ISSUE N°3
FA L L 2 0 1 6
A C ON V E R SAT I O N WITH
AWA R D S & R E COGN ITION —
TAHA HEYDARI —
CITIZ E N A R TISTS — TU R N I N G L E MON AD E I N TO A L I B GU I D E —
PAU L M I R E L VISIT S M I CA — M ICA' S N E W VE NT U R E CA P I TA L C OM PE T I T I O N —
ON E GIAN T L E AP — CH A N GE S I N BA LTI MOR E
C OM M U N I T Y AR T S AS A WAY O F LI F E — C U LT U R E O F C H A N GE —
MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
WELCOME TO
COM·MO·TION Noun A S TAT E O F C O N F U S E D A N D N O I S Y D I S T U R B A N C E .
We’re pleased to send you our third issue of Commotion, a magazine produced twice each year to share ideas, news, and of course, art—all that emerges from the 20 graduate programs here at MICA. The name Commotion comes from our belief that artists and designers create by a process of exploration, an investigative method that by its nature can be chaotic, noisy, and sometimes uncomfortable. The best work often starts with sparring ideas, a creative mind that is deliberating multiple media and solutions, and even a state of confusion. Sometimes, artists embrace this tumult, intentionally disrupting the expected to bring attention to new ideas or to begin conversations. Sometimes, designers are deliberately brought to situations to rethink and disrupt in order to energize.
T H E C O M M O T I O N T H E Y C R E AT E C A U S E S U S T O PAY AT T E N T I O N . A N D W E H O P E YO U ’ L L PAY AT T E N T I O N T O T H E PA G E S A H E A D . L E T U S K N O W YO U R T H O U G H T S — W R I T E U S AT C O M M O T I O N @ M I C A . E D U . A N D F O L L O W U S AT @ M I C A C O M M O T I O N .
C O V E R : S A N D H YA M A D D U R I ’ 1 6 ( P O S T - B A C , G R A P H I C D E S I G N ) , B E H O L D , 2 0 1 6
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30 CITIZEN ARTISTS F I N D O U T H OW T H E C I T Y ’S C R E AT I V E C L A S S I S M A K I N G I T S P R E S E N C E K N OW N O N T H E POLITICAL SCENE
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36 TURNING LEMONADE INTO A LIBGUIDE L E A R N H OW A M I C A LIBRARIAN TURNED A P O P C U LT U R E P H E N OM E N O N I N T O A L E A R N I N G R E S O U RC E
20 ASHLEY MINNER C OM MU N I T Y A RT S A LUM NA CONTINUES HER LIFELONG W O R K I N B A LT I M O R E’S LUM B E E I N D I A N C OM MU N I T Y W H I L E P U RS U I N G H E R P H D
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CULTURE OF CHANGE D I S C OV E R H OW 2016 S O N D H E I M WINNER IS CONFRONTING I N G R A I N E D AT T I T U D E S A B O U T S E XUA L V I O L E N C E
34 AWARDS & RECOGNITION
44 8 TAHA HEYDARI I R A N I A N NAT I V E TA H A H EY DA R I R E F L E C T S O N H I S T I M E AT M I CA A N D A RT ’S A B I L I T Y T O F U N C T I O N B EY O N D B O R D E RS
CHANGES IN BALTIMORE E S SAY B Y C A R A O B E R ’05
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
M E E T A RT I ST-E N T R E P R E N E U RS W H O W O N S E E D F U N D I N G AT T H E C O L L E G E’S F I RST P I T C H A N D STA RT U P C O N T E ST
(PAUL MIREL — MICA'S STARMAN)
(PAUL MIREL — MICA'S STARMAN)
If you visit Paul Mirel at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, you’ll eventually take note of the similarities between his office and an artist’s studio. Set inside a '60s-era building on Goddard’s sprawling campus, Mirel’s office is laden with the tools he uses to create. But instead of traditional fine arts gear—paint, brushes, rags, fiber, clay, ink—Mirel’s workspaces are filled with techy gizmos, everything from a 3D printer and computer to copper-clad tungsten wire and a soldering iron. Instead of paint thinner, he works with liquid nitrogen and liquid helium. Canvases don’t lean against walls; prototypes of wire grid polarizers do. Mirel agrees with the comparison, noting, “Engineers and artists are really doing the same thing. We’re both trying to create something that hasn’t existed before.” And what Mirel spends his days creating are pioneering technologies that will help determine how the universe developed the structure we see today. You see, our universe is made up of vast, empty areas interspersed with what Mirel calls clumpy bits—things like stars and planets that make up solar systems, solar systems that make up galaxies, and galaxies that make up clusters of galaxies. What's called the Primordial Inflation Theory posits that in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang— literally in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second—the universe so rapidly expanded that quantum fluctuations of the atom-sized universe got stuck as the universe expanded to macroscopic size. Those 'stuck' fluctuations created the current structure of the cosmos. Quantum fluctuations happen when particles smaller than atoms, or subatomic particles, blink in and out of existence — and those first ‘in’ particles froze to become the universe’s clumps, and the ‘out’ particles created those massive areas of empty space. Continued
Visiting engineer Paul Mirel takes time after his day job at NASA to bring art and science together
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M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
To discover the truth or untruth of all of this, Mirel is creating new tools that will sit on the edge of the sky. A systems engineer working for NASA’s PIPER (Primordial Inflation Polarization ExploreR) mission, he and the rest of the team at NASA will send a balloon observatory to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, where it will look toward space to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background, or light left over from the Big Bang. What that ancient light reveals when captured— nine PIPER launches are planned in all—may have profound consequences. Scientists understand how gravity works on a macroscopic scale—why planets orbit their suns and how gravity bends light, for example—but not on smaller, quantum scales. If PIPER helps prove the inflation theory, it will also give physicists data on the link between gravity and quantum mechanics.
P I P E R PAY LOA D I N THE HANGAR IN FORT SUMNER, NEW MEXICO, WA I T I N G F O R L AU N C H .
It’s heady, mind-blowing stuff. Mirel explains that it’s all driven by a childlike impulse to constantly question everything. “In order to do science, you have to maintain curiosity,” he said. “Why? Why? Why? Like a child’s approach to the universe. Why is the sky dark at night with stars in it? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Listening to him describe his work is inspiring. You want to go back in time and apologize to your high school chemistry teacher for being bored in class. If you’re an artist, you wonder how your thesis would have been different if you’d had access to Mirel’s enthusiastic sharing of knowledge. And when you talk to him about his day job and how it relates to his off-hours gig—being the first visiting engineer in MICA’s Division of Graduate Studies—you begin to understand how fitting and utterly delightful the relationship is between engineer and artist, and between Mirel and the students here.
— Mirel’s relationship with MICA began because of a light-up princess dress. “My niece was turning three, and I asked my brother what she was into. He said coloring books and princesses. I asked myself, ‘how can I take this princess idea as far over the top and as strong as possible?’ So I started making a light-up dress,” Mirel said, adding that he’s made a new one for her every year since.
(PAUL MIREL — MICA'S STARMAN)
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(PAUL MIREL — MICA'S STARMAN)
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
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PAU L M I R E L WO R KS W I T H A S T U D E N T I N M I CA' S LAZARUS CENTER.
Mirel came to show a prototype of the dress to Cat Yard Dunne '11 (Fiber BFA), who in turn urged the engineer to meet Annet Couwenberg, chair of the fiber department at the time. Mirel met with Couwenberg, who was teaching the class Unravel the Code with Ryan Hoover '06 (Mount Royal School of Art). Their mutual interests were apparent, and Mirel volunteered to help the class by conducting workshops on electronics and advising students on engineering approaches and skills. His work there was so successful that the Division of Graduate Studies brought him officially on board as MICA’s first visiting engineer. Today, he visits MICA anywhere from one to four days per week, teaching workshops and assisting with classes such as Motion + Interaction and Toy Design. Because more and more students are incorporating things like Arduino, an open source software and hardware platform, into their work, Mirel also works one-on-one with students on individual projects.
