Fall 2008 - relay - Carnegie Mellon University

CARSON
SLAVICK
BURGESS
FRIED
GOOCH
KINSLEY
HATOUM
SINGER
GIUNTA
KOFMEHL
FEIGE
SPERANDIO
RUBIN
BECK
KELLEY
JOHNSON
KHAN
RELAY 7 VOLUME ONE 7 FALL 2008
carnegie mellon university school of art
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www.art.cfa.cmu.edu
CONTENTS
03 HEAD TO HEAD 7 JOHN CARSON AND SUSANNE SLAVICK TALK
05 AWAY FROM HERE 7 INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS AND TRAVEL
07 THE QUIET AXIS 7 AN INTERVIEW WITH LOWRY BURGESS
11 A MORATORIUM ON MAKE-BELIEVE 7 THE MFA PROGRAM
13 SITES OF THE UNCANNY 7 MONA HATOUM
15 ALTERNATE ROUTES 7 CATCHING UP WITH ALUMNI
17 GOING PUBLIC 7 AREAS OF ARTISTIC PRACTICE
19 CELEBRATION & CHAOS 7 THE BFA PROGRAM
21 TOWARDS A NEW PLACE IN NAture 7 BY HEATHER PESANTI
Doug Fritz (BFA & BS in Computer Science ‘07)
23 THE POETICS OF GAMEPLAY 7 HEATHER KELLEY
24 About FOld 7 Andrew johnson
25 AFTERWORD 7 FROM JOHN CARSON
RELAY 7 VOLUME ONE 7 FALL 2008
carnegie mellon university school of art
PAGE 03
The current and former Head share thoughts on the job.
ENCOURAGING AND
FACILITATING
Slavick 7 I always loved (and still do), connecting opportunities and the appropriate people, whether it’s faculty or grad
students or undergrads, trying to match people to the right sorts
of situations or grants or scholarships and advocating for them.
talk
Carson 7 That’s an aspect which I like
a lot—­­
—the enabling. You see the
connections and the opportunities, and
sometimes it’s just enough to say
yes to something. It’s a form of social
sculpture ­
— trying to get the best
out of people, encouraging folks to
work together.
INTERDISCIPLINARITY
WHYS AND WHEREFORES
Carson 7 Why did you step down as Head?
Slavick 7 Well, I definitely enjoyed the position and I learned
a lot. I feel that it expanded my world in terms of working with
a wider circle of people, whether it was development staff,
or alumni, or the other heads and deans–people that you don’t
normally encounter on a regular basis as a faculty member. I
was committed, but the extent of my immersion in the position
really put my creative work further and further on the back
burner. I’ve always admired people that seemed to be able to
strike that balance. I used to take great pride in being a good
multi-tasker, but I could not find the right balance between the
administrative work, my studio work and family life. I needed
to step back and restore some kind of better balance between
my creative, professional, personal and pedagogical pursuits.
Carson 7 For instance, if a professor
comes to me with a proposal for a new
joint class working with someone from
another area such as design or computer
science — if it’s thought through and
it enhances the curriculum, then I am
happy to facilitate that kind of initiative. Such initiatives encourage
interdisciplinarity and will hopefully
inspire further initiatives.
Slavick 7 I think that’s part of what the head’s role is; finding
ways to keep fostering those opportunities.
Slavick 7 I’m sure you well know. So why did you come to
Carnegie Mellon?
Carson 7 Sometimes it just happens
through personal connections which can
be more effective than trying to create
a new course through formal structures
and then trying to railroad people in
there, because the fundamental thing
that drives it is personal enthusiasm
and passion for the idea. That’s what
brings people along.
Carson 7 I wanted a change, to re-energize.
Carnegie Mellon interested me particularly
for a number of reasons. The philosophy of the fine art program was in tune
with my own approach to art education.
The program has breadth and depth, allowing students to specialize or to work
across media. The art-in-context component
of the program connected with my ongoing
interest in finding new audiences and
new strategies for contemporary art,
and I was excited and challenged by the
prospect of working in this university
environment where there is access to
current and emergent technologies and
possibilities for interdisciplinary
collaboration and new types of art.
Also, I had enjoyed a spell in the USA
before when I was in the MFA program
at Cal Arts from 1981 to 1983, and I always
had a notion of coming back to the
States. So here I am!
Carson 7 I am intrigued by the menu
system of classes in the USA, whereby
students create their own individual
program by the combination of their
selections. At best it allows a rich
and diverse self-directed path of
study, and at worst it can result in a
kind of ‘pick and mix’ dilettantism.
The traditional arts school system in
the UK is linear system where, after
the initial foundation year, there are
three years of continuous sustained
studio practice, to focus on and develop an area of interest or a set of
ideas, guided by a number of tutors.
Rather than the tutors or professors
determining what students do through
classes, projects and assignments–
they are prompting, facilitating and
supporting each individual student’s
Carson 7 It is an all-consuming role.
CURRICULUM
area of exploration and practice. Instead
of a combination of choices, its one big
choice for each student to define the
direction and subject of their own inquiry.
Slavick 7 It’s all relative isn’t it? As much as you see the
American system as providing flexibility and choice, it does
have its own restrictions and requirements and I know that
some students feel the program to be quite prescribed in some
respects, in terms of what’s compulsory and what electives are
available, or not available.
Carson 7 Well there are pros and cons
within both systems. The US system is
certainly more structured, but it has a
lot more faculty/student contact.
ART EDUCATION
Slavick 7 I was going to ask you about the difference
between art schools and a university. We are certainly training
artists of the future within a university context, but we also
recognize that not all our students will persist as artists in the
traditional sense of the word or earn a living from the work they
produce. Regardless, we still expect these students to play a
creative and proactive role in shaping our society, so they need
to be nurtured through all the resources of the university toward
that end.
Carson 7 But that’s education. We’re
involved in art and art education. So
one part of what we do is to provide a
system that will allow people to become
the best possible artists they can be.
The other part is to give them a good
general education, a set of versatile
and transferable skills, and flexibility
of thinking, so that they can creatively
adapt and contribute to all sorts of
different situations in the world.
MILLENIAL GENERATION
Slavick 7 What do you see as the biggest challenge that we
face as an art school — or art schools in general, aside from the
usual budget and space problems?
Carson 7 I could talk about the particulars
of what might benefit the CMU program in
terms of tweaking or altering the curriculum, but I think there is a bigger
issue which is the challenge of how we
deal with the millennial generation:
this generation of students who think
via computers, who can happily operate
within a virtual environment. When I
was a kid my father had a tool-shed and
we fixed things when they got broken.
Now, things don’t get repaired; they
just get replaced. And so there’s a
PAGE 04
THE JOYS OF EMAIL
whole seismic shift in the generational
mind-set. Whilst many of our generation
hold onto the belief that it’s important
to learn through engagement with materials,
we have a generation of young people
for whom that doesn’t really have any
meaning. Those material processes for
them are outmoded, inappropriate and
time-consuming. They may become hackers
rather than mechanics, creating software and virtual phenomena rather than
artifacts. We have to lead in providing
an increasingly expansive and innovative
curriculum that addresses this potential.
Slavick 7 Exactly, and there has always got to be a continual
recalibration of the balance, whether it’s between physical or
virtual realms or between academic courses and concept or
media studios. How do we integrate all those in a meaningful
way to optimally prepare students? Curriculum design is an
ongoing balancing process. I’d say every five to ten years you
pretty much have to do a thorough curricular review, and we’re
pretty much due for that, you know? I think our curriculum has
worked very well for a long time, partly because it has a kind
of in-built flexibility and is open to cross-media exploration.
It isn’t as segregated as other art school curricula, and I think
that has served us well, and I hope it continues to do so. But
we have to respond to and shape the developments that you
just articulated.
ALUMNI
Carson 7 It’s a tremendous thrill, when
the people that you had as students are
doing well and enjoying success.
Slavick 7 It’s funny whenever people ask, who are CMU’s
notable alumni? They are always surprised to know who has
graduated from here. Sometimes those same artists also have
graduate or undergraduate degrees from other schools, and a lot
of times the other schools get the glory. We have a great record
of producing really strong, inventive artists, and I love letting
people know about them. Just take four alumni who graduated
in the stellar class of 1999. Mitzi Pederson showed in the 2008
Whitney Biennial and has her first solo museum exhibition at
Hammer Projects in LA. Innovative projects by Cat Mazza and
Rich Pell have won fellowships from Creative Capital and Renew
Media, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Nathan Martin,
while still at Carnegie Mellon, was a collaborative creator of
MapHub (maphub.org), which has now developed into Deep
Local (deeplocal.com), a successful software design firm that
helps clients and communities in finding solutions to information
collection, analysis and management.
