The Lay of the Land: Folio Fall 2009

FALL · VOL 10

2009

FOLIO

A Biannual Publication For MassArt Alumni And Friends

EXPLORE

The lay of the land exploring the inner and outer landscape

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.

For centuries artists have engaged with the landscape around them to reinvigorate themselves and deepen their practice. The tradition is alive and well at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

TIMELESS TOPOgRAPhy

shAPIng—And BeIng shAPed By—uRBAn And RuRAL TABLeAuX

The college’s Art of Landscape program,

Another group of students also derived benefit

funded by Bank of America, brings fifteen

from their surroundings, which were altered to

third graders to Franklin Park’s Scarboro Pond

meet their needs.

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 members of the National Park Service guide par-

In Boston’s South End, ten students in the master of architecture program brightened the urban landscape as part of its first community 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

ticipants in their study of the park’s changing

goals of our program, which is community ser-

seasons. “It’s a good self-confidence booster.

vice and teaching students leadership through

Many want to take further art classes,”

that service,” says Patricia Seitz, professor of

says Sallen.

architecture and head of the master of archi-

As participants engage with Franklin Park,

tecture program. “The school is thrilled.”

they also learn about Frederick Law Olmsted,

Architecture students learned how to work

the renowned landscape architect who

with clients, design and alter a design, create

created the largest jewel in the Emerald

technical drawings, collaborate, and lead a

Necklace. “The most powerful part of the

project. The shelter’s design includes recycled

program is students engaging in side-by-side

rainwater, which is channeled into overlapping

art-making with their parents,” says Leslie

pools that create sensory learning experiences

Wu Foley, director of MassArt’s Center for

for Carter School students; the water is then

Art and Community Partnerships.

repurposed for the school’s gardens.

“Freshly felled trees”, Nemah, Washington from the series Sawdust Mountain

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 construction were reused to create pathways and added to the water features, and bright translucent 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 photography, 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 relationship between environmental and economic interests within communities that can be seen in a microcosm there,” says Johnson.

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.

“Looking at nature is a very valuable thing for an artist.”

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 landscape 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.

Art New England, Vermont

In March 2010 Barbara Bosworth, professor

Johnson’s connection with the landscape of

of photography, will teach a ten-day land-

the Northwest springs from how he was raised

scape photography class at Sunglow Ranch

in Seattle. “My family would go out into the

in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains. The

middle of the forest hunting chanterelles and

course will help artists develop an eye for the

morels. We’d watch salmon come in to spawn,

uniqueness of a place, as well as the ability to

and we would hike. As an artist, I’m interested

compose images that capture subtleties and

in showing how humans are changing the

reflect their personal interpretation of the

landscape. I have an obligation to make work

environment.

that deals with some of these issues.”

Lavish leadership fresh faces bring vast experience Two new leaders are invigorating Massachusetts College of Art and Design: Hunter O’Hanian, vice president for institutional advancement and executive director of the MassArt Foundation, and Karen Townsend, dean of admissions.

DR

O’Hanian was president of the Anderson Ranch

Mark Ferguson ’88 passed away in 2008. His

Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado;

family, including his wife Eleanor Li ’87 and

Townsend was director of admissions at Maine

her sister Priscilla Li, established the Mark

College of Art (MECA) in Portland, Maine.

Ferguson Scholarship to honor his love of

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-

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.

ers locally and nationally, and achieve a good

Despite the fact that dyslexia made reading

balance of in-state and out-of-state students,”

a struggle, Ferguson also was an ardent — and

says Townsend. She works on her painting

non-traditional at twenty-four — student and

when she can.

teacher. Ferguson relished his relationship with Alan Klein, professor of fine arts 3D, who,

DONOR PORTRAIT

Reflecting a life in glass

the mark ferguson scholarship

REAM says Li, really encouraged him. “Mark was

Ferguson’s friend Hirokazu Fukawa remembers

hard working, funny, and sarcastic. He was

Ferguson’s Small Homage to de Chirico. The

one of the few people in the country who used

work refers to the illogical juxtaposition of

hot poured glass as the main thrust of their

objects in the Italian Surrealist’s painting Song

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-

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.

“The important point to life is not how long it is but rather how well it is lived…”

Champaign. He earned his MFA from Rhode

Ferguson’s work is a testament to his talent

Island School of Design in 1990 and returned

for cast glass. A letter he wrote to a friend

to MassArt in 2002 as a visiting artist.

in 2002 expresses his spirit: “The important

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.

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.

faculty focus

Cold comfort

jane marsching addresses climate change

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.

She has been teaching freshmen the fundamentals of visual language, video, and digital imaging, and graduate students contemporary art practices at Massachusetts College of Art and Design for five years.

Jane D. Marsching, Mike supervising Naomi building a balloon umiak, Austfonna Glacier, Svalbard, Norway, 2006, Courtesy Miller Block Gallery

Outside the classroom Marsching is working on what she calls a “Greek chorale adaptation of the Fourth Assessment Report of the

“We have gotten better at recycling and using

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

fluorescent light bulbs … but still, the problem

(IPCC).” Released in 2007, the report assesses

seems so huge, so out of our hands … that

the risks of climate change and includes

it’s easier to turn away or indulge in cynical

predictions about its impact.

dystopic visions,” says Marsching, who

“the problem seems so huge, so out of our hands, and getting ever more complex...”