One student who worked with Mirel to incorporate technology into her artistic practice is Morgan Everhart ’16 (LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting). When she received a grant in 2015 to incorporate Arduino into her work, having a visiting engineer on hand was invaluable. As Everhart explained, “If Paul wasn’t at MICA, it would have taken me years to make the work that I aspired to create with this technology. I was able to share my ideas with him, and he walked me through the process of developing each circuit and figuring out what materials I needed.” While at MICA, Everhart used knowledge gained from Mirel to create a moving painting that changes speed based on the proximity of the viewer. Post-graduation, she plans to work on a capacitive painting that will make sound when the viewer touches the surface. “I feel confident and excited moving further with these projects because of him,” she said. “Having a NASA scientist advising students is the kind of thing that makes MICA so exceptional. His background is not in the arts, but he is an unmistakably creative thinker and maker with a great deal to offer to all of us,” said Jason Gottlieb ’13 (Graphic Design MFA), the faculty member leading Motion + Interaction. “It’s no surprise that a resident expert like Paul has become such an invaluable resource.”
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(PAUL MIREL — MICA'S STARMAN)
PAU L M I R E L E X P L A I N S H OW P I P E R ’ S PAY LOA D W I L L M E AS U R E T H E P O L A R I Z AT I O N O F T H E C O S M I C M I C R OWAV E BAC KG R O U N D .
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(PAUL MIREL — MICA'S STARMAN)
PAU L M I R E L N A S A’ S G O D DA R D S PA C E F L I G H T C E N T E R / M A RY L A N D
He added, “I like exploring new ideas. At NASA, I have one new idea to work with; we think we can measure a signal that nobody has ever measured before, and to do that, we have to be very careful. Here, I teach students a range of skills in engineering, and they all go out in all different directions.”
But Mirel is a fierce advocate of what he calls the democratization of engineering, the idea that society will be better off if more people understand basic engineering skills. This belief is driven by his thoughts on the environment and the inevitable impact of global climate change.
One of those different directions came from alumna Megan Mills ’15 (Design Leadership MBA/MA), a student in Unravel the Code, who approached Mirel with these simple words: I want to redesign the tampon.
“We have problems today, political problems and engineering problems. I can’t solve political problems. But the sea level is going to rise as much as a meter in the next decade, and that’s an engineering problem, and as a society, we don’t understand engineering. We carry around cell phones, but we don’t understand how they work,” he said. “None of this stuff is magic, but we treat it like it’s magic. If more people understand how things work, they can make intelligent decisions about the things they make and how they affect this world we live in.” Instilling basic engineering skills into nonengineers is one reason why Mirel is at MICA. Another is that he simply likes working with artists and designers. “One thing about artists, they get it done. They are willing to make decisions when they don’t have all the information, and in all cases, you will never have all the information you want. Some of the students I’ve worked with here are some of the most fluid thinkers I’ve ever met. To interact with people like that, that’s why I come here,” he said.
Mills explained that the plastic tampon applicator is a huge source of pollution, and they did a back-of-envelope calculation. In the U.S. alone, tampon applicators comprise 10,000 tons of single-use plastic waste every year. “Megan wanted to make the applicator out of a bio-plastic, but she didn’t know about casting and mold making,” Mirel said. “I taught her how to build some prototype molds, and after we worked together, she came away with the vocabulary to talk to anyone in the industry. She’s not a professional mold maker, but now she can talk to a mold maker with knowledge.” Since he’s been here at MICA, Mirel has helped not only students, but faculty and alumni as well— with chemistry and process control, with electronics, and he even helped Annie Howe '01 (Fiber BFA) with the math to scale a window installation. The relationships between Mirel and the MICA community have developed naturally. As Everhart explained it, “Art and science cannot exist without one another. Artists, scientists, and engineers are all essentially investigating people, materials, culture, and history.” “Both science and art are an expression of being human,” Mirel added. “Theo Jansen, a Dutch artist who makes wind-powered mechanical structures, says that the distinctions between art and engineering are only in our minds. It’s true. We all make things with materials.” Things like reactive paintings that bring a viewer and an artistic work together. Things like eco-friendly tampons that better protect our planet’s stressed biosphere. Or things like Mirel’s groundbreaking tools that will capture light as old as time in a quest to explain why our universe is made up of empty spaces and starfilled galactic clumps.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
Some of the students I’ve worked with here are some of the most fluid thinkers I’ve ever met. To interact with people like that, that’s why I come here.
What Mirel is doing at MICA is pretty basic given his range of skills. At Goddard, he works across multiple engineering fields—from aerodynamic to cryogenic, electrical to optical—and when he describes his work with PIPER, you wonder how he has the spare time to make what can be a two-hour commute from Greenbelt to Baltimore.
A C O N V E R S AT I O N with
TA H A H E Y DA R I
PROFOUNDLY INFLUENCED BY SOCIO -POLITICAL NARRATIVES DURING HIS CHILDHOOD IN TEHRAN, IRANIAN NATIVE TAHA HEYDARI ’16 (LEROY E. HOFFBERGER SCHOOL OF PAINTING) WAS ALREADY AN ACCOMPLISHED PAINTER BEFORE COMING TO MICA IN 2014. HIS WORK—WHICH CHALLENGES MEDIA-DRIVEN PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY AND THE GROWING HOLD DIGITAL IMAGERY HAS ON SOCIETY—HAS SHOWN IN LONDON, AMSTERDAM, BERLIN, AND ANTWERP, AND WAS THE FOCUS OF A 2015 SOLO EXHIBITION AT ETHAN COHEN GALLERY IN NEW YORK. (Continued)
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Although he had traveled extensively around the globe, Heydari’s entry into Hoffberger School of Painting represented his first journey to the United States, a journey that he says was as much about challenging his own perceptions of America as it was about studying art. Commotion sat down with him recently to discuss his time at Hoffberger, his art, and the differences — and similarities — he has found between Baltimore and Tehran.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
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W H AT WAS I T L I K E G R OW I N G U P I N T E H R A N , A N D WAS T H E R E A N E X P E R I E N C E O R P E R S O N T H AT I N F L U E N C E D YO U R I N T E R E S T IN ART?
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I was born in the middle of war between Iran and Iraq, so my everyday experience on TV was news about war, showing soldiers and battlefields, socio-political stuff. That war happened six or seven years after the revolution [that created] the Islamic Republic of Iran, so that topic was on the stage, too. I’ve been really influenced by socio-political subjects since I was a kid.
In terms of formal aspects of art, my dad was really influential. My dad is a painter, so I grew up in painting. The things I used to play with when I was a kid were colored pencils, watercolors, papers. I also used to go to college with him. He teaches art, and the experience of being at college and being in art studio classes was influential.
Coming here wasn’t just about art school. It was a journey. I came here to understand, to expand my view.
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W H Y D I D YO U D E C I D E TO L E AV E I R A N TO P U R S U E YO U R M FA I N T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S , A N D W H Y D I D YO U C H O O S E TO S T U DY AT M I CA ?
T H The topic of America is something huge in Iran. The way I grew up, the media represented America like it was a Satan; all the problems all around the world are related to America. And having that idea as a kid, which I gradually realized is not true—the game is way complicated then, what the media tried to simplify. So I decided to do this investigation. Coming here wasn’t just about art school. It was a journey. I came here to understand, to expand my view.
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W H E N YO U CA M E TO M I CA , WAS I T YO U R F I R S T T I M E T R AV E L I N G OUTSIDE OF IRAN?
T H No, I traveled to five countries in Europe. I’ve been to Turkey, I’ve been to Azerbaijan, and I’ve been to China. But when I came here in 2014, it was the first time I came to the United States.
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CA N YO U C O N T R AS T L I F E I N T E H R A N W I T H YO U R E X P E R I E N C E L I V I N G A N D S T U DY I N G I N BA LT I M O R E ?
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T H People all around the world, the image that they have of the United States is from Hollywood. I was affected by that, too. I was looking for that ideal image, in which everything was beautiful, everything was fine; if there was a problem, people were able to solve it—that happy-ending quality of Hollywood movies. But when I came here, I realized that image is flawed. And this gap between reality and image reaches my concern in artmaking.
In Iran, we’re dealing with a metanarrative that’s like a huge conflict between good and evil. The way that part of the world has been, with the origin of all religions — Christianity, Judaism, Islam — the whole area is very hot; I mean, they’re all fighting each other, even if the fight is not clear or obvious, there is an underlying conflict in interactions. Here, the pace of life is very fast because people need to make money. That lifestyle doesn’t let people here ask a lot of questions.