At the grad level it is great to see the surging careers of Shana
Moulton, Jacob Ciocci (Paper Rad), who has recently shown
at The New Museum in NYC and Peter Coffin, who has been
exhibiting and curating in one country after another!
Carson 7 The e-mail is coming at you all
the time, demanding to be responded to.
Quite a significant portion of each day
is spent shoveling it out of the way or
moving it along. At the same time it
is keeping you vitally connected and
reinforcing a sense that you are at the
center of something important. I have
now been in several discussions with the
other College Heads (Architecture, Design,
Drama and Music) where we consider
strategies, such as the 4D approach–
delete, do, delegate or defer. Sometimes
I think about adopting the 1D approach
— destroy!
­­
Slavick 7 I’m still addicted to it. I check it way too frequently.
That was the biggest transition – no longer getting hundreds of
emails every day.
ON HAVING A (CREATIVE)
LIFE
Slavick 7 So, I guess now that you’ve been here for two
years, and given all the upheaval of a transatlantic move and
repositioning yourself and your family, and taking on a new
position, have you found a way to keep your creative life alive?
And has it shifted its direction since coming here?
Carson 7 I often get asked the question
“Can you balance the requirements of
this job with your own creative work—
do you get time to do your own work?”
Well, you don’t get time to do your own
work. You have to make the time
to do your own work. I recently produced
some etchings for an exhibition of
small works at the Mattress Factory
in Pittsburgh, and I am working on a
video installation which will show at
the Richmond Center for Visual Arts in
Kalamazoo in January of 2009. I am also
contemplating some kind of artistic
response to my amusement in discovering
that Pittsburgh has a prominent thoroughfare called Carson Street.
HOME IS WHERE THE
ART IIS
Slavick 7 Do you miss London? Do you get homesick?
Carson 7 I am enjoying being in Pittsburgh.
It seems to be at an interesting point
in its history, given how it has had
to reinvent itself after the demise of
the steel industry. It is encouraging
that more of our graduates are deciding
to stay in Pittsburgh when they finish
at Carnegie Mellon, and the artistic
community here seems to be healthy and
growing. As well as the established
venues such as The Mattress Factory,
The Warhol Museum and The Carnegie
Museum and Pittsburgh Center for the
Arts, there are other initiatives such
as the Artists Image Resource, Pittsburgh
Filmmakers, Penn Avenue Arts
Initiative and the small independent
galleries springing up in Lawrenceville
and Penn Avenue. I feel a real sense of
optimism about the place. Anyway, I never
really thought of myself as a Londoner.
I thought that I was going to London
temporarily and then I stayed for 23
years. I am originally from Belfast,
Northern Ireland­
—of Scots/Irish stock
and the Scots/Irish connection is very
strong in Pittsburgh. Sometimes I am
walking through the campus looking up
at the American flag, and then I hear the
bagpipers practicing in the background.
That cures the homesickness.
MEASURING AND
BALANCING
Carson 7 I am thinking back to what we
were discussing at the outset concerning
the all-consuming nature of the job,
the requirement to be all things to all
people, and the need for juggling and
balancing skills. At the heart of it is
trying to get that balance between the
operational and the inspirational.
Slavick 7 ... or between the mundane and the miraculous!
AWAY FROM HERE: INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS AND TRAVEL
B ELGRADE
M ARFA
S PARTA
Photo: Melissa Ragona, Marfa, TX, 09.16.06
RECORDED 7 Artmecca: The Making of Marfa
7 Marfa, TeXas 7 Fall 2006
School of Art faculty Melissa Ragona and Bob Bingham
accompanied graduate students from Ragona’s MFA
Academic Seminar to Marfa, a high desert town in west
Texas. The group’s project was to interrogate this phenomenon. Participants considered the underlying issues
of cultural tourism within this specific context including
the realities of real estate, labor and border politics. The
group produced a 30-minute radio program, ArtMecca:
The Making of Marfa, that aired last October on Marfa
Public Radio
VOICE 7 Jan Descartes [mfa ‘07] 7 I am often influenced
creatively by my immediate environment, so I was
interested to see how a radically different environment
would change my work. Instead of being inspired by
media and pop culture, I found myself much more
stimulated by graffiti on the street. I appropriated an
image I found on the street and spoke with some local
kids about what they thought it meant. I used that
image in an installation at the Turkish bath, coupled with
recycled objects I found at the Recycling Center. It was
really interesting to work in this extroverted way as
opposed to the internalized way that my soft little comfort
zone in Pittsburgh affords me. 7 To view project visit the
www.outsideproject.org/outside/next01.asp.
This collaborative project combined the critical and
creative energies of CMU School of Art students and
faculty and their counterparts in Belgrade and
Florence. The project included meetings with noted
artists, historians and cultural workers along with
seminars and workshops in the fields of visual culture,
contemporary art and art history. Participants created
projects that responded to Belgrade, representing and
promoting the host city’s historical and contemporary
position within an international artistic context. The
project as a whole culminated in a citywide exhibition
spanning diverse venues ranging from city museums
and art centers to a 17th century Turkish bath.
RECORDED 7 Outside Project 7 Belgrade, serbia
7 Summer 2006
The wanderlust of the artist is a chronic and fortunate
condition—one that the School of Art has happily
indulged. Over the last 15 summers (and a few other
seasons), faculty and students have periodically
traveled together to work with peers from many
countries. Their projects have transformed a former
distillery in Sardinia; private gardens, a tour boat and a
meat packing house in Venice; vacant army barracks in
Metzingen, Germany; a winter castle and frozen lake
in Skoki, Poland; a former gorgonzola factory in Billabio,
Italy; and Turkish baths in Belgrade just to name a few.
PAGE 05
N AGOYA
VOICE 7 Ben Kinsley [mfa ‘08] 7 We spent our first week in
Nagoya, Japan, working with students and faculty
preparing the exhibition, eating eel, squid, and raw
horsemeat, and drinking many bottles of Sake and
Shochyu. We slept in a student apartment the size of
a bathtub and squandered thousands of yen at the
Pachinko parlor. We also watched the K-1 Kickboxing
Finals naked with dozens of other men at the local hot
springs. After the exhibition, we had an extended weekend
in Tokyo exploring the many facets of the businessman
lifestyle, including sleeping in a Capsule Hotel, getting
Chinese massages, and shopping at a 10-story Anime
Mega store. . . On the way home, we spent a day surfing
at Waikiki beach during our 10-hour layover in Hawaii.
TRANSIT 2007/2008 opened last fall in Nagoya and traveled to Tokyo, Kyoto and Pittsburgh. Graduate students
Ben Kinsley (MFA ‘08) and Kazuki Eguchi (MFA ‘09)
couriered and installed works by fellow graduate student
Eileen Maxson (MFA ‘08) and alumni Doug Fritz, Amisha
Gadani, Michael Kontopoulos, and Jessica Scott (all BFA
‘07) for the Nagoya premiere. Ben and Kazuki performed
and presented their own works among videos, digital
prints, hand-bound books and sculptures.
RECORDED Transit 7 Nagoya Japan 7 Pittsburgh,
PA 7 Fall 2007 7 Spring 2008
VOICE 7 Jonathan Minard [bfa ‘07] 7 On our travels
throughout Peloponnesos I carried a digital audio recorder and captured sounds in the caves of Diros, chanting
in the ancient tombs of Mycenae, fellow students singing
in the amphitheater of Epidauros, cantors performing
the liturgy in a Greek Orthodox church, and Greek folk
songs exchanged among family and friends. Having the
portable audio recorder filtered my perception, increasing
my sensitivity to the ongoing sounds of the environment.
The interdisciplinary Greece Summer Study program is
a vehicle for cultural exchange between Carnegie Mellon
and the Sparta Institute to foster exploration, collaboration, and integration among a wide range of academic
disciplines. Students developed projects ranging from
sound installation and architectural history to poetry,
under the guidance of faculty members Lowry Burgess,
Elizabeth Bradley, Clayton Merrell and Patricia Maurides.
RECORDED 7 Inquiry & Vision 7 Sparta Greece
7 Summer 2007
VOICE 7 Eileen Maxson [mfa‘ 08] 7 Uncovering the
relationships between different communities in Marfa
was a complex undertaking. Through the radio program
our group was able to cover the widest range of angles
to the story. We talked to people ranging from a senior
officer of the border patrol to local business owners
and recent Manhattan transplants, as well as recording
soundscapes. Other undertakings included performance
interventions, sound mapping, and interviews with
tourists, border patrol agents, and restaurant owners.
