brass. In most cases the master was the father and the student the son. Their projects show the workflow and in the atmosphere you can breate in the true heart of Florence and, at the same time, meet people who are using traditional methods of working as an artisan.
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
DIVA RICH MEDIA PODCAST PRODUCTION
M A R I A PAU L A O S P I N A Rochester Institute of Technology
Duccio Banchi: Bronzista
R AG A N C L A R K Belmont University
F lor e n c e A r t i s a n s h i p: B e a t r i c e C u n i b e r t i
SPENCER SISSELM A N Independent
Enrico Giannini
FINE ARTS INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED DRAWING WORDS, PAINTING AND EMOTIONS: THE MIND MAP OF CREATIVITY ART THERAPY WATERCOLOR AND TEMPERA / GOUACHE TECHNIQUES FLORENCE SKETCHBOOK CERAMICS BEGINNING
G A E T A N O
C U N S O L O
INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED DRAWING
What kind of connection is formed between teachers and students? How do we represent it and what forms can this connection assume? During this drawing course we worked on the concept of line. Line as a space, form, trace, and process that involves real and perceived time. We attempted to see the relationship between the teacher and the student as a possible line, opening a discussion on how time and space extended the concept of the line itself and its use in contemporary art. If there is a line that belongs to students and teachers, and in this case in the art world, how we can image it? It is certainly continuous rather than fragmented. We wanted to include in the line the things that remain outside of the moment of exchange of knowledge, information, and technique. The moments that are places for silence, incubation, fortuity, and above all empathy. The line needs to constantly be re-designed; it needs to be broken and reconnected, it makes many curves that sometimes lead us to nothing. It is never straight and easy. Only with time will it give us results.
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
FINE ARTS INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED DRAWING
M A RY K R I S T I N A M I C H E A L Baylor University
Unt itled Graphite on paper 100cm x 70cm
FINE ARTS INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED DRAWING
AU G U S T B A X T E R Q U I N I F Mizzou, University of Missouri, Columbia
Lines in Motion Video, format 960x540, 1’18’’.
FINE ARTS INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED DRAWING
PAU L M AT T H E W N O R D Q U I S T Gustavus Adolphus College
Unt itled Six digital prints, black and white, 29,7 cm x 21 cm.
N I C O L E T T A
S A L O M O N
WORDS, PAINTING AND EMOTIONS: THE MIND MAP OF CREATIVITY
Creativity is not an accomplishment, it is a state of being. We are in the shapeless realm of creativity as we tune in with it while undergoing a process of self-connection. This process is creative in itself, it doesn’t abide by rules, and needs to be guided for being eective and rewarding in terms of artistic growth. Through a 7-step process of entering deep levels of the creative tide that I personally invented, I guided my students to delve into individual memories of heart-toheart relationships with masters or caregivers of their past or present life. While accepting to try diverse techniques of drawing, painting, talking, and writing individually as well as collectively, each student developed a personal path into the conceptual approach to SANZEN as well as into the creative uses of art techniques. All the exhibited artworks express something mysterious in connection with creativity: the same mystery is there in the appeasing and nurturing an unconscious connection between pupil and master. The fruitful interplay between group experiences, individual discoveries, and my ongoing advising lead to highly personal interpretations of the SANZEN concept during a strenuous and joyful class on creative processes as applied to art.
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
FINE ARTS WORDS, PAINTING AND EMOTIONS: THE MIND MAP OF CREATIVITY
AINE COLE Endicott College
Balanced Gauche, acrylic paint, water color | 42x29,7 - 42x29,7 - 50x70 - 50x70
FINE ARTS W O R D S ,
P A I N T I N G
A N D
ERIN BURR Colorado State University
S e a s o n s of M e e t i ng Guoche on textured paper | 29,7x21
E M O T I O N S :
T H E
M I N D
M A P
O F
C R E A T I V I T Y
FINE ARTS WORDS, PAINTING AND EMOTIONS: THE MIND MAP OF CREATIVITY
C A R O L I N E M C Q UA D E Boston college
A byss Water color on paper | 29,7x21
N I C O L E T T A
S A L O M O N
Art Therapy is not about exhibiting your artwork outside the safe and well-known group of participants in the artistic and therapeutic experience. Art Therapy is about exploring personal issues within your group, with the help of your facilitator, in an encouraging and containing setting, employing art supplies in a highly free, creative and personally meaningful way. The reason why I decided to present my group with the opportunity and challenge of sharing our intimate work with others resides in the consistency of the SANZEN concept with the artistic and therapeutic experience we have been discovering during the Semester: in our Art Therapy group we lived the unconscious connection with the professor/facilitator, a growing sense of mutual trust, and a process of opening up to unutterable dimensions of being in touch with yourself, thanks to the experience of being accepted and understood. We decided then to offer the intimate outcome of that experience as a group installation, made of visualizations, visual work and reflections about the SANZEN. It’s a prayer banner created by all the students of the Art Therapy class as “postcards” to the Masters who have been important in their lifes. The inherited Eastern tradition is interpreted following our western cultural background: colors and words are suspended in the open white of small pieces of paper and canvas, lightly hung on a wire, offered to the wind. A simple and appeasing interpretation of the ephemeral and beautiful instant when the pupil’s and the master’s hearts beat together.