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

Marsching began her career at Aperture

scientists could spark a sense of wonder,

as a book editor, where she worked on

interest, and a desire to take action.

interdisciplinary teams of writers and photographers. As she developed an interest in research, writing, and language, multimedia followed naturally.

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

Marsching’s recent work has centered on the

and rhetoric was a kind of art form,” says

Arctic; her current focus on climate change

Marsching. “We have an engine of creativity

isn’t much of a leap considering that global

today, which we can see in the massive

warming is transforming the formerly frozen

entertainment industry as well as in so many

frontier into slush.

other places. Can it be diverted to another

The IPCC report raised questions for Marsching that she is addressing in her long-

kind of activist effort?”

As diverse as Marsching’s work can be, a

term work in progress, An Uncertain Land,

common thread runs through it. “It’s about

which will include twelve-person vocals and

stories—putting them together and seeing the

multi-screen video. She will examine how

relationships between them,” says Marsching.

policy makers try to define the scientific language of uncertainty. The Greek chorus will act as translators of the complex transformations the climate is bringing to our planet and culture.

ES Inaugural Retrospective and Storage Loft, contents of studio, ink jet print, 2009

ES Alumni Focus

The handyman is artist-in-residence at the Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana,

He’s at your service

douglas weathersby takes environmental services to the masur museum

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

Where you see a pile of invoices, Douglas Weathersby MFA ’02 pictures a collage.

for visiting artists and curators. As Weathersby works—and documents his work—he’s unearthing his next work of art. At press time he’s

And all those tools and supplies you have

not sure exactly what will coalesce; perhaps

lying around your studio? He envisions

an installation that depicts the history of

an installation.

It’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.

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.

“The show referenced the move because I literally brought everything from my studio and stored it in the gallery for the show.”

ES Virtual Home Office, Atlanta Ed., ink jet prints, office supplies, 2007

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 Weathersby inhabits a temporary office and

Retrospective and Storage Loft,” exhibited at

art space in the downstairs of the carriage

the Judi Rotenberg Gallery in January 2009.

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 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

The artist also is collaborating with Emily Jahn,

longer afford when he bought his home. “The

the museum’s curator of education, on several

show referenced the move because I literally

projects for children. “I’ll have them help with

brought everything from my studio and stored

projects in my studio,” says Weathersby. “I’ll

it in the gallery for the show,” says Weathersby.

tell the children what I do, talk about it functionally, and then talk about appropriation and collage. Maybe we’ll make collages out of some museum invitations.”

He’ll cap off his residency at the Masur Museum with an exhibition, talk, and reception, 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.

sTudenT snAP

POeTRy In MOTIOn for young artist, words drive filmmaking

Lewis Morris SIM ’11 feels a bit like a prodigal

performances have won the team appearances

son. His mother, talented in drawing, yearned

at the Collegiate National Poetry Slam, Inc.

to attend Rhode Island School of Design in

(CUPSI) finals at the Apollo Theater in Harlem

Providence, Rhode Island, where Morris was

(they placed fifth), in San Jose, CA (they

raised. She never finished high school. Neither

placed second), and in Washington DC.

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.

“My poetry has taken me a lot of places.”

But words comfort and guide the twenty-yearold, 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

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.

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

Cover illustration of Anatomy of an Adam

Morris’s favorite director is Quentin Tarantino.

back, and become nothing and revert back

“The dialogue crackles and he gets you

into a mere thought in the celestial conscious-

interested immediately,” says Morris. He also

ness of my creator than be incomplete…

counts Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002) as one of

“Eve is every woman’s story,” says Morris, who

a few films he considers “flawless.”

says the poem reflects the continued margin-

When he’s not writing poetry or working on

alization of women.

films, Morris focuses on his screenplays.

“I like to create characters that have a dual

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.

nature,” says Morris. “My goal is to get one of my screenplays sold by the time I turn twenty-two.”

FuLL cIRcLe Learning — pass it on More than forty alumni, students,

- a photographer from South Africa

Whether you are interested in

and friends of MassArt joined

who was only able to attend

setting up a charitable gift annuity

President Kay Sloan last month

MassArt after receiving a new

that provides a steady stream of

in the President’s Gallery, as she

scholarship specifically for talented

income now, establishing a named

thanked the college’s ever-growing

MFA students with financial need;

scholarship in your will, or exploring

group of scholarship donors and members of the Longwood Society.

- a fashion major who spent the summer at the Paris Fashion

After a welcome from new

Institute on a full scholarship,

Vice President for Institutional

and talked about the fashion

Advancement Hunter O’Hanian and

department’s excellent reputation

a college update from President

as well; and

Sloan, attendees heard compelling stories from three of the scholarship recipients:

- 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.

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 karin.blum@massart.edu.

NONPROFIT ORG US POSTAGE 621 HUNTINGTON AVENUE BOSTON, MA 02115 USA

MassArt.edu

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10.30.09

04.10.10

Alumni Homecoming Weekend

Twenty-first Annual Benefit Art Auction

Generations of alumni return to campus

We are grateful to the generous artists,

to catch up with old friends and honor this

buyers, and sponsors who helped raise

year’s award winners at the second annual

more than $500,000 at the twentieth

Alumni Homecoming Weekend.

annual auction last spring. Funds raised support student scholarships and academic programs. Mark your calendar for the

12.07.09

auction on April 10, 2010.

Holiday Sale

For details on these and other events,

The college’s annual holiday sale, open

visit the alumni online community at

December 7-12 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.,

Holiday Sale jewelry

alumni.massart.edu.

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.

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

Homecoming 2008