PAGE 06
Photo: Lowry Burgess, Sparta, Greece, 07.20.07
THE QUIET AXIS
LOWRY BURGESS
RECORDED 7 Lawrenceville Pennsylvaina 7 Fall 2007
CONVERSATION 7 Clayton Merrell talked with Lowry Burgess about his series of paintings that were recently exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
PAGE 07
Our daughter Audrey remembered
this painting that I had painted in
a barn in Ashland Massachusetts
when she was four, and she asked
me if I would get it out and send
it. She lives in Florida in a house
with a wall that’s big enough for
one of these. So I went into the
storage at CMU—you know one of
those cadaver places off of the
Loggia—and I got all of them out,
and I finally found it and took it
home and unrolled in our basement,
because it hadn’t been out for
thirty-five or forty years. So, I had
such a good time mudding around
on it, you know just crawling
around on the surface of the painting and doing little things here and
there, just this kind of immediate
contact with color. I thought, well
maybe I’d better go back and take a
look at these...
PAGE 08
Vision Portal: Crocus, 1966-1970/2002-2007
PAGE 09
Solar Vision: Vision of the 13 Suns, 16 ‘X 8’, 1964
PAGE 10
lowry
7 I brought all the old paintings over to my studio
in Lawrenceville, and I got out all of my old things, all my old
records and my old overalls, and my old everything, just kind
of picking up my brushes where I stopped.
clayton
7 What was the most obvious thing when
you first pulled them all out after not having seen them
for thirty or more years?
lowry
7 There were surprising things there that I had
forgotten. And things that I didn’t understand that were
simply visionary presences back then. Now I knew what they
were, and I could begin to fill in the blanks. There was this
very strange folding of time in both directions. I could take a
very small slice of now, start to open it up and create a time
space that I could start to live in. I think that’s the deepest
motivation of what occurred…this serendipitous thing
dropped out of the sky and…became a refuge out of time.
7 There’s no contemporary time or even modern time left.
That’s a deeper dilemma behind all these things coming out.
clayton
clayton
7 But there is also an art historical genealogy
there, when you dig a little bit.
lowry 7 Historians have written about my art to con-
7 These painting seem very geological, with
strata that are loaded with visions.
7 These are visions and yet they’re not illustrations
or direct depictions of the visions, they are trying to make the
feeling of the presence of the visions. There are direct quotations from many many visionary experiences in the paintings.
They are brought together around specific themes from The
Quiet Axis, which is the big forty-year, almost fifty-year work
now in my life, which is scattered all over the world. These are
glimpses into critical nodules of that bigger work.
lowry
clayton
7 The work is so prismatic in that way.
Everywhere the suggestion is that these are pieces of
some bigger whole. The whole set of paintings function
that way, and all the little elements in the paintings
function as the prismatic constituent parts of other
bigger things.
7 Well, I think that’s a really good metaphor. They
are spectral—They are spectra of manifestations that go
back to the primal that lies behind them: primal forms, primal
thoughts. And in that sense they are like very large holograms
too, because it’s as if you got at a certain angle to something
where the image could suddenly play out as they do with
holograms.
lowry
clayton
7 This summer in Greece you just
completed another major piece of The Quiet Axis.
lowry
This summer I finished 32 years of work by
placing the two Seeds of the Infinite Absolute, which you
see here [pointing to the painting]. One was placed on top
of the tallest mountain in southern Greece, and the other in
the 20,000 foot deep sea trench nearby. So both of these
things are tugging at the earth in this very interesting place
where you have such a close proximity of high and low and
about 30,000 feet difference in the crust of the Earth. For me
all infinities are “two” and this two-ness is about these two
seeds that contain 36 waters of the world, 33 bloods—your
[Clayton Merrell’s] blood is right there…
7
clayton 7 Yes, mine is in there.
Vision Portal: Rose, 1966-1970/2002-2007
lowry 7 What else? 52 flowers and 44 trees and 120
people’s telepathic projections of hope into the substance
that is the red on the painting. 7 But behind that is this
whole story of Greece this summer of finally getting these
things that I’ve been collecting for so long together and
distilling them into these two seeds. The one, the top one,
had flown into zero gravity, so it’s the one that tugs the earth
up. The other one is the hyper-gravity seed, which pulls
down. 7 The dragonflies came up to me at the Menelaion
overlooking Sparta, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, I want
to be a dragonfly.” So we got a helicopter and that’s how
we did it then, floating up gloriously over top of the landscape
to the top of the mountain and then out to the sea in the
most beautiful kind of chattering arc of flying. After all the
labor of gathering all this stuff, distilling it, forming it,
let alone getting everything through customs, it was very
easy…so graceful…a light touch.
clayton
7 We see them in these paintings, and yet
they’re sitting on top of the mountain and bottom of the
ocean too.
lowry
7 Yes. There are very long, complex stories behind many of the elements in the paintings. I should explain
the Buddha vision a bit. This is during the Vietnam War in
1968 in Cambridge, Mass. I had studied South-Eastern Asian
anthropology and history at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1960 and was rather surprised with our government’s
incursion into a situation that had been a historical disaster
forever. I had done teach-ins, as we all did in the peace
movement, and that wasn’t having any effect at all.
7 So, one evening there was a really massive slaughter
on both sides and I walked out on my deck in Cambridge
looking over towards the sun setting and looked out, thinking
what to do. And I saw a lake, eyes open, a lake sloping up in
the air, with water lilies on it, in a place where there was no
such thing, towards the sun. I thought, well, if you want to
do something, go make a lake slope in air in Afghanistan. Six
years later, we went to Afghanistan and made a holographic
lake a mile and a half long in the valley opposite the
Buddhas, as if the Buddhas were looking out at it. That’s
the clearest historical reference in all of these.
nect me in that stream of people back to Blake. And I feel
resonance with the northern Germans like Runge and
Caspar David Friedrich. And then back to the very late, big
paintings of Delacroix in Saint-Sulpice. So this line from
Delacroix that flows through Redon and all those people, the
southern French painters that I love. And then off to Mexico
and through Russia and back then from Byzantine stuff into
La Farge and the late Sargent stuff in Boston, that was very
powerful to me. 7 So here are all these off-line influences
on me. I’m almost an anomaly in the sense that these paintings are a very different history of 20th century painting.
clayton 7 Everything on the fringes. What about
Grunewald?
lowry 7 He’s the source point, period. Everything collapses
back to Grunewald’s Isenheim. So you can understand why
in 1966-67, these paintings in the studio were historical
anomalies, to put it mildly. With Greenberg dominating everything in sight, there was no breathing space anywhere.
clayton 7 It’s no wonder you rolled them up for
thirty years.
lowry 7 I have this sense of an ever-expanding spiral
that comes out over the same issues again and again. It
seems that all the works in The Quiet Axis live that way,
that they come back in strange ways and they don’t finish
themselves.
clayton 7 Well, the question of finished , obviously
in a project that’s taken this long to come full circle…
will they ever be finished? Will you ever think of them as
finished?
lowry 7 No, I don’t think they will ever be finished, in
fact there will probably be new things growing out of them.
These are just, what would you say…they are ripe enough
to eat.
Lowry Burgess with his painting, Vision Portal: Lotus, 19661970/2002-2007
PAGE 11
00
Graduating MFA students present their final exhibition in the spring semester of their third year.
2008 MFA exhibition 7 the Miller Gallery 7 www.cmu.edu/millergallery
Varying from orchestrated spectacles to understated ephemera, from split personalities to
discreet objects, and from informal economies
to invented mythologies, the 2008 MFA candidates
are linked by a serious playfulness. Unwilling to
settle, they thrive in an open-ended practice.
Exploration, experiment and inquiry are as
important to them as any resulting artifacts.
program
The three year structure of the MFA program and
its emphasis on contextual practice produces
graduates of exceptional ability and initiative who
are able to create opportunities for themselves
and connect meaningfully with communities and
cultures around them in Pittsburgh and beyond.