In terms of history, the United States is new in comparison to the Middle East. In the Middle East, people carry history in themselves. People there, they’re like old trees. They have these roots in history and it’s hard to move. Each movement, each action requires a lot of pain, and blood, and fight. But here, history is not that dominant.
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W H AT H AS YO U R E X P E R I E N C E AS A PA I N T E R B E E N L I K E I N HOFFBERGER?
W H AT W E R E YO U R E X P E C TAT I O N S A B O U T T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S A N D BA LT I M O R E , A N D W H AT WAS T H E R E A L I T Y O N C E YO U CA M E H E R E ?
Page 39 Acr ylic on canvas, 78 x 93 inches 2016
Here, I have the privilege of having this window in my studio watching over North Avenue. On that corner is Red Emma’s, and I watch every day people going by. So now I know what is going on underneath that image that media tries to produce. It is the same in all countries. They try to produce an image of themselves but reality is always something else.
TH
Hoffberger is not rigid. Students here don’t have to paint. Some people do videos, and some do installations. Painting is very old, and when you have this history, you can build up on it and look at other mediums from that point of view. What is visual experience? What is the history of art? It was started by painting in the caves. We have this huge perspective from cave to now. And I think Hoffberger is unique in terms of giving us this opportunity to be experimental. We can make videos, but even if you’re making video in Hoffberger, your video is considered from the point of view of a painter — or the history of image making.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
And with choosing MICA, it’s very simple. MICA is one of the top universities and the rank of Hoffberger [School of Art]—I think we’re ranked 4th right now in the [US News & World Report] rankings. Hoffberger was really important because it is unique. It is solely focused on painting. I was like that. My whole life, I painted, and I wanted to be surrounded by people who paint.
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When we think beyond the borders, we can solve problems. Art lets us do this. Art functions beyond borders.
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H O F F B E R G E R ’ S P R O G R A M D I R E C TO R , J OA N WA LT E M AT H , M A K E S I T A P O I N T TO B R I N G I N A V E RY D I V E R S E G R O U P O F V I S I T I N G A R T I S T S . W H AT H AS I T B E E N L I K E I N T E R AC T I N G W I T H T H E S E A R T I S T S A N D W I T H J OA N ?
TH
In this case, Hoffberger is unique, too. Every week we have a new artist, and with these artists, we do crits; and getting critiques here is completely unique. Also, they’re active artists; some mainstream, some more underground, some using alternative spaces. We have superstars in the art scene visit one day, and then one day we have a very young emerging artist. It gives us this opportunity to have expanded points of view of what is art. That’s a privilege that Hoffberger provides.
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2 Dark Chamber Acrylic on Canvas, 76 x 86 Inches, 2015
And Joan Waltemath is absolutely influential. There are 19 students between second and first year together. Joan is holding this all together.
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T H I mostly use rollers and airbrush because I can remove gestures. My work looks like it’s been produced by a machine, and I’m criticizing the process of these machines. I’m making glitches. For example, if your camera falls down, there’s a small chip, the image that you’re taking would be completely glitchy. This is how technology is fragile, and we are holding the whole understanding of ourselves through technology.
T H The atmosphere of Hoffberger, it’s like
W H AT D O YO U T H I N K I N T E R N AT I O N A L S T U D E N T S B R I N G TO C U LT U R A L A N D S O C I A L E X P E R I E N C E S I N BA LT I M O R E AND ELSEWHERE?
TH
The whole idea of diversity and having dialogue is very important. When you come to Iran, when I come here, these interactions let us realize that we are all the same.
We have these borders someone else made for us. When these borders are emphasized, danger is there—like evil exists there. When we walk through these borders, when we talk to each other, evil is not there. When I came here, I thought there was such a thing as Americans, but now I see people. So when we think beyond the borders, we can solve problems. Art lets us do this. Art functions beyond borders. I try to connect Tehran to Baltimore, the United States to Iran by making art. I want to say, “Forget what the media told you. Let’s talk.” It’s what I try to say here [in the piece Dark Chamber]. It shows a mass of people frozen, looking at one image. They are not looking at each other. We’re all staring at a two dimensional screen that is controlled by someone else. We don’t talk to each other. And I’m criticizing that.
This piece, Dark Chamber — the idea of camera obscura, which was the beginning of the camera—it’s like the first time when that pinhole let outside reality come in; we thought, “OK, we can just sit here and watch outside.” All we get from reality is through a screen. We think it’s real, but it’s not. I need to go to the corner by Red Emma’s and stand there for two hours to realize what is real.
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W H AT W I L L YO U TA K E F R O M M I CA AS A N A R T I S T ?
T H Diversity is something I really admire about MICA, especially about Hoffberger. We have students from all over: from China, from Mexico, from Korea, and I’m from the Middle East. Even from inside the United States, Hoffberger has students from the south, the west. And when we get together here, we all feel safe. We feel we have support to express ourselves. MICA provides this stage of not being afraid to talk about everything. For artists, that’s the most important thing. Freedom allows us to show how we can be productive and influential in everything. Artists have new ideas. They think beyond the borders. MICA provides a place to do this.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
a family. It’s a small program, so we do everything together. We have dinner together; we cook together; we clean together; we live together. For me, that’s important because art is not about institutions, it’s about life. Hoffberger is a program that is alive so that people communicate beyond rules and regulations of institutions.
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YO U PA I N T S Q UA R E BY S Q UA R E , S E C T I O N BY S E C T I O N , AS T H O U G H YO U A R E R E V E R S E E N G I N E E R I N G , P U T T I N G D I G I TA L WO R K BAC K I N TO PA I N T I N G . H OW D I D YO U A R R I V E AT T H I S S T Y L E , A N D CA N YO U T E L L U S ABOUT THIS TECHNIQUE?
W I T H 1 9 F I R S T - A N D S E C O N D - Y E A R S T U D E N T S AT A T I M E , H O F F B E R G E R I S A S M A L L P R O G R A M . W H AT KIND OF ENVIRONMENT DOES T H AT C R E AT E ?
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LIGHT CITY The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) hosted its inaugural Light City Baltimore festival. According to BOPA, Light City is the first large-scale light festival in the United States. The seven-day festival featured more than 50 light installations and artistic performances along the 1.5-mile BGE Light Walk, spanning the Inner Harbor and into Canton.
In addition to illuminating Charm City, BOPA also hosted Light City U, a series of innovation conferences focused on topics such as social change, health, and sustainability. Guest speakers from many industries and organizations around the city, including MICA President Samuel Hoi, spoke during the four-day series. MICA’s presence in the festival did not go unnoticed. In addition to being one of the major sponsors, MICA students, faculty, and alumni contributed heavily to the planning and curation of Light City. Approximately one-third of the artists, collaborators, and performers were members of the MICA community, seven hailing from our graduate programs:
6 A DA P I N KS TO N ' 1 3 ( C O M M U N I T Y A R T S M FA ) — PA R T I C I PAT E D I N NEIGHBORHOOD LIGHTS I N S TAT I O N N O R T H —
Into the Zone (Anthology of Accounts and Findings)
The Dark Lab
7 FAC U LT Y M E M B E R Q U E N T I N M O S E L E Y ' 72 (HOFFBERGER SCHOOL O F PA I N T I N G M FA ) —
2 R O B BY R AC K L E F F ' 0 9 ( M O U N T R OYA L S C H O O L O F A R T M FA ) —
Pyrrha
Gateway Baltimore: Tic, Pratt, Go
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3 FAC U LT Y M E M B E R M I N A C H EO N ' 99 (HOFFBERGER SCHOOL O F PA I N T I N G M FA ) —
N E X T Y E A R ’ S F E S T I VA L , RUNS FROM MARCH 28 T H R O U G H A P R I L 8 . YO U CA N F I N D M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N AND GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION ON THE F E S T I VA L W E B S I T E , L I G H TC I T Y. O R G
Diamonds Light Baltimore
4 SA R A H TO O L E Y ' 0 9 (COMMUNITY ARTS MA) —
901 Arts Drumline
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5 AS H L E Y M O L E S E ' 14 ( C U R ATO R I A L P R AC T I C E M FA ) —
Light City Festival Coordinator (BOPA Staff Member)
Photos courtesy of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts
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M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
Expanding beyond central Baltimore, Neighborhood Lights is a public artist-in-residency program that brings the magic of Light City to life on a community level. Artists-in-residence worked with residents of the selected neighborhoods to create public installations, with the help of community groups, over a three-month period. Installations illuminated the night in five neighborhoods: Station North, Little Italy, Hampden, Greater Mondawmin, and Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello.