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
FINE ARTS ART THERAPY
LOGA N A M ST EY, M AY EL A A R A NA, M ICH A EL A ST R AT M A N N BU BI ER, EL IZ A BET H EN R IQU EZ, M A R I SA M ICH EL E GIGL IO, BROOK E SH A N NA G OL DA M, TOR I GRO GROSZ, SZ, EM I LY HOUSTON, JACQU EL I N E K R IGBAU M, H A DL EY L EW I S, EL ENA LOZ A NO, K EL LY M U NCI L , SA N DR A RU V IO SOL I S, A LYS SA CH R I ST I N E SEV ER E, ER ICA LY N N ST EI N, M A R H A ST RONG, V ICTOR I A ROSE WOL A K. P r aye r F l a g Mixed media on paper and canvas
P A R I D E
M O R E T T I
WATERCOLOR / TEMPERA TECHNIQUE
How natural are you? In philosophy, Zen Kōan, is a paradoxical question or story used to help meditation and awaken a deeper nature, which usually narrates the encounter between a teacher and his disciple in which the deepest nature of things is revealed.The purpose of the Kōan is to humiliate reason and cause a major doubt. “How natural are you?” This is the Kōan I posed to my students. The question immediately triggers an introspective journey that touches the depths of human existence. It separated and embarks on a journey to a space that is no longer the place of origin, a natural habitat. Man transforms the landscape, changes dress, intervenes on his body, tricks time, and controls the growth of plants and animals. Nature suffers from man and man endures despite the law of the universe: birth, growth, death. “How natural are you?” is first an existential question, a philosophical dilemma. The solution to the question emerges in these watercolors with simplicity, fluid and vague as the question itself: the stone as a raw material of nature that meets the artificial human composition.
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
FINE ARTS WATERCOLOR AND TEMPERA / GOUACHE TECHNIQUES
A LY S S A S E V E R E Western Washington University
K I M B E R LY FA Z Z O N E Texas Women’s University
J U L I A I AC O I Providence College
H A N N A H PA N C I O N E Stonehill College
How n a t u r a l a r e you? Watercolor on paper
P A R I D E
M O R E T T I
FLORENCE SKETCHBOOK
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
FINE ARTS FLORENCE SKETCHBOOK
AINE COLE Endicott College
S A R A H K AU Z M A N N Muhlenberg College
G A E T A N O
C U N S O L O
CERAMICS BEGINNING
Indeed, very few people are aware that in each of our fingers, located somewhere between the first phalange, the mesophalange, and the metaphalange, there is a tiny brain. The fact is that the other organ which we call the brain, the one with which we came into the world, the one which we transport around in our head and which transports us so that we can transport it, has only ever had a very general, vague, diffuse and, above all, unimaginative ideas about what the hands and the fingers should do. For example, if the brain-in-ourhead suddenly gets an idea for a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music or literature, or a clay figurine, it simply sends a signal to that effect and then waits to see what will happen. Having sent an order to the hands and fingers, it believes, or pretends to believe, that the task will then be completed, once the extremities of the arms have done their work. The brain has never been curious enough to ask itself why the end result of this manipulative process, which is complex even its simplest forms, bears so little resemblance to what the brain had imagine before it issued its instructions to the hands. Excerpt from The Cave by José Saramago
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
FINE ARTS CERAMICS BEGINNING
ALICE CHEESMAN FUA students
Unt itled Raw clay 29 cm x 27 cm
K I M B E R LY FA Z Z O N E Texas Women’s University Flower Mound, Texas
Unt itled Raw clay 30 cm x 27 cm
L O G A N S C A N DA L I N G Baylor University
Unt itled Raw clay 32 cm x 32 cm
TA N Y S S A B E H N K E St. Norbert College
Unt itled Raw clay 30 cm x 30 cm
SANZEN STUDENT EXHIBIT SPRING 2015
GANZO Via Dei Macci 85/r | May 13, 2015
GABRIELLA GANUGI FUA President
DAVID WEISS DIVA Chair
MICHAELA STRATMANN BUBIER JULIA MCKENZIE ENNIS EMILY CATHERINE JUNKER JACQUELINE KRIGBAUM ALYSSA CHRISTINE SEVERE Student Curators
GIANNI ROSSIELLO Faculty Coordinator
GIULIO VINCI DIVA and IDEAS Academic Coordinator
ENRICA QUARANTA DIVA Staff
SIMONE PIEROTTI Intermendate / Advanced Digital Photography
JURI CIANI Introduction to Rich Media: Podcast Production
GAETANO CUNSOLO Intermediate / Advanced Drawing Ceramics Beginning
NICOLETTA SALOMON Words, Painting and Emotions: The Mind Map of Creativity Art Therapy
PARIDE MORETTI Watercolor and Tempera Gouache Technique Florence Sketchbook
SUSANNA BAUSI GRACE JOH Press Office
ALBERTO SIMONCIONI Graphic Design
Special thanks to the staямА at GANZO Printed on May 2015 by FUA Florence University of the Arts
RINGRAZIAMENTI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FUA FLORENCE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
DIVA SAS WWW.FUA.IT