The program is highly selective, with only six
students accepted each year. Students interact
with an extraordinary roster of visiting artists and
critics. Our alumni are well prepared for an array
of career opportunities. Our faculty are versatile,
diverse and accomplished artists. We have an
impressive array of tools and studios to facilitate
our students making just about any kind of work
they can imagine.
www.art.cfa.cmu.edu/academic/programs/mfa
Ally Reeves (MFA ‘08)
MFA 2008 7 Chris Beauregard 7 Michelle Fried 7 Ben Kinsley 7 Eileen Maxson 7 John Peña 7 Ally Reeves 7 MFA 2009 7 Jennifer Gooch 7 Joey Hays 7 Samina Mansuri
7 Mike Nixon 7 Gregory Witt 7 MFA 2010 7 Brian Brown 7 Amanda Long 7 Leslie McAhren 7 Gian Carlos Silva de Jesus 7 Jonathan Trueblood 7 Derk Wolmuth
A moratorium on make-believe
March 21– April 20, 2008
PAGE 12
current and recent MFA students 7 www.art.cfa.cmu.edu/people/graduates
RESIDENCY 7 Crawl Space Gallery 7 Seattle, WA
Fall 2007 7 LINK 7 www.michellefried.com/tantrums.html
7
Last Fall Michelle Fried (MFA ‘08) was accepted to the first
annual Crawl Space Studio Intensive Residency in Seattle, WA,
where she spent one week in solitary confinement in their
gallery space creating new work for an exhibition mounted at
the end of her stay. Although she submitted a proposal outlining
various works in sculpture, video, and 2D media, most of that
expired when she finally encountered the space. Instead, she
improvised a performance/installation based on the act of the
Tantrum and the psychological specificities of being confined.
Her resulting video and documentation of the show can be seen
on her website.
There was no time to edit, look back, or make excuses;
therefore, it was one of the most fruitful, but enduring artmaking experiences in my life. The goal was to have a solo
show after seven days, and I had to figure everything out in that
span of time. Plus, I only worked with what I had; therefore, the
whole residency was a week-long improvisation. In a critique
when I came back to Pittsburgh, someone asked me if
I talked to myself. I didn’t really, but I said I thought very loudly.
I never had the compulsion to be nude. I listened to “The
Bodyguard” soundtrack over and over again. I counted that
I watched “Welcome to the Dollhouse” sixteen times. That’s
almost three times a day.
It is extraordinary that, while still in school,
our grads have been awarded national
residencies, designed projects that have
garnered international media coverage, and
put Pittsburgh on the map as the site of the
first choreographed performance on Google
Street View. They operate in the world beyond
CMU’s campus, extending not only their
own boundaries but also the boundaries for
artistic practice. 7 Michelle, Jennifer, and
Ben’s projects demonstrate the kind initiative and ambition of graduates that seek out
and thrive at Carnegie Mellon.
PROJECT 7 Street With a View 7 SPRING 2008 7
Pittsburgh, PA 7 links 7 www.streetwithaview.com or
www.benkinsley.com
Street With A View introduced fiction, both subtle and
spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View.
On May 3rd 2008, artists Ben Kinsley (MFA ‘08) and Robin
Hewlett (BFA ‘04) invited the Google Inc. Street View team and
residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to make a series of tableaux
along Sampsonia Way. An incredible cast of real-life characters
contributed their time, energy and talents to creating pseudostreet life on Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants
from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and
a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century
sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more...
Street View technicians captured 360-degree images of the
street with the scenes in action and are currently in the process
of uploading the images to the Street View mapping platform.
This first-ever artistic intervention in the Google Street View
map is slated to debut on the web during the summer of 2008.
LOST AND FOUND 7 One Cold Hand 7 Winter 2008
7 Pittsburgh, PA 7 links 7 www.onecoldhand.com or
www.jennifergooch.com
Jennifer Gooch’s (MFA ‘09) project, Onecoldhand.com, began
with the basic desire to reunite Pittsburgh’s lost gloves with
their mates. Gloves collected from drop-boxes placed at various
public venues around Pittsburgh were documented and posted
on her site. The project, which received partial funding through
a Seed Award from The Sprout Fund, Pittsburgh, attracted
international media attention during the spring semester. Her
story was picked up by the Associated Press and distributed to
142 papers/sites and counting, including interviews on CMU’s
LabA6 podcast, KDKA, NPR and BBC radio live. One Cold
Hand also received CMU’s 2008 Smiley Award for “innovation
in technology assisted person-to-person communication”.
Onecoldhand.com is a project that connects the Pittsburgh
community through one unfortunate event–the loss of a glove.
This site creates a method for dealing with the conundrum
of finding these lost articles. Do you leave it and hope the
owner comes back to find it? Do you pick it up? Throw it away?
Through onecoldhand.com, the abandoned object now becomes
a symbol of benevolence and hope.
You will be able to view the final results of this project on the
Street With A View website, or by typing “Sampsonia Way,
Pittsburgh, PA, 15212” into Google Maps and selecting the
Street View option.
PAGE 13
SITES OF THE UNCANNY:
MONA
HATOUM
extracts 7 robert lepper distinguished lecture series 7 carnegie mellon 7 Fall 2007 7 transcription 7 Mary emery–Williams 7
introduction 7 john carson 7 http://lectureseri.es
Undercurrent, 2004, edition of 3. Courtesy of Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall and Alexander and Bonin, New York. Photographer: Mattias Giwell
Hot Spot, 2006
PAGE 14
Mona Hatoum is an artist whose work creates both physical
and psychological fear. She uses materials in a visceral way to
make metaphors for suffering, pain, danger, and torture. Her
work is tough and uncompromising. Within the work there is
also a sense of defiance, resistance and resilience. She speaks
particularly to the exile, the outsider, the dissident, and victims
of control and oppression. Her work tackles uncomfortable
aspects of the troubled world in which we live.
Over the years her subject matter has broadened in scope to
embrace global and universal themes. The work, however, has
not softened. It is still tough. It is intense, and it challenges us
to confront difficult truths. The following text is made up of
extracts from a lecture given at Carnegie Mellon University on
28th September 2007, as part of the School of Art’s visiting
lecture program.
People are very often intrigued when I refer to myself as
Palestinian or British, although I was born in Lebanon. I actually
was born into a Palestinian family. And like the majority of
Palestinians who ended up in Lebanon after 1948, after Israel
was established, my family was never able to obtain Lebanese
identity cards. For complex reasons they became naturalized
British, and I have held a British passport since I was born.
7 In 1975, I traveled to London. I was supposed to be there
for a week to ten days on a holiday. But the war broke out in
Lebanon, and I was stranded. I ended up going to art school in
London and completed my studies in fine arts in 1981.
7 I have now been exhibiting my work in one form or another
since 1980. To start with, I worked mostly in the area of
performance and video. The work was issue-based, with a
narrative that touched on social and political issues. It was
certainly not political propaganda. I never liked work that
revealed itself too directly. The work was centering around using
the body as a metaphor for society. Toward the end of the ‘80s I
started making installations and sculptures in which the content
became more implied rather than directly stated and more
embedded within the formal aspects of the work. I was then
able to combine my interest in exploring the phenomenology of
materials and space with political and social concerns.
7 In this showing of slides of work from the last 15 or 16
years. To make the presentation more efficient, I have made 4
groupings of works that have similarities, because there seem
to be certain recurring themes that run through my work.
7 The first group of installations deals with containment and
barriers, through the use of the grid and repeated modules.
The second group consists of works based on furniture and
household furnishings. The third group deals with the body in a
direct way, either using the body as a subject of presentation,
or using the body as material. The fourth group deals with the
home as a site of the uncanny, or the familiar turning unfamiliar,
which is a phrase that could probably apply to all my work.
For the purposes of this article, one example of work has been
chosen from each category.
CONTAINMENT AND BARRIERS
This work, called The Light at the End, is one of the first times
where I was able to create a work that you experience intensely
on a physical level, as you have a gut reaction or experience
it intensely through the body, and then the associations might
come out of that initial physical experience. Also, there is the
minimal aspect with which I had a very long relationship as a
student. In this work and the works that came after, I was able
to adapt this minimal aesthetic to my own purpose. 7 The
work was made for The Showroom Gallery in East London, and
was inspired by the wedge–like shape of the space, which
narrows from 20 feet down to 5, like a tapering tunnel. So you
walk into a disorienting, darkened space, and all you see are
these bright lines hovering in space at a distance. When your
eyes get accustomed to the darkness, you start walking to the
end of the room, and when you get to within a few feet of the
structure, you start experiencing an intense heat, and suddenly
your perception of the piece shifts. You realize that the bars of
light are actually red-hot electric heating elements.
7 The title, The Light at the End, sets up a hopeful expectation
that is disrupted as you approach the work. It becomes
something dangerous. It conjures up images of imprisonment,
torture and pain. At the same time, there is something very
tempting and seductive about it. It therefore sets up conflicting
emotions of attraction and repulsion, fear and fascination in
the viewer. This contradictory aspect where you are pushed
and pulled in different directions was something that I tried to
explore in many works that came after this one.
FURNITURE AND FURNISHINGS
I was interested in using pieces of furniture in my work because
they are objects that we encounter in our everyday life, so we
already have an established relationship with them. But in my
work those familiar objects are transformed in such a way that
they are unable to fulfill their intended function. They become
strange and sometimes threatening and dangerous objects.
Also, pieces of furniture are very much about the body and
become a site for projection. We can easily project ourselves
onto these objects or imagine ourselves using them.