1 R AC H E L G UA R D I O L A ' 1 5 ( M O U N T R OYA L S C H O O L O F A R T M FA ) —
R E N Z BA L AG TAS ’ 14 , SA M R I E T E N BAC H ’ 1 6, A N D J UA N S E BAS T I A N SERRANO ’16 OF JOINT YO U T H M OV E M E N T
AT MICA, THINKING CREATIVE
IS SERIOUS BUSINESS
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AT M I CA , C R E AT I V E T H I N K I N G I S S E R I O US B US I N E S S Artists and designers take chances, often big ones. Just look at the creative process — experimental, speculative, daring, and even disruptive. Risk taking is embedded in artmakers’ DNA.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
So it follows that a large number of art school graduates ultimately become entrepreneurs, and members of the MICA community are among those launching innovative businesses. To both maximize and support such efforts, the College has begun a series of initiatives designed to bolster the success of its entrepreneurial-minded students and alumni. As part of this effort, MICA brought awardwinning business owner Monyka Berrocosa, known as an Entrepreneurship Evangelist, as well as two Entrepreneurs-In-Residence, Harrison Tyler ’14 (Interdisciplinary Sculpture BFA) and Evan Roche ’14 (Interdisciplinary Sculpture BFA) to campus. The College also hosted a “Shark Tank”-style venture initiative called the Up/ Start Venture Competition — the College’s first pitch and startup contest for students and alumni who are launching or growing businesses. All of this was made possible by a $600,000 grant from the Philip E. and Carole R. Ratcliffe Foundation to capitalize on the unique talents of the College’s students and recent graduates. J O R DA N B R A D L E Y ' 1 6 ( I N T E R AC T I V E A R T S B FA ) — JORDAN PRESENTS AT THE UP/START VENTURE COMPETITION.
A STUDENT EXPLAINS HER PROJECT AT THE POP UP & PITCH DAY JAY JAC KS O N ' 1 6 (BUSINESS OF ART AND DESIGN MPS) — JAY AT THE POP UP & PITCH DAY.
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This past spring, eight teams of MICA-related entrepreneurs competed in front of a live audience and a panel of judges composed of the city’s most successful business leaders and owners, with up to $100,000 in investment funding awarded to four teams. Up/Start showcased some of MICA’s most creative, adventurous minds, with two teams from the graduate community receiving two of the event’s largest prizes.
UP/START VENTURE COMPETITION CONTESTANTS DURING THE VOTE FOR THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD WINNER
Julie Buisson '15 (MBA/MA in Design Leadership) and co-founder Mark Verdecia also won a $30,000 prize at the competition for MODERNature, their Baltimore-based microgreen company that focuses on environmentally conscious growth. MODERNature uses a trailer as an urban agriculture grow room that fits 40 microgreen trays, which equals 480 servings every two weeks (year-round) of tiny produce that contains four to 32 times as many nutrients as its fully grown counterpart. The partners plan to sell the gorgeously hued, early-harvested produce to local restaurants. After learning from MICA to look at the big picture of the design process, the founders also ensured they were reducing their environmental impact by growing local, reusing water, and using biodegradable inputs.
A STUDENT SHOWS HIS WORK AT THE POP UP & PITCH DAY.
JULIE BUISSON '15 (DESIGN LEADERSHIP M BA / M A )
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
JAY JAC KS O N ' 1 6 (BUSINESS OF ART AND DESIGN MPS)
Jay Jackson '16 (MPS in the Business of Art + Design), along with partners Micah Payne, Jack Rous, and Terrence Carpenter, won a $30,000 prize during the inaugural Up/Start MICA Venture Competition for their podcast studio, TNP Studios. The media company, which started with a few friends coming together in 2011, has grown to over 100,000 downloads per month. TNP Studios provides four to five shows per week about niche, often artistic topics —from black films to Japanese animation. Jackson and his fellow co-founders hope to launch a community project for the people of Baltimore that would improve healthy dialogue in the city.
AS H L E Y M I N N E R COMMUNITY ARTS AS A WAY OF LIFE
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Epiphanies often happen during the most mundane of tasks. We know the famous ones — we are able to measure the volume of irregularly shaped objects because Archimedes decided to take a bath. And Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity was triggered because he took a walk and noticed an apple falling from a tree. For Ashley Minner ’11 (Community Arts MFA, General Fine Arts BFA), that moment —when she was able to put a name to her life’s work— came because she wanted to cut class.
But to say that she simply wanted to cut class is unfair. Always a straight A student, Minner was feeling uncomfortable in MICA's environment, which, while great in its own way, was unlike anything she experienced growing up. She felt race and class tensions, but didn't yet have a vocabulary to articulate the experience. Minner is also a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and is deeply attached to the Baltimore American Indian Center, located on S. Broadway Street in Baltimore's Fell's Point.
Southeast Baltimore has been home to a significant population of Lumbee Indians since World War II’s employment boom, including Minner’s mother’s side of the family. “The way I was raised, you are expected to be a citizen of your community, to contribute. We help each other in whatever our vocation may be, and I’ve always been an artist,” she said. “That’s partly why I do what I do today. And I went to MICA because I didn’t want to move away from my community. It felt like a different world on campus, but at the end of the day I could go home.” When the faculty member who led that Visual Journalism class, Ken Krafchek, launched the MA in Community Arts (MACA) program, Minner joined the program — with certain conditions. “Ken asked me to apply, and I said, ‘if I can work with my people in my community, I want to do it.’ Ken made a way for me to do that. I had a job working with my Aunt Jeanette, who directed the Title VII Indian Education Program of Baltimore City Public Schools. It was housed in the former Highlandtown Middle School. That became my MACA community site.” Minner said.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
“I was an undergraduate and decided to take Visual Journalism, because I saw the course description; and it said we’d be in different neighborhoods in the city, including mine. I thought, ‘Great! I’m going to disappear.’ I didn’t want to go to class. I thought I’d get something to eat, go visit people,” Minner explained, adding, “But as it turned out, I discovered that community arts was a thing that you study and do, and I didn’t realize until then that what I already did was community arts.”
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M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
As part of her thesis in the MACA program, she developed the pilot for the Native American After School Art Program (NAASAP), which evolved into a successful application for an Open Society Institute – Baltimore Community Fellowship—an honor that comes with a stipend of nearly $50,000. The funding helped get the NAASAP off the ground, and the youth-run program is still active today. Now led by a group of four girls from the Lumbee Tribe, the community arts for social justice program allows its members to choose which issues to address within their community. When the program started, Minner brought in guest artists, and participants studied everything from photography to quilting. Over time, due in large part to Minner’s hectic schedule, the core group of girls in NAASAP took true ownership of the program’s direction. “The girls today are all little arts professionals. They write grants—they’ve gotten two so far—and they participated in the Alternate Roots regional conference in Tennessee this summer,” Minner noted. “They did a watercolor show and raised $1,000 for Haiti. They donated their old toys and raised money for a homeless shelter in West Baltimore, and they did art workshops with the kids there.” Still an active part of the lives of ‘my girls,’ as she calls them, Minner went on to earn her MFA in Community Arts at MICA and is currently pursuing a PhD in American Studies. She said that awareness of her role in these young people’s lives helped motivate her to continue her education — that, and advice from one of her own mentors, Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute. Vega passionately advocated for more education, noting that there are not enough women of color in advanced positions and with advanced degrees. Minner was also a 2016 Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellow at the institute, where she worked with a cohort of young arts professionals from around the world to address disparities in arts funding and investment. “We addressed whose art gets to be art in New York specifically,” Minner said, but pointed out that the issue has a much broader context. When describing her work, and the work of many other community artists, she stressed, “We are addressing disparities that are as old as this nation state. Race is at the core of everything in America. It began when there was contact with Europeans —they wondered if the people
they found here were subhuman or not. How do you keep people of color down? You devalue their cultural production. You don’t recognize their art as art or their beauty as beauty. That plays out in a million insidious ways, like what or who is represented in popular media.” Minner stresses that all forms of art are important, but adds, “In the Lumbee community, there’s always been art. We make regalia. There’s dancing, singing, and music. There’s culinary art. It’s just not art as defined by the Western academy. If you’re a person of color or someone who doesn’t fit the dominant culture, you don’t always see your people’s history or your people’s accomplishments reflected.” And the desire to change the conversation about what is art and what is beauty is at the heart of Minner’s work as a community artist, and continues to drive her work with the NAASAP’s four girls. “I want them to be proud of who they are and to love the way they look. I want them to understand the importance of family, and that they’re also a part of a legacy that’s so much bigger than just themselves. I want them to know it’s fine to dream big. I want them to know they’re important,” she said, pausing a moment as tears threatened to overtake her words. “I just love them.”
