Engage: Color, Ritual & Material Studies

Conference Postcard

Engage Is . . . 

a month-long confluence of art, craft, and design culminating in the 76th Kutztown University Annual Art Education Conference on November 21, 2014. The conference and exhibition will focus on how artists use color, ritual, and material manipulation both in their own practice and in their teaching.

Ten national and international artists— Mary Hark, Ritsuko Hirai, Theo Uliano, Ted Hallman, Janice Arnold, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Amy Putansu, Moon Jung Jang, Barbara Tetenbaum, and Jeffrey Clancy—will be exhibiting in the Marlin & Regina Miller Gallery. Their combined work displays a virtuoso balance between the fields of art, design and contemporary craft. Particularly striking is the artists' strength of engagement with the themes to be explored in the exhibition and conference.

Paramount in each conference presentation and session is the emphasis on the experiential. What are we making? How do we prepare for our engagement with our work, color, materials, students and the classroom? What are the pedagogical practices we advocate when choosing and researching materials and their ultimate manipulation?

The conference presentations, sessions, and workshops will provide the opportunity for K-12 teachers, academics, researchers, artists, designers and students to exchange ideas and participate in a day-long engagement with the arts.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

JANICE ARNOLD

Janice Arnold

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT: Artist & Designer—Janice Arnold has made it her life to know and understand Felt. She has researched and worked with nomadic tribes of Central Asia and Mongolia and studied the high tech world of industrial felt. Arnold approaches her art and projects with intellectual sensibility and an open-minded design sense. These skills combine to offer an unparalleled perspective. JA is equally comfortable as a collaborator or solo artist and is driven by quality, design, refinement and challenge. She balances function, and practices design as a cohesive combination of intention, working with people and elements to create harmony. Exhibitions, installations and commissions include; Chroma Passage-Grand Rapids Art Museum, Palace Yurt-Fashioning Felt-Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and Site-specific permanent installations: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Corporate Headquarters Reception Area Furniture, Chroma Voyage - Seattle Center Key Arena, Seattle Center and The Bar at the Edge of the Earth-Cirque du Soleil.

As the daughter of a cartographer, Janice Arnold grew up looking at the world in landscapes rather than countries, contour lines rather than boundaries, textures rather than cultures. The fine fabric was always a passion. Throughout college, she was enamored with folk art, high fashion and studied a wide variety of textile traditions. She traveled extensively to learn traditional techniques within cultural contexts. JA started making handmade Felt in 1999 for a large scale sculpture commission for the Nordstrom Corporation stores. She has focused intently on making Felt as functional fabric and art form ever since.    www.jafelt.com

CAROL SAUVION

Carol Sauvion

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT: Creator and Executive Producer, Craft in America—Carol Sauvion is the creator and Executive Producer of Craft in America, the documentary series celebrating American craft and the artists who bring it to life. She is also the Executive Director of the Craft in America non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and advance original handcrafted work through educational programs in all media. Craft is Sauvion’s lifelong passion. For the past thirty years she has been the director of Freehand, her Los Angeles gallery specializing in functional craft.

www.craftinamerica.org

Art Education Presenters:

Dolores Eaton and Dr. Amy Bloom - Craft in America in the Classroom,
Kutztown University alumnae

Bob Reeker - Engaging and Assessing Young Learners Through Creative Exploration and Expression

Dr. Angela LaPorte - Exploring Ritual Through Art Education

Dr. Camilla McComb - Routine, Ritual, and Personal Shrines: Pre-Adolescents Explore the Sacred in their Lives

Kutztown University Faculty Presenters:

Dr. Daniel Haxall - The Place of Textiles in Contemporary African Art

EXHIBITION:

Marlin and Regina Miller Gallery

Thursday, October 16 - Friday, November 21, 2014

Opening Reception: Thursday, Oct. 16, 4-6 pm

Meet the Artist Reception: Friday, Nov. 21, 4-6 pm Sharadin Arts Building

The exhibition and conference will focus on how artists use color, rituals, process and material manipulation both in their own practice, as well as in their teaching, with special focus on education in the Crafts, Graphics and Communication Design and the Fine Arts.

ARTISTS:

Mary Hark

Ted Hallman

Ritsuko Hirai

Amy Putansu

Jeffrey Clancy

Dorothy Akpene Amenuke

Barbara Tetenbaum

Janice Arnold

Theo Uliano

Moon Jung Jang

WORKSHOPS

Friday, November 21, 2014

Theo Uliano & James Chaney — Color, Text, and Form:

Narratives, storytelling and personal expression through imagery on ceramic vessels. Through form, surface, text, and color, learn how to make your pots speak. Techniques will include scraffitto and slips on dry greenware, underglaze drawing and painting on bisque, finishing glaze-fired ware with fired-on ceramic decals to add text, or applying gold and silver lusters. The workshop will also center around the discussion of direct personal expression through drawing.


Saturday, November 22, 2014

Mary Hark & Michael Radyk
The Topography of Handmade Paper:
An Introduction to the Craft

Soft, ephemeral and airy, or tough and bark like; paper can be an absorbent material that carries fluidity with ease or possess a dense impenetrable face. Paper has the potential to carry a “smooth as glass” surface or become a field of lush texture. Skin or substrata, this wonderful material has endless possibilities.

This afternoon workshop will be an introduction to hand papermaking. A discussion of a range of papermaking fibers and traditional tools will introduce the work. Many examples of papers that carry a great variety of surface qualities will be shared. All participants will have the opportunity to process Asian fibers and practice basic sheet forming with an eye towards producing high-quality papers suitable for use in books, printmaking, and collage. Some exploration of surface and texture will be explored as time allows. Each participant will leave with a small portfolio of papers as well as information for setting up a hand papermaking studio with simple and affordable tools. All levels of experience are welcome.

Jeffrey Clancy & Jim Malenda
Pewter—A Poor Man’s Silver

Given the high cost of precious metals such as silver and gold, pewter offers an inexpensive alternative. It allows for all the possibilities of the more expensive metals at a much more reasonable cost. The techniques are easily adaptable to the k-12 classroom offering a simpler alternative to casting, fabricating and forming in silver and gold. Often referred to as poor man’s silver, historical and contemporary pewter-wares are rich in form, function, and expression. Tankards, ewers, candlestick holders, spoons and wearables can be fabricated, formed and cast in pewter. A range of hollowware techniques and mold making as it relates to casting will be explored.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE


Saturday, November 22, 2014
9:00-4:30 –  METALS WORKSHOP – Sharadin Arts Building
Pewter - A Poor Man's Silver SH 107, Metals Studio

1:00-4:30 –  PAPERMAKING WORKSHOP – Sharadin Arts Building
The Topography of Handmade Paper: An Introduction to the Craft, SH 121, Textiles Studio

Exhibiting Artists, Sessions, and Workshop Presenters:


Janice