7 Incommunicado. This is a child’s hospital cot, left to the bare
metal—cold, harsh, with the metal bars turning it more into a
confining structure instead of being one that offers protection
and support. Also, instead of having a solid base that would
usually support a mattress, there are thin wires that have been
stretched across the frame, reminiscent of cheese wire or an
egg slicer. There is an immediate connection with some kind of
child abuse. But as is often the case, there is an ambivalence
about it. You can project yourself in either the role of the victim
or perpetrator or both, depending on your own personal history.
THE BODY
Corps Etranger (which means Foreign Body), is a video
installation from 1994. This work originated from a series of
performances in the early ‘80s, where I used to pretend that my
video camera could see through the clothes of the audience.
I was very much dealing with aspects of surveillance at the
time. Here, it takes on the aspect of a scientific eye surveying
the body and invading its boundaries. So, this is a circular
room with two narrow openings, and a circular video image is
projected on the floor. It leaves a very narrow space to walk
around it, so when you’re standing in there you are in very close
proximity to the image. 7 Both the video and sound were
recorded using special medical equipment to probe and explore
the body: endoscopy, colonoscopy, and equipment to record the
echo of the heartbeat. So there’s one sweeping, continuous shot
of the surface of the body, shot in extreme close up. Eventually,
it penetrates inside the body through various orifices — into the
stomach, intestines, vagina. 7 I wanted to give the feeling that
the body becomes vulnerable to the scientific eye, an invasive
device, probing it, turning it inside out, objectifying it. On the
other hand, when you’re inside the structure, in places you feel
like you are standing on the edge of an abyss that threatens to
swallow you up, especially in this kind of situation where the
camera is traveling down the esophagus.
THE UNCANNY
In Freudian terms, uncanny is the familiar turning unfamiliar,
or even threatening. Mobile Home is a recent work consisting
of two parallel metal barriers with wires strung between them.
The area in between, about 18 feet, is full of objects that refer
to domestic life and travel: table, chair, bed-roll, two suitcases.
These are strung together with wire and are in perpetual slow
motion. They constantly move towards one and then the other
barrier and give a sense of instability. It is quite slow, so unless
you stop, you don’t notice the movement. It makes you feel like
the ground is shifting under your feet.
At the end of the talk there were a number of questions on
various aspects of the work.
ON THE DARK NATURE OF THE SUBJECT MATTER
There is also humor. Very often when I talk about a work or
when I’m conceiving it, I’m thinking about the negative side.
But, it’s not all doom and gloom, because there are some
really seductive aspects within the work. A lot of the works
have contradictions. You often feel pushed in two opposite
directions. They can be very beautiful and seductive, but also
very dangerous at the same time. 7 I hope that the works
have more than one reading and different levels of meaning. For
instance, the last work I showed is actually very beautiful and
elegant, but at the same time the globe structure is reminiscent
of a cage, and it looks dangerous because it is buzzing with
energy. So I’m always exploring two directions, at least”.
ON THE MATERIALITY OF THE PRACTICE
I’m constantly involved in the finding of the materials I want
to work with. Most of these works are made by professional
fabricators. There are so many skills involved in the making of
each work that I could not, in my lifetime, learn all these skills.
I actually spend most of my time searching for materials that
embody the ideas I’m trying to convey. And I am also constantly
searching for people who have the skills to work with these
materials. It’s not based on my abilities or skills. It’s more about
the ideas.
ON THE LACK OF POLITICAL SPECIFICITY IN THE WORK
My work does not deal with political issues in a direct way. I
am never trying to illustrate a specific issue, and most of all,
I’m not trying to narrate my own story in the work. I like to
create work that makes the viewer somehow experience some
of the feelings of a displaced person for instance. It’s not a
defined or predetermined narrative. It’s much more abstract–
creating a situation where you have to come up with your own
interpretations. I like for instance to use objects with certain
associations or create a displacement on the level of materials
or scale to introduce ambiguities. This is not to make art more
rarified or difficult to understand. In order to engage the viewer’s
own capacity to find their own story out of the multiplicity of
references. And that story will be different depending on the
viewer’s own experience and background. 7 I actually work
in an intuitive way. Sometimes I find myself in a place where
there’s some kind of material or craft or manufacturing, and it
inspires me to do something; it is often just a series of happy
accidents. I don’t have strategies. It’s kind of coincidental how
it works”.
ON THE LACK OF OVERT REFERENCES TO RELIGION
I’m actually Christian. You probably didn’t expect this. My
family is Greek Orthodox, but I don’t care much about religion.
I grew up in a place where religion was, and still is, a source of
enormous conflict, and I have had a complete reaction against
it from the very beginning.
Hot Spot, 2006. Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin and
Alexander and Bonin, New York. Photographer: Jorg von
Bruchhausen
PAGE 15
AlternatE ROUTES
ALUMNI
CATCHING UP WITH ALUMNI 7 brooke singer 7 justin giunta
7 jacob
feige 7 william kofmehl
Justin Giunta (BFA ‘01)
www.art.cfa.cmu.edu/people/alumni
Brooke Singer (MFA ‘02) is a digital media artist based
in New York. Her work uses Wi-Fi, digital cameras,
and RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies.
She is currently Assistant Professor of New Media at
Purchase College, State University of New York, and
co-founder of the art, technology and activist group
Preemptive Media. LINKs 7 http://www.bsing.net 7
http://pm-air.net/AIR_PR
What are some of the more tangible effects CMU has
had on your practice and career?
singer
Brooke Singer (MFA ‘02)
7 Studying at Carnegie Mellon dramatically
changed my art practice and how I approach my work. It
was during graduate school that I began to collaborate and
to this day I still am working with CMU alum, Jamie Schulte
(MS Computer Science) and Beatriz da Costa (art exchange
student). We formed a group in 2002 called Preemptive
Media. We built a series of mobile air monitoring devices
that visualize localized pollution in real-time. The project
launched in September 2006 in New York City, and we are
continuing to develop and deploy it. This is the third major
project we have created together as a team. 7 I am also
working on my own, currently on a project called Superfund365. This is an online data visualization project that
spotlights a different toxic site in the U.S. everyday for a
year. My work is research-based, which feeds my penchant
for sleuthing and entering the unknown. 7 I take great
pleasure in interdisciplinary research and collaboration as
well as bending technology to create opportunities for social
action and change.
If you were to support a new initiative or current
program at CMU, what would it be?
singer
The School of Art is proud of the achievements of its alumni.
Relay intends to feature alumni stories in every issue, please
keep in touch and keep us informed.
7 I would create a new initiative that would bring
graduates back to CMU for a residency every ten, no,
probably five years. That way we could take advantage of all
the things we missed or did not have time for while we
were students. Alumni could in turn share all their knowledge
and expertise acquired since graduating. It’s a win-win
situation really.
Since graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Justin Giunta
(BFA ‘01) has pursued painting, fashion, industrial
design and jewelry-making. His paintings use
White-Out and highlighters to create a contemporary
version of the glazing techniques of Dutch “old master”
paintings. In 2003, he opened his company, Subversive
Jewelry, in response to the high demand for his one-ofa-kind wearable works, which embrace high art concept
in combining refined and mundane components.
LINKs 7 http://www.justingiunta.com
7 http://www.subversivejewelry.com
What is the thorniest problem you have faced since
graduating, and how did you address it?
giunta
7 I often found myself in position to be taken
advantage of in the market. Eventually, buyers started respecting me for my business skills, which only consisted
of being able to understand and negotiate business propositions (sale or commission). Speaking up when something
was not right earned me the reputation of being smart,
serious, and above all, talented. I think many young artists
want only to be the talent and to divorce themselves from
having to sell their own work. I have seen many be pricked
by this thorny rose. It was very awakening to graduate with
an art degree and not be immediately welcomed into the
art community for my body art. Recognizing the economics and politics that exist in the art world, as in many other
industries, equipped me to survive as my own representation
until others caught wind of my work.
What is your suggestion for a new initiative in the
current program at CMU?
giunta
7 I would initiate a new program called “Creative
Entrepreneurship 101,” based on the idea that artworks, like
any other finished products, become part of an economic exchange that the artist must recognize.* I believe it is the artist’s responsibility to be aware of contracts, protective rights,
and competitive price structures that apply to any artist’s
work. We must shake the traditional idea that artists exist at
the fringe of culture. Rather, they influence it. Possessing the
ability to manipulate imagery is one of the strongest cultural
commodities one could possess, and artists should be aware
of the asset that they possess. 7 In Spring ‘08, Assistant
Professor of Art, Melissa Ragona offered a new class to
undergraduates titled Art as Business/Business as Art.