I want them to be proud of who they are, and to love the way they look. I want them to understand the importance of family, and that they’re also a part of a legacy that’s so much bigger than just themselves.
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PISCATAWAY LADIES’ REGALIA (POST-CONTACT), AS SEEN AT THE BALTIMORE AMERICAN INDIAN CENTER.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
PISCATAWAY MEN’S REGALIA (POST-CONTACT), AS SEEN AT THE BALTIMORE AMERICAN INDIAN CENTER.
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M ICA ALUM NAE UPE N D I NGRAI N ED ATTITUDES SURROUN DI NG RAPE
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Winner of the 2016 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize, a prestigious honor that includes a $25,000 fellowship for artists living and working in the Greater Baltimore region and the opportunity to exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the pair recites staggering statistics, such as, “one in three women, one in six men, and over half of all transgender people will experience sexual violence as children,” as they explain their reasons for getting involved. “Rape is not a special interest issue that affects a few people; rape is a social justice problem that affects everyone,” Nagle explained.
Brancato and Nagle first joined to confront the issue after a series of events that included the finish of Brancato’s work with House of Ruth, an intimate partner violence center, and Nagle’s completion of a script for a satirical play about her experience as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Around the same time, conflict arose within the Baltimore arts community when a comedian made a joke about rape. Their response turned into FORCE: On the Culture of Rape, which exhibited at Baltimore’s Current Gallery and prompted local artists to have a more public dialogue about rape and the way it was treated in their own community. The pair soon expanded their collaboration by creating FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, an artist collective and activist effort which today is comprised of a 30-member national team. FORCE quickly began raising awareness around issues of sexual violence and consent, gaining national attention in 2012 from their Pink Loves Consent project, a spoof of a Victoria’s Secret campaign. Pink Loves Consent — which included a website promoting a line of consent-themed underwear, a live Twitter chat during the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and a panty drop where underwear emblazoned with “no means no” and “ask first” were placed in stores across the country — went viral, spreading rapidly across social media and garnering a slew of press coverage.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
At a time when there has been an intense, nationwide look at sexual assault, particularly on college and university campuses, Hannah Brancato ’07, ’11 (Fiber BFA, Community Arts MFA) and Rebecca Nagle ’08 (Fiber BFA) are directly confronting the issue. Co-founders of FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, the pair is seeking to not only support survivors of sexual violence, but also to change culture and policies surrounding the violent act. Their efforts have been felt nationwide—going viral during a provocative social media campaign and literally blanketing city streets and green spaces across the country through the large-scale, collaborate fiber piece, The Monument Quilt.
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The success of that campaign prompted Brancato and Nagle to think on an even larger scale. In 2013, they began working with thousands of survivors to help tell their stories through art, a venture which culminated in the national art project, The Monument Quilt. Exhibiting across the country and encompassing more than 1,000 collected quilt squares inscribed with the words of survivors, The Monument Quilt acts as a vehicle for creating public space where survivors of sexual violence can heal. This past April, The Monument Quilt was spread across two blocks in the Station North Arts & Entertainment District—the center of Baltimore City and in the heart of MICA’s graduate community— during a month-long awareness campaign called Not Alone Baltimore. As streets were closed, personal stories from survivors blanketed the thoroughfare so that hundreds of quilt squares from contributors throughout the nation spelled out “NOT ALONE.”
HANNAH BRANCATO ’07 ’11 AND REBECCA NAGLE ’08 AND THE MONUMENT QUILT.
SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE DRAW STRENGTH AND INSPIRATION FROM MANY PLACES INCLUDING THEIR FAITH.
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VISITORS TO THE MONUMENT QUILT’S DISPLAY ALONG NORTH AVENUE IN MARCH, 2016.
“Quilts are used as a vehicle to send a message,” said Annet Couwenberg, a faculty member in MICA’s Fiber Department.“It (The Monument Quilt) creates a place of the communal healer and creates a place where people use art to talk about difficult issues.”
VOLUNTEERS AT FORCE CREATED THESE GIVEAWAY MEMENTOS SO THAT SURVIVORS COULD BE REMINDED THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
Brancato and Nagle contend that by creating public space for survivors, the project challenges and reshapes public understanding of how United States policy and culture contribute to the widespread occurrence of sexual violence. The pair credits psychiatrist Judith Herman as their inspiration for The Monument Quilt. In her book, Trauma and Recovery, Herman says, “The most common trauma of women remains confined to the sphere of private life, without formal recognition or restitution from the community. There is no public monument for rape survivors.”
Exhibiting across the country and encompassing more than 1,000 collected quilt squares inscribed with the words of survivors, The Monument Quilt acts as a vehicle for creating public space where survivors of sexual violence can heal.
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HANNAH BRANCATO ’07 ’11 AND REBECCA NAGLE ’08 IN FORCE’S STUDIO ON NORTH AVENUE.
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Nagle added, “It builds a new culture where survivors are publicly supported, not shamed. Public shame isolates survivors. Isolated, we cannot come together, we cannot organize, and we cannot create change.” Since 2013, The Monument Quilt has displayed in 22 cities nationwide. In late 2016, the quilt will tour the West coast, finishing with a display along the border with Mexico, and in October 2017, the quilt exhibition will spread across the National Mall in Washington, DC, along with a simultaneous display in Mexico City. The pair have also received a $30,000 PNC Transformative Art Prize from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. In addition, FORCE will continue to gather survivors together to work on public projects thanks to a fellowship from the Open Society Institute – Baltimore.
Quilts are used as a vehicle to send a message. It creates a place of the communal healer and creates a place where people use art to talk about difficult issues. A N N E T C O U W E N B E R G | A FAC U LT Y M E M B E R I N M I C A ’ S F I B E R D E PA R T M E N T
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
IN ADDITION TO INDIVIDUAL SQUARES, GROUPS ACROSS THE COUNTRY WILL COME TOGETHER TO COLLABORATE ON WHOLE PANELS OF THE MONUMENT QUILT.
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P R O M OT I N G T H E P O L I T I C A L P OW E R O F C R E AT I V E S
Held in MICA’s Falvey Hall, a spacious auditorium surrounded by Brown Center’s towering glass walls, the event was packed with a standing room only crowd. They came to make a statement, to let mayoral hopefuls know that Baltimore’s arts and culture community is much more than a tool that can be used to bring tourists into the city. It is a community that forms a powerful, passionate voting bloc, and one whose work is as important to Baltimore’s future as education, health, and public safety. The forum was sponsored by Citizen Artist Baltimore, a non-partisan initiative aimed at raising awareness within and around Baltimore’s creative community. A collaborative effort, Citizen Artist Baltimore has partners from around the city and state, and is led by a dedicated team of citizen artists, including MICA alumnus Graham Coreil-Allen ’10 (Mount Royal School of Art), the group’s creative director.
“We were happy to see the candidates seriously engaging in these conversations, and we’re looking forward to working with the next mayor’s administration. We’re going to keep this effort up, and we’re going to hold the next administration accountable — working with them to ensure they follow through on some of these priorities,” Coreil-Allen said. With forum attendee Catherine Pugh going on to win the democratic primary and thus becoming the presumptive mayor in heavilydemocratic Baltimore, Coreil-Allen pledged that the arts will be a part of the city’s future plans, and the priorities of the arts community will be upheld. Those priorities, he explained, represent the concerns of people across Baltimore City. As he noted, “Our efforts aren’t just about artists, per se, but about anyone that benefits from or cares about arts and culture, which is everyone. We held meetings all over the city to gather ideas about the top priorities of Baltimore’s diverse arts communities. Our listening session sites included Wombwork Productions in Walbrook, Art Social Club on Pennsylvania Avenue, The Windup Space in Station North, the American Indian Center in East Baltimore, Zella’s Pizzeria in Hollins Market, and Cherry Hill Homes in South Baltimore.”
Continued
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Last March, MICA hosted Baltimore’s first-ever Mayoral Forum on Arts and Culture, bringing 11 of the cit y’s mayoral candidates to campus to discuss issues specific to the local arts community. During the unprecedented event, contenders for Baltimore’s highest elected office covered a range of items—from equity in arts funding to the creation of a cabinet-level arts and culture position. The most striking aspect of the forum, however, wasn’t the candidate’s ideas— it was the sheer size of the audience, one that came as much to be seen as heard.
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H O P S C OTC H R I VA L RY , I N S TA L L AT I O N AT A R T S C A P E I N BA LT I M O R E , J U LY 2 0 14
H O P S C OTC H R I VA L RY P H OTO C O U R T E SY O F GRAHAM PROJECTS
H O P S C OTC H C R O S S WA L K C O LO S S U S
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What we learned is that arts and culture are so embedded with everything. The top priority we heard was employment. How can arts and culture continue to employ people in even stronger ways? G R A H A M C O R E I L-A L L E N ’ 1 0 | M O U N T R OYA L S C H O O L O F A R T
H O P S C OTC H C R O S S WA L K C O LO S S U S , I N S TA L L E D AT THE CORNER OF LO M BA R D A N D E U TAW S T R E E T S I N BA LT I M O R E , 2013–ONGOING, PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAHAM PROJECTS AND B O PA .
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Citizen Artist Baltimore received input from hundreds of people throughout the city, eventually using their feedback as a foundation for a questionnaire distributed to the city’s candidates for mayor. The responses to those questionnaires were then posted on the Citizen Artist Baltimore website as a voter education tool and served as a foundation for the mayoral forum held at MICA. In describing the feedback the group obtained from city residents, Coreil-Allen said, “What we learned is that arts and culture are so embedded with everything. The top priority we heard was employment. How can arts and culture continue to employ people in even stronger ways? We also heard about arts education, on how to get better, stronger arts education into more schools.” In addition to being an arts organizer, Coreil-Allen leads Graham Projects (grahamprojects. com), a Baltimore-based creative agency that seeks to make cities more inclusive and livable through public art, civic engagement, and social initiatives. And with a background in public art and advocacy, getting involved in Citizen Artist Baltimore was a natural step for him to take. “My work as a public artist is comprised of different modes of working strategies that are all under the overarching goal of improving cities for people. I love cities, especially Baltimore,” he said. Citizen Artist Baltimore’s partners include heavy hitters in the arts, such as the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maryland Citizens for the Arts, and Station North Arts & Entertainment District, among others. The organization continues to raise awareness of key dates and information—including voter registration deadlines and polling locations — leading up to the general election in November.
To learn more, visit citizenartist.vote
G R A H A M C O R E I L-A L L E N P H OTO BY DA N ANDERSON
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AWARDS & RECO GNITION
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
Ryan Nord Kitchen ‘14 | Winter Paintings, 2016
Il Sung Na ’15 | Bear LATIN AMERICAN ILLUSTRACION AWARDS
ED UAR D O CO R R AL ’14 I LLU STRATION PRACTICE MFA
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Interrupted Dream no. 01 by Corral ‘14, aka TLaloC, was selected for inclusion in the Latin American Illustracion Awards sponsored by American Illustration/American Photography. This is the second year his work has been selected for the award. Corral is currently teaching illustration in Monterrey, Mexico.
WIA2015 AWARD
I L S UNG NA ’15 I L L US T R AT IO N PR ACT I CE MFA
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Na was shortlisted for WIA2015 (World Illustration Award given by the Association of Illustration in London) Self-Initiated Category and a Merit Award in the 3x3 student show. He created two books for his Illustration Practice MFA Thesis; one book, The Opposite Zoo, is a March Best of the Month Pick at Amazon and the other, A Pig who Admired Birds, will be published in 2018 by Chronicle Books. Na is currently working on Bird, Balloon, Bear with the publishing company Alfred A. Knopf to be released in 2017.
CREATIVE CONSCIENCE AWARD
LUYI WANG ’17 I L L US T R AT IO N PR ACT I CE MFA
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Wang received the Silver Medal Creative Conscience Award in the Illustration & Animation category in 2015. Creative Conscience promotes socially valuable, humancentered design that enables and inspires people to change their lives and the lives of those around them for the better.
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AWARDS & RECO GNITION IN THE MEDIA
RYAN N O R D KITCH E N ’14 LEROY E. HOF F BER G ER SCHOOL OF PAI NT I N G
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DOUG THOMAS ’16 GRAPH IC D ESIGN MFA UNITED STATES SOCIETY FOR EDUCATION THROUGH ART AWARD
J E S C I A HO P P ER ’15 A RT E DUCATION MA
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Hopper is the recipient of the inaugural “Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award” from the United States Society for Education through Art (USSEA). The award is based on Hopper’s research report, “Learning At My Own Pace: A Qualitative Investigation on the Impact of Tutorial Videos on Student Learning in an Eighth Grade Art Classroom,” and the extensive interdisciplinary literature review that supported that. Hopper received the award at the National Art Education Association convention in Chicago in March.
+ CAITLIN WEBER ’16 SOCIAL D ESIGN MA
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Thomas and Weber were named Students to Watch in the January/February 2016 issue of Graphic Design USA. Thomas was selected for his previous work in graphic design and published works on typography. He is currently working on a book, Never Use Futura, Unless…, which explores the full constellation of typographic meanings in the historical and contemporary uses of the font Futura. Weber’s current work includes a team project in Baltimore, a thesis identifying points of intervention in a complex system of urban water pollution and issues of climate change as the Civic Works Climate Action Fellow.
S TEPHAN I E BARBER Resident Artist MO UN T R OYA L S CH O O L OF ART
+ HAN NAH BRANCATO ’11 CO M M UN IT Y A R T S MFA
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Barber and FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, led by Brancato and Rebecca Nagle ’08 (Fiber BFA), were named finalists for the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. The competition awards a $25,000 fellowship to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Greater Baltimore region and the opportunity to exhibit at The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). The finalists’ works were exhibited in the BMA’s Thalheimer special exhibition galleries this summer. The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize is held in conjunction with the annual Artscape juried exhibition and produced by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts in partnership with the BMA and MICA. The competition winner was announced during an award ceremony and reception in early July.
LAUNCH ARTISTS IN BALTIMORE (LAB) AWARD
J E N BURT ’16 CO M M UN IT Y A R T S MFA
+ M ERRELL HAM B LETON ’16 CR I T I CA L S T UDI ES MA
+ ALIC E G ADZ I NS KI ’16 R I N EH A R T MFA
+ E M ETRIOUS CANTY ’16 S O CI A L DES I G N , MA
+ DIAMON D JAM ES ’16 S O CI A L DES I G N MA
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Now in its fifth year, the Launch Artists in Baltimore (LAB) award is given to graduating Master of Fine Arts and Master of Arts students, providing them with $10,000 of seed funding to create and implement projects in Baltimore. The graduating students are pursuing a variety of Baltimore-based work that will expand and diversify the city’s cultural landscape. Burt is using her LAB award to provide after-school arts programming to middle school students in the Patterson Park and Hampstead Hill areas of Baltimore, where she will collaborate with students to explore identity and place. The LAB award is helping Hambleton establish The Old Town Mall Collective Memory Project, a multimedia, multi-perspective portrait of Baltimore’s historic
Old Town Mall before it is demolished. The project will include written pieces, oral interviews, field recording, mapping, video, and photography. As part of her residency at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Gadzinski will use her LAB award to produce a performance in collaboration with Charm City Puppets. The work will include partnerships with a broad range of Baltimore-based artists, musicians, and dancers to animate Gadzinski’s sculptures. Canty is using the LAB award to develop a high-school level architecture curriculum designed to help teens rethink and redesign the world around them. The project will bring students from City Neighbors High School to Baltimore’s Morgan State University for weekend classes. The LAB award will assist James in the creation of a design exchange embedded within Baltimore’s Perkins Homes housing project in an effort to increase citizen power in the neighborhood revitalization process. Through the exchange, residents, developers, and designers will envision the next iteration of housing for the residents of Perkins Homes.