PAGE 16
After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Jacob Feige
(BFA ‘02) worked as an art handler in Pittsburgh
and New York. He earned an MFA in painting at the
Cranbrook Academy of Art, then returned to New York,
where he got a job as a registrar for an art consultant.
7 William Kofmehl (BFA ‘02) was awarded an
additional year as a Fifth Year Scholar. He earned an
MFA in sculpture at Yale University and has taught in
both Pittsburgh and Pont-Aven, France. He recently
purchased an old synagogue in Pittsburgh to use as a
studio. 7 Feige and Kofmehl are both represented by
Lombard-Freid Projects, where they show work both
collaboratively and individually.
LINK 7 http://www.lombard-freid.com
What has been the most useful experience from CMU/
School of Art that is relevant to your current daily life?
feige
7 Unlike many art schools, the School of Art is
a bit of a material and intellectual free-for-all, in the best
sense possible. I’ve noticed that art students who are on
the creative straight and narrow often have a tough time
finding a creative place afterwards, no matter how hard they
worked in school. All students who go through the School
of Art are given lots of support and almost overwhelming
possibilities, as far as media and ideas are concerned. No
one is held to a particular path. Negotiating that freedom
has helped me make choices outside the academic context
on my own terms.
If you were to support a new initiative or current
program at CMU, what would it be?
kofmehl
7 The best way to explore art’s historical
past in all its wretchedness, splendor and complexity is the
reading of biographies. Whether you are preparing for Graduate School, residencies, grant writing, nomadic wandering,
or complete financial independence while riding the wave
of a trust fund, artists need to comprehend the historicity of
their contemporaries. This particular forum, in which Jacob
and I are highlighted, functions in a similar way.
What sights/sounds/smells/situations remind you of
CMU and why?
feige
7 Homasote wall paneling, lithographic ink, old
digital video cameras, gobs of oil paint, flat white wall paint,
and any place that looks like the fourth sub-basement of
Doherty Hall remind me of Carnegie Mellon. That’s what the
School of Art was made of, circa 2000.
kofmehl
7 The Rites of Spring party. Blood drawn,
fried and eaten. And the Halloween pig roast when the tail
was saved for a certain cowboy.
How has your collaborative work developed and
continued outside of school?
feige
7 Collaboration is one aspect of our work as
artists. I like it because it takes me out of my comfort
zone, and I can’t take ideas and materials for granted
the way I can when I’m alone painting in my studio. Our
collaborations started as a natural part of William’s work
as an undergraduate, which almost always involved other
artists contributing aspects of performances. The origins of
our current body of work date to our BFA degree show at
Carnegie Mellon in 2002, when we conceived of our pieces
in the show as a pair: a painting I made framed a basketball
hoop and a performative tableaux that William developed.
What distinguishes our more recent collaboration from our
separate bodies of work is its narrow focus on one particular
subject—most often a nearly obsolete, traditional occupation. Our most recent collaborations have dealt with whaling,
chimney sweeps, hobos, and migrant carnival workers. For
these projects, most of the characters and sculptural elements stem from those themes, even if they are seemingly
unrelated. For instance, in our collaboration “At the End of
the Day, We’re All Sooty,” shamrocks, horseshoes, smoking
pipes, and incense pervaded the imagery, which are all traditionally associated with chimney sweeps. At times in that
performance, William and I danced as our chimney sweep
characters to the 1967 Gene Pitney #5 UK hit, “Something’s
Gotten Hold of My Heart,” just to be sure that our theme
didn’t become too, too literal.
William Kofmehl & Jacob Feige (BFA ‘02)
PAGE 17
Areas OF artistic practice
GOING PUBLIC
Rachel Stewart (BFA ‘07)
RECORDED 7 Carnegie mellon 7 Spring 2008
CONVERSATION 7 Faculty Chris Sperandio and Jon Rubin share what it’s like to break out of the classroom
Class links 7 www.tentshow.org 7 http://suntrailer.blogspot.com 7 www.caughtlooking.info 7
www.biographical.biz 7 www.snowballsfromthefreezer.com
sperandio 7 Why is it important for young artists to learn about making art outside the typical
gallery/museum axis?
rubin 7 our school has long recognized that many artists are working in new ways that
hybridize historical art practices with cultural trends outside of fine arts that never
existed in the past. students come into art schools ready to create work in dynamic forms
like youtube, graffitti, diy clothing and music, computer hacking and zines/comics. it seems
a bit retrograde just to limit the students to only historical models of artmaking. 7 we
are now the first art school in the country to offer contextual practice as an undergraduate
area where students can take a full range of classes that provide them with ongoing offcampus opportunities to research and produce works in the public sphere and developing new
venues and audiences for art. we want to critically engage the students in the production
of art that recognizes and responds to the social, physical and cultural dynamics of a given
place and audience and through our unique interdisciplinary curriculum and immersion in
socially-engaged processes we challenge students to create work that has a direct, conscious
and often catalytic relationship to the place it exists in and the audience it relates to.
PAGE 18
sperandio 7 Yes! There’s a tremendous interest from the School and student body to develop
alternative models. For the past two years I’ve been able to get Lamar Outdoor Advertising
to give my Making Mass Media class these really great, 25’ long billboards around
Pittsburgh. Students were able to renegotiate the model of “the billboard” by combining
traditional approaches to image-making with an eye on the culture of advertising. Their
designs went up around the city for a month before the Senior Show. We’ve also made oneminute videos for two public screenings, “Caught Looking”, shown on the 85 foot Jumbotron
screen at PNC Park. This Spring the School of Art partnered with the Warhol Museum to expand
the programming. The 60-second videos by students and faculty were screened alongside
Warhol’s “Outer & Inner Space”. Working in outside contexts can provide incredible and
unexpected learning opportunities. I think your class’ ongoing Tent Show project is a
really good example of that…
rubin 7 yeah, tent show operates as a mobile institution/classroom, relocating each semester
to a different vacant storefront or unused space in the city of pittsburgh. this year we
were on the south side, in a great old storefront across the street from a busy new shopping
mall. many of the students’ projects played against the concept of the mall in some way.
break even coffee, initiated by bfa student brittanie wine, transformed the storefront into
a legitimate coffee shop for a semester. however, coffee was sold coffee at the exact amount
we paid for it, which turned out to be six cents a cup. being directly across the street
from two fancy (meaning expensive) coffee shops, this project positioned us as the anti-starbucks,
which usually moves across from locally-owned shops in order to siphon off their clientele.
in a similar vein, the museum of modern failure, initiated by bha student rachel brown,was
born from the storefront’s history of failed businesses. our museum was dedicated to the
continual documentation of human failure (big and small, catastrophic and personal), and anyone
who visited the space could contribute his or her failure to our collection. visitors also
had the chance to purchase the item for sale from the museum’s gift shop. the item for sale
was curated from the goodwill next door and replaced by a new item from the goodwill upon
its purchase. 7 it’s very rare to have an art school within such a prestigious research university,
and contextual practice courses are able to generate new contexts for interdisciplinary
practice. we want to continue expanding the number of courses co-presented with other cmu
departments like design, architecture, business and the humanities. the other goal is to
create more contextual practice offerings within the school of art, like your biographical
class, which is a perfect example. your biographical and graphic novel classes are especially
interesting, since it is so close to your own practice as an artist. how does it fit within your
teaching philosophy?
sperandio 7 I always swore that if I taught, I would not want my students to do what I do. I
want them to have the freedom to find their own voice. However, at a research institution
like CMU, it’s important for the faculty to teach what they know. I know about making comic
books about and with other people. I was also reacting to student interest­­
—not simply in
Batman, but in all sorts of indy and hybrid graphic works. 7 In order to cram the field of
comics into a single semester, I came up with biographical for the Fall, where each artist collected and worked with other people’s stories as a starting point and removing the
writing burden from the students--it allows them to leap forward into making. In the Spring
I co-taught a Graphic Novel class with Jane McCafferty from English. Here English and Art
students could choose to write, pick up ink and brushes and draw, or do both. This year we
published two graphic novels that are available around Pittsburgh and for sale online. How
are students taking advantage of the opportunities that Tentshow presents to them?
rubin 7 this spring, tent show was co-offered for the first time through the schools of art
and design, which provided an awesome opportunity for collaboration. the students took off
with the storefront’s identity, coined goods & services, developing everything from its
visual identity to programming. we functioned as a quasi-business offering products and services
like weekly soups based on unusual ancient historical recipes; a service that offered the
creation of one-minute video biographies; a movie theater that played reenactments of pittsburgh
history according to locals; a constantly changing curated sidewalk sale; an ongoing series
of impromptu parades made up of people crossing the intersection out front and regular, a
weekly publication that sought out conversations within a different community of south side
“regulars” collected in a single visit to their hangouts. additionally, we collaborated with
a curatorial group from chicago called incubate to host projects by artists from new york
and chicago that explored issues of alternative economies. tent show is becoming even more
mobile, with the creation of the suntrailer a re-purposed 50’s camper lined with full-spectrum
light panels. during the gloomy winter and spring months, the bike-powered environment traveled
around pittsburgh inviting people to step inside, feel brighter and engage in conversations
about coping with the extended winter. the suntrailer is the first of many reincarnations
for this camper. going forward, anyone from the School will be able to borrow it for projects
that will be considered “mini-residencies”, so the possibilities of where and how it will
appear in the city again are almost endless. who knows, maybe next semester it will be a
traveling billboard…
jon rubin is an assistant professor of art and chair of contextual practice program.
www.jonrubin.net 7 Christopher Sperandio was recently a Visiting Assistant Professor of
Art from 2005-8 and Chair of the Painting, Drawing, Printmaking and Photography studio area.
www.kartoonkings.com
PAGE 19
00
BFA
programs
Carnegie Mellon’s approach to art making is
expansive and inclusive, combining the advantages
of a renowned and innovative professional studio
program with the interdisciplinary resources
of a top-tier University. The BFA program offers a
distinctive and progressive curriculum that
examines, in practical and visionary terms, the
role of the artist in society.
We embrace new and established technologies
and media. We encourage experimentation, crossing boundaries, and hybrid processes, as well as
engaging the histories and traditions of art. Our
three interdisciplinary degrees (BHA, BSA, and
BCSA) offer students the opportunity to explore
and contribute to the intersection of the arts and
the humanities, natural sciences, and computer
science.
BFA 7 Bachelor of Fine Arts
Our students engage with local and international
communities through projects, events, courses,
and study abroad. We cultivate and celebrate
diversity in educating artists for and of the future.
www.art.cfa.cmu.edu/academic/programs/bfa
BHA 7 Bachelor of Humanities and Arts
BSA 7 Bachelor of Science and Arts
Terry Boyd (BFA ‘09)
BCSA 7 Bachelor of Computer Science and Arts
admissions 7 www.cmu.edu/admissions
PAGE 20
At the end of their four years, students from BFA, BHA, BSA, and BCSA programs come together
to design, curate and exhibit their work.
2008 SENIOR exhibition 7 the Miller Gallery 7 www.cmu.edu/millergallery
CELEBRATION + CHAOS
May 2-18, 2008
For many, THE senior show signals
Their break into the outside world
where THEY must make it on THEIR
own. THIS class of 2008 was out of
the gate long before their senior
show–curating performances,
taking over galleries, Forming art
collectives–Transforming
Pittsburgh’s cultural landscape.
Graduating Senior Class 2008 7 BHA 7 Bachelor of Humanities & Arts 7 Claire Hoch 7 Rebecca Jang 7
Julia Stein 7 Michael McParlane 7 Danielle Saudino 7 Connor Sites-Bowen 7 BSA 7 Bachelor of
Science & Arts 7 Alison Margolskee 7 Victoria Spindel 7 BFA 7 Bachelor of Fine Arts 7 Hye Sung An
7 Jose Baez 7 Emily Bellingham 7 Emily Berezin 7 Ben Bigelow 7 Dan Buchanan 7 Yvonne Chan 7
Theresa Chen 7 Monica Cho 7 Amy Conroy 7 Jake Cox 7 Emilia Edwards 7 Caroline England 7 Giana
Gambino 7 Amy Johnson 7 Nicoletta Karvelas 7 Gene Kim 7 Elin Lennox 7 Spencer Longo 7 Michael
Ben Bigelow (BFA ‘08)
Mallis 7 Jon May 7 Laura Miller 7 Michael Pisano 7 Amy Pischke 7 Andrew Shedd 7 Audrey Szeto
PAGE 21
Towards A New Place In Nature
“The piece was a new place in nature.” So said Philip Leider in
1970 when he first set eyes upon Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, a massive piece of Land Art located in Mormon Mesa, Nevada. Begun in 1969 and completed a year later, Double Negative
consists of two immense incisions in the earth, some 1,500 feet
long, 30 feet wide, and 50 feet deep each. Leider recognized
WRITTEN 7 by Heather Pesanti 7 Prior to taking up her position as Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
the radical nature of Heizer’s proposition. On one hand, he un-
Buffalo, Heather Pesanti was the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at Carnegie Museum of Art,
derstood that Double Negative was essentially a form made of
Pittsburgh, PA, 2005-8. REFLECTIONS ON ARTIST 7 KIM BECK Associate Professor of Art, www.idealcities.com
negative space rather than tangible matter. On the other, he must
have perceived that Heizer, by leaving these two indelible cuts in
the earth, was reformulating the irrevocable link between culture
the pioneering American West, Beck’s family left behind her Jewish
and nature, or between the man-made, built environment and
east-coast roots and family members for the large-scale, anony-
pure natural growth: for as long as man has been around, one
mous open plains and mountains of the Midwest to “start afresh.”
has not existed without the other. 7 Switching gears from the
monumental to the liminal, Kim Beck’s practice centers on a desire
Though she was too young when she moved to have remembered
to understand and then manifest this uniquely personal relationship
left an indelible impression on her. Gradually, as Beck grew up, the
of an individual to her surroundings. She works in a range of media,
telephone poles on long stretches of Colorado highway, the weeds
including vinyl, cardboard, and paper, as well as a variety of tech-
in tree-less parking lots, the strangely uniform houses of the Denver
niques, such as cut-out formations, sculptural aggregations on the
suburbs, and the “blank faces” of wooden fences became meaning-
floor or wall, multi-part installations, and silkscreened or charcoal
drawings on paper. Though operating on a nearly opposing scale
ful markers for this lost or hidden identity. 7 Beck literally mines
the imagery of such fences as subject matter for her most recent
to Heizer, Beck’s work is similarly engaged with in-between spaces,
work, Perforated: Building Site, 2007, an installation consisting of
theoretically exploring interconnectivity between the built and natu-
silkscreened color images of fences overlaid on found corrugated
ral environment and how this is manifested in the landscape. Her
cardboard with cut-out portions of the chain-link holes. Refer-
subject matter consists of quiet, overlooked spaces and objects:
encing both generic suburban fences and uniform enclosures
weeds, telephone poles, fences, commercial signage, cracks, and
found at construction sites, the artist has said the piece emerged
subtle irregularities in the architecture and landscape around her.
from her philosophical questioning revolving around the simple
Blending an interest in architecture and the landscape with a deep
but immensely provocative concept of a barrier: “Which side
ambivalence towards nondescript, man-made constructions, her
is in? Which is out?” Stacked against one another and leaning
work reflects a disdain for the inevitable progress of commercializa-
against the wall, the works function formally as part sculpture,
tion as well as an appreciation for the flaws and awkwardness of
part landscape, part painting, while philosophically they question
these same spaces and objects. 7 In his eloquent, historicalcultural travel narrative Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama
the potential contradictory interpretations of a single man-made
identifies this mutually intertwined—and at times fraught—rela-
favorite part of the fence was a small irregularity: a cell-like blip
tionship between the man-made and natural environment: “Ob-
in the symmetrical holes of the links, indicating a small dam-
jectively, of course, the various ecosystems that sustain
aged spot perhaps where perhaps a piece of machinery poked
life on the planet proceed independently of human agen-
through. One has the sense that Beck looked at the fence, en-
cy, just as they operated before the hectic ascendancy of
gaged by it, until the precise nature of her fascination emerged.
Homo sapiens. But it is also true that it is difficult to think
Returning to the text Landscape and Memory, Schama wrote the
of a single such natural system that has not, for better or
following: A curious excavator of traditions stumbles over
for worse, been substantially modified by human culture.
something protruding above the surface of the common-
Nor is this simply the work of the industrial centuries. It
places of contemporary life. He scratches away, discover-
has been happening since the days of ancient Mesopota-
ing bits and pieces of a cultural design that seems to elude
mia. It is coeval with writing, with the entirety of our social
coherent reconstruction but which leads him deeper into
existence. And it is this irreversibly modified world, from
the past. Each of the chapters that follow might be thought
the polar caps to the equatorial forests, that is all the na-
of as an excavation, beginning with the familiar, digging
ture we have.” 7 We can infer from Schama’s passage that
nature and culture are not only symbiotic entities but symbolic
down through layers of memories and representations
constructions of identity: landscape reflects the people around
millennia ago, and then working up again toward the light
it, and vice versa. The ways in which individuals interpret their
built environment vary but such divergent perceptions contribute
of contemporary recognition. 7 Heizer, building on a grand
scale, scratched away deep into the earth. Kim engages in visual
to those same individuals’ definition of self-identity. Heizer and
“digging”— closely observing elements of the landscape until
his ancient Egyptian or pre-Columbian predecessors undoubtedly
something previously unseen emerges, often in the smallest of
understood this. Their monuments were as much structures built
details or the most generic of spaces. This is Kim’s process, lead-
for civilization as testaments to their own particular relationship
ing her towards the discovery of a new place in nature.
and sensibility to the world around them. 7 Accepting that landscape and personal identity are linked, Beck’s current focus can be
connected to her conception of the environment in which she grew
up. Born in Riverside, New Jersey, Beck discusses a pivotal moment
in her history when, as a toddler, her parents packed up the family
and moved to Denver, Colorado. Recalling a modern day version of
New Jersey, the decision by her parents to leave their roots behind
object in the landscape. In conversation, she revealed that her
toward the primary bedrock, laid down centuries or even
New York, NY: Printed Matter, Inc.. 2007, Cloth cover, sewn bound,96 p.;
Available at www.PrintedMatter.org
PAGE 22
17.5 x 11.8 cm., Edition 750, ISBN:978-0-89439-026-5
A Field Guide To Weeds by Kim Beck
Beck’s project uses the physical form
of the book as a metaphor for a crack
in the city sidewalk: the common
dandelion, pigweed, and poison ivy
—the very plants we ignore, step
over, dig up, or scrupulously avoid,
creep out of the gutter, up pages, and
overrun the book.
PAGE 23
Spring 2008
Heather joined the School of Art for the
semester as the Kraus Visiting Assistant
Professor of Art and Adjunct Faculty at
Entertainment Technology Center.
www.moboid.com
“When Jim Duesing got in touch to ask whether I’d like to
teach a course in the School of Art, I replied “yes” so quickly
that I probably gave him whiplash. I’ve admired CMU as a
creative research institution for as long as I can remember,
going at least as far back as the Oz project in the early 90s.
With its strong background in both computer science and
the arts, I knew that CMU was the place where a course in
artistic game design was bound to succeed.”
Kelly’s course, “The Poetics of Gameplay,” introduced twelve
undergraduates representing eight academic departments
to the theory and practice of game design within the context
of artistic expression. Exploring the diversity of game media,
student projects included playing card and parlor game
modifications, as well as digital game prototypes based on
specific emotions or relationships. Emphasis was placed
on the unique abilities of gameplay (rules and systems for
player action) to generate meaning, or elicit an aesthetic
response. “Art game design does not inherently mean
screen-based computational content (though the class had
plenty of that too). There is an explosion of work happening
in systemic and computational art, and we’re preparing
Images by Cactus, www.cactus-soft.co.nr
Carnegie Mellon students to make rich contributions in the
field,” said Kelley.
Games are now generally acknowledged as culturally
significant, comparable with film or television in their
economic strength if not their public mindshare. In the
mainstream, games are still often positioned either as the
idle pastimes of sedentary children, or testosterone-fueled
war arenas. But that tide is turning. Game developers and
the game-consuming public alike have begun to recognize
that games could be and say more.
theorist, producer and curator researching documentary
and video games through Concordia University’s Doctoral
Humanities program; Jason Rohrer, independent game artist,
programmer, and critic; Randy Smith, creative director of a
video game collaboration with Steven Spielberg at Electronic
Arts in Los Angeles; and Jesse Schell, Entertainment
Technology Center faculty at Carnegie Mellon, former
chairman of the IGDA, and CEO of Pittsburgh’s largest video
game studio, Schell Games.
To consider these new developments, Kelley organized and
co-curated The Art of Play Symposium and Arcade on March
31 & April 1, 2008, bringing some of the leading thinkers
and creators in the intersection of games and art to Carnegie
Mellon. Students and faculty from all over campus, as well
as guests from Pittsburgh and beyond, spent two days
testing experimental games, engaging with the speakers
on current issues in game design, and touring Carnegie
Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center.
“While the official events offered great opportunities for
students to interact and learn from professionals and
practicing artists in this emerging field, students were also
an integral part of the development of the Symposium itself.
They designed and created the web site, the games Arcade
and event signs, and assisted with event logistics before,
during, and after the Symposium. The dynamic of the class
and the Symposium lives on in a newly created student
organization, the 8-bit Poets Collective, inspired by the ideas
and methods pursued in the course.”
Speakers included, Cindy Poremba, a digital media
The Art of Play Symposium & Arcade, www.theartofplay.com.
Refrain I, 1/28 in the FOLD series, 2003-7
ARTIST 7 Andrew Johnson, Associate Professor of Art and current Chair of International Programs
COntext 7 About Fold is a series of 28 paired pages of a picture book that responds to the consequences of crises in the Middle East, crises in photography, and crises in representation. The pages are united by a lower band
of sand traversed by twisting taffy, a visual metaphor for our inability to extricate ourselves from an intractable conflict we helped to create.
LINK 7 www.rootingfortheradical.coma
ABOUT FOLD
PAGE 24
PAGE 25
00
www.relay.art.cfa.cmu.edu
John Carson, Regina and Marlin Miller
Professor and Head of the School of Art
AFTERWORD
Doug Fritz (BFA & BS in Computer Science ‘07)
A brand new start. How often does that thought or that chance
occur. The chance to reassess, to reinvent and to do something
new. Right now Pittsburgh is great city for new beginnings,
since it is decidedly reinventing itself from its history as the fiery
crucible of America’s industrial age to the forging of a bright
new future as a melting pot of cultural, educational, ecological,
medical and technological innovation. Carnegie Mellon University
is a significant contributor to that reinvention. The School of Art
continues the great legacy of Andrew Carnegie’s desire to make
art and culture available to all. 7 In my 2 years as Head of
the School of Art I have been mightily impressed and excited
by the talent, energy and invention of faculty and students. This
‘magazine’ is an attempt to relay that excitement and energy to
you. You can visit the website and read the prospectus, but there
is a deeper insight to be gained from some more in-depth and
particular stories and examples of the thinking, invention and
spirit of the individuals who make up the creative community
here. 7 In the 2008 US News and World Report national survey,
the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon School of Art was ranked
number 1 in multi-media and number 7 in the overall category.
This is testimony to the high achievement of our faculty, students
and alumni and we are determined to stay up there in the top tier
of fine art education, by continuing to recruit top class faculty
and students, providing a paramount educational experience and
by garnering support from appreciative sources. 7 As well as
covering traditional artistic disciplines we are constantly seeking
to expand our terms of artistic reference. Having established 2
interdisciplinary programs with our Bachelor of Humanities and
Art and our Bachelor of Science and Art, we are now offering
a Bachelor of Computer Science and Art, for an emergent
generation of students who wish to explore and expand the
connections between computation, digital technology and the
arts. 7 I hope that you enjoy this first issue of Relay. We intend
to publish annually and we invite you to share in our endeavors
with your comments, criticisms, suggestions and contributions,
as we work to maintain and develop the quality of education,
debate and artistic production in the School of Art at Carnegie
Mellon. 7 Now tell us what you want next...
RE:RELay
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
Stay up-to-date with School of Art news and events;
plus announce your own exhibitions, calls for artists,
and network with other alumni through our:
News & Events Blog 7
http://news.art.cfa.cmu.edu
Artscan Newsletter 7
http://artscan.cfa.cmu.edu
www.art.cfa.cmu.edu/people/alumni
Email 7 artscool@andrew.cmu.edu
Alumni Profiles 7
Donations
If you would like to help emerging artists by joining
Friends of the School of Art, contact Business Manager
Wayne Savage at 412-268-8180.
Carnegie Mellon University School of Art 7 CFA 300, 5000 Forbes Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, Phone: 412-268-2409, Fax: 412.268.7817, www.art.cfa.cmu.edu
Editorial staff 7 John Carson, Head of the School of Art, Clayton Merrell, Associate
Professor of Art, Charles Rosenblum, Assistant Professor of Architecture & Art, Lauren
Goshinski, Office Associate 7 Design 7 Kristin Hughes, Associate Professor of Design
PAGE 00
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www.relay.art.cfa.cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon University 7 School of Art 7 5000 Forbes Avenue 7 Pittsburgh, PA 7 15213 7 www.art.cfa.cmu.edu
Osman Khan 7 cover image 7 SEEN - Fruits of Our Labor 7 August 2006 7 back cover image 7 weapons of Mass Consumption - Act
3: Reflection ‘Net Worth’ 7 June 2004 7 OSMAN KHAN, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, is interested in using technology to construct
artifacts and experiences for social criticism and aesthetic expression 7 www.osmankhan.com