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
Doug Thomas ’14 | Never Use Futura, Unless...
Kitchen’s New York solo debut, “Winter Paintings,” at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, was reviewed in The New York Times. Called “a brilliant newcomer” in the field of modernism, Kitchen showcased 25 works through May 22.
JANET & WALTER SONDHEIM ARTSCAPE PRIZE
. . . T U R N I N G
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L I B G U I D E . . .
Chances are, even if you’re not a fan of contemporary R&B music, you’ve heard of Beyoncé’s most recent work, Lemonade. Released last April and accompanied by the simultaneous debut of a one-hour film on HBO, the visual album was an instant cultural phenomenon. It is lyrically haunting, and is graced with powerful, often emotional imagery. It is also stuffed so full of literary and historical references that it makes librarians drool. At least, that was its effect on Jenny Ferretti, the digital initiatives librarian at MICA. Continued
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Ferretti was so inspired by the work that within days of its release, she published the Lemonade LibGuide — or an online research guide — filled with information, videos, articles, and other materials that explore the numerous references found in Beyoncé’s groundbreaking visual album. And as soon as the LibGuide was online, Ferretti tweeted the news to her followers.
Ferretti also realized that some students might be more familiar with Beyoncé than some of the literary and historical references used throughout the visual album. She said that by engaging those students with an experience they can relate to, such as Lemonade, she can shift the conversation into ways students can deepen their educational experience at MICA.
The news reverberated across Twitter and the library research community, and within 24-hours, the Lemonade LibGuide had over 14,000 views. Among those retweeting Ferretti’s news was the New York Public Library, which has over 1.5 million followers, and the NAACP. A reporter from Baltimore’s City Paper contacted her about the LibGuide’s success almost immediately, while online blogs reached out as well.
“Art is information. I want students at MICA to understand that,” she said. “A great deal of research went into Lemonade’s production. There were three lines from a Malcolm X speech used in Lemonade, and someone had to find that clip of him speaking. That’s a connection I hope students can make.”
Ironically, Ferretti doesn’t often listen to Beyoncé’s music. As she noted, “I wasn’t a fan, but I happened to be home the Sunday the visual album was playing on HBO; and because the trailer for it was so vague, I didn’t know what to expect. I decided to watch it, and I was completely blown away.” In a subsequent call to her family, Ferretti gushed about the piece and began outlining all of the things she found interesting in Lemonade—such as snippets of a Malcolm X speech used in the work and imagery inspired by New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Indians. Those items outlined during that phone call became the backbone of what she would create a few days later. “In creating the guide, I was hoping to give students a small window into what went into making Lemonade and to show them what kind of work there is in the industry,” Ferretti said. “Seven different directors worked on the film. There were stylists, cinematographers, a large team that’s similar to teams that build large-scale, three-dimensional artworks.”
She added, “In one part, we see the faces of mothers of victims of gun violence placed front and center, but the audience isn’t told who they are. A student might not recognize them— they included the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. It’s powerful and emotional, and I want students to have the resources to look that kind of detail up.” Ferretti continues to add to the guide, incorporating materials sent to her over Twitter and from colleagues at MICA. As she explained, “Siân Evans, our instruction librarian, mentioned a Pipilotti Rist video —where she was smashing car windows, and smiling in a dress. That’s imagery seen in Lemonade. Seeing Beyoncé smashing windows, and seeing this 1997 video that’s performance art and there’s a record of that work at MOMA — it’s a great connection for students to follow.” Currently, the Lemonade LibGuide has over 60,000 views. It includes information about literary works associated with the album; about Warsan Shire, the Somali-British poet—named the first Young Poet Laureate for London in 2014 at age 25 — whose work is read by Beyoncé in between Lemonade’s tracks; about the album’s art and culture references, including influences from filmmakers such as Terence Malick; and details about the collaborative team responsible for the visual album’s creation. The guide even includes a map to give users an idea of the locations used during the making of the film. To conduct your own research into the Lemonade sensation, visit libguides.mica.edu/lemonade
In creating the guide, I was hoping to give students a small window into what went into making Lemonade and to show them what kind of work there is in the industry. JENNY FERRETTI | LIBRARIAN
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HEATHER SLANIA LIBRARIAN
A N A R T I S T I N T H E S TAC KS
She didn’t use the library for coursework, but Slania loved books and gravitated toward libraries. She even became a library work-study student at Northwestern. As she explained, “I was placed in the book conservation department because that’s where the artists worked. When I graduated, I thought, ‘working in the library is really great.’ I went from never using the library for my classes to becoming a librarian.”
Denial
After earning a Bachelor of Science in Performance Studies and Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern, Slania pursued a Master of Library Science from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has 20 years experience, including a position as instruction librarian at Georgetown University and as director for the library and research center at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where she worked to make the library fully functional after a four-year closure during the Great Recession. Her background — in higher education, in a museum, and as performance artist — makes Slania a perfect fit for MICA. She wants students to know research is an artistic process and that Decker Library is the place to start. “Libraries are a place for creation and a place for knowledge making,” she said. “As you grow as an artist and designer, you realize the importance of knowing the history of what you’re doing, or that you need more background to fully realize your idea.”
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
FORMATION
Despite using the library for a single project during her senior year at Northwestern University, MICA’s new director of Decker Library, Heather Slania, decided to become a librarian after graduation. “My intent was to become a performance studies professor and working artist, but when I graduated, I wasn’t sure that was for me,” she said.
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ONE GIANT LEAP
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
A new generation of designers is emerging, one dedicated to applying their talents to the critical challenges of our time. Still, as these professionals seek to become social innovators, a few questions remain — what kinds of jobs are available for these designers, and are they receiving the preparation needed to face the realities of a challenging and evolving marketplace? The exploration of that question was the focus of LEAP/2: Value of Design Symposium, a seminal convening held in MICA’s Center for Social Design this past April. The symposium brought participants from around the country and globe, including over 100 thought leaders, educators, and practitioners, to MICA to discuss this professional frontier. The Symposium was made possible through support from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Sappi, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. “It was an incredible opportunity for our graduate students to interact personally with many of the leaders and role models in the emergent field of social design,” said Lee Davis, codirector of MICA’s Center for Social Design. “It was also an opportunity for us to celebrate Baltimore as a real pioneer in social innovation and to spotlight the amazing work of our colleagues and partners around the city who have embraced the value and potential of design to address really complex social problems.” LEAP/2 built upon momentum from an initial LEAP Symposium hosted in 2013 at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. The first event explored the rising trends in social innovation careers while acknowledging numerous challenges. The goal of LEAP/2 was to shift from a broad conversation to one that explored actionable opportunities for creating new professional pathways in social design.
Davis notes that LEAP/2 was intentionally designed by the Center for Social Design to be an open, honest conversation about the current state of the emergent field. A mix of small group work facilitated by MA in Social Design (MASD) graduate students and faculty, site visits around Baltimore, and public plenaries offered multiple opportunities for critical thinking, discussion, and reflection about both the challenges and opportunities faced in developing professional pathways for social designers. “One theme which stood out was that of equity and social justice in design,” Davis said. “This topic came up in nearly every session and was intentionally discussed in the final plenary. We were delighted to see these conversations emerge as urgent themes. How can we discuss human-centered design and professional pathways for social designers when our own profession doesn’t yet reflect the diverse communities, talent, and voices we espouse in our work and teaching?” Participating in plenary sessions were what Davis called a “diverse group of provocateurs” who were brought to the symposium to inspire and challenge participants—including George Aye and Sara Cantor Aye from Greater Good Studio, Christine Gaspar from the Center for Urban Pedagogy, Kippy Joseph from the Rockefeller Foundation, Gaby Brink from Tomorrow Partners, Justin Cook from the Finnish Innovation Fund – Sitra, Liz Ogbu from Studio O, Seema Patel from the Global Development Lab at USAID, and Rafael Sergio Smith from IDEO.org. When MICA launched MASD in 2011, it was the first graduate level, degree-granting program of its kind in the country. The success of LEAP/2 illustrates the increasing interest from educational institutions in offering educational opportunities to socially engaged designers. “As MASD enters its sixth year, we’ve been reflecting on the amazing work of our alumni. The diverse pathways they have taken are representative of the field itself,” Davis noted. “It is exciting to see designers working on complex problems at a macro systems level demonstrating a new role for designers in areas we wouldn’t have seen a decade or even a handful of years ago. And many are now educators themselves. It’s exciting to see a new generation enter academia with an equal portion of design literacy and social literacy and who can push design education in more ambitious and impactful directions.” To learn more, visit www.valueofdesign.org.
LEE DAVIS (LEFT) WITH FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR SOCIAL DESIGN AND MA IN SOCIAL DESIGN, MIKE WEIKERT ‘05 (GRAPHIC DESIGN MFA).
As MASD enters its sixth year, we’ve been reflecting on the amazing work of our alumni. The diverse pathways they have taken are representative of the field itself. L E E DAV I S , C O - D I R E C TO R O F M I C A ’ S C E N T E R FOR SOCIAL DESIGN
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PATHWAYS TO SO CIAL INNOVATION
CENTER FACULTY MEMBER BECKY SLOGERIS FACILITATES LEAP/2 SMALL GROUP.
One theme which stood out was that of equity and social justice in design.
M I C A’ S M A S D A L U M N I H I G H L I G H T T H E B R E A D T H O F P RO F E S S I O N A L O P P O RT U N I T I E S I N T H I S G ROW I N G D E S I G N F I E L D.
DESIGN & SOCIAL I N NOVATION The Australian Centre for Social Innovation Bramble Lab Gensler Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety & Quality Little Bird Innovation Neighborhood Design Center ReBoot Tomorrow Partners
GOVERN M E NT/PUBLIC SERVICE Baltimore City Health Department White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) White House Presidential Innovation Fellowship
BUSI N ESS & SOCIAL E NTERPRISE BOOMco Chipotle emocha Mobile Health Inc. Imperative Johnson & Johnson’s Global Strategic Design Office MLE Empowering Apparel revolution foods Tipping Point T Lab
EDUCATION University of Maryland, Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship The School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University University of the Arts London Loyola University of Maryland MICA, Center for Social Design MASD CLASS OF 2016 SHARE THEIR PROFESSIONAL ASPIRATIONS WITH LEAP/2 PARTICIPANTS.
Johns Hopkins University/MICA, MBA/MA in Design Leadership School of Visual Arts
NON PROFIT ORGAN IZATIONS Chesapeake Bay Foundation Development Seed Korea Crafts & Design Foundation The Open Society Institute-Baltimore, Community Fellowships Teach For America
M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
NEA DESIGN SPECIALIST COURTNEY SPEARMAN.
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M ICA / MARYL AN D I NSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART
CHCHCHCHCHANGES IN BALTIMORE
CA R A OBER ’O 5 E D I TO R IN-CHIEF, BMOREART
M A RY L A N D INSTITUTE COLLEGE OF A RT
— OCTOBER 2016
I arrived in Baltimore in 2000 with a strong desire to become an artist, but I was clueless about how to do this. I come from a middle class family of educators, and my desire to make a living as an artist, build creative community, or to found a small business seemed like a ridiculous fairy tale. The art world offers so many contradictions about the relationship between art and money it’s hard to know where to begin. In mainstream media, we regularly read about astronomical auction prices, mega-artists with hundreds of assistants, and billionaire collectors and museum trustees. Then there are the passionate but starving artists with mountains of student loan debt, deft waitressing skills, and little hope of ever making a living from art sales. Both extremes are clichés with little depth or founding, yet both seem to dominate art world press and maintain a powerful presence in the minds of artists. While incomplete, these stereotypes continue to promote unhealthy attitudes and behavior among working artists and misunderstanding from the general public. I started out my career by renting a studio with other artists, enrolling in MICA’s low-residency MFA program, and founding BmoreArt as an online art blog. I had no idea that these three practices would form the basis of my career as an artist, educator, and publisher in Baltimore, that they would serve as a pathway for me to build a life in the arts. As a journalist, I still find the artist-money continuum to be fascinating, and I am constantly amazed by the way successful artists find a balance between extremes. While I have found very few who live solely from the sales of their work, I have interviewed hundreds of artists who are learning to successfully navigate their financial decisions in a way that actually benefits and grows their art practice. It is these artists, who quietly budget their time, money, and resources so that they continuously move forward from one fulfilled project to the next, who have the most to teach us. Often their stories aren’t sexy, dramatic, or loud. They don’t grab headlines. As a result, stories of thriving, pragmatic artists aren’t widely shared, and representing them as complex individuals with families and bank accounts has become a significant goal for me as an arts writer and publisher.
Over the past few years, BmoreArt has grown into an online magazine with dozens of contributors, a host of events, and a beautiful new print journal. Although we review exhibits and promote participation in community events and projects, one main goal of our publication is to offer honest, healthy, and creative conversations around artists’ financial struggles, highlighting lessons learned by those achieving their goals. In a city with few commercial galleries and a slowly growing art market, it’s empowering to discover a thriving community of artists who maintain growing and ambitious careers. By sharing their stories and exploring the ways they sustain careers, we benefit as a community. In many ways, Baltimore is a creative leader and a flash point for creative endeavors all over the world. As a community, we offer an alternative to the broad and mostly false narratives about artists in mainstream media. As an individual artist, curious thinker, writer, and publisher, I have been able to encourage and promote conversations that continue in studios, galleries, classrooms, and boardrooms — wherever artists inspire, incite, and connect with audience, shaping the world that we live in, especially here in Baltimore.
T H I S C O L L A B O R AT I V E P R O J E C T BY F O U R M FA I N G R A P H I C D E S I G N S T U D E N T S TO T E AC H YO U N G WO M E N A B O U T T H E I R D E V E LO P I N G B O D I E S WO N A 2 0 1 6 A D O B E D E S I G N AC H I E V E M E N T AWA R D I N T H E C O M M E R C I A L A P P / G A M E D E S I G N C AT E G O RY. T H E A D O B E AWA R D S H O N O R T H E M O S T P R O M I S I N G S T U D E N T G R A P H I C D E S I G N E R S , P H OTO G R A P H E R S , I L L U S T R ATO R S , A N I M ATO R S , D I G I TA L F I L M M A K E R S , D E V E LO P E R S , A N D C O M P U T E R A R T I S T S F R O M A R O U N D T H E WO R L D . DA N I E L F R U M H O F F , G U R L E E N KAU R SA I N I , M A R I N A G U T H M A N N , A N D Y I N A N WA N G G R A P H I C D E S I G N M FA , C L AS S O F 2 0 1 7 | P E T. M E , S M A R T P H O N E A P P , 2 0 1 6 | FAC U LT Y A DV I S O R S JAS O N G OT T L I E B A N D J E N N I F E R C O L E P H I L L I P S .
C R E AT I V E : D E S I G N A R MY P R O J E C T M A N A G E R : M I C H A E L WA L L EY- RU N D V I C E P R E S I D E N T F O R S T R AT E G I C C O M M U N I C AT I O N : D E B R A RU B I N O ’92 W R I T E R S : L O R R I A N G E L L O Z , K I M B E R LY H A L LUM S , A N D TA N I A C O R D E S ( E XC E P T W H E R E N OT E D ) P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U RT E SY O F T H E A RT I ST S , W I T H A D D I T I O N A L S U P P O RT BY A N D R EW C O P E L A N D ’1 3 , NA N CY DA LY ’1 1 , C H R I ST O P H E R MY E R S ’94 , A N D B RU C E W E L L E R
Meet the next generation of creative thinkers. Learn more at www.micagradshow.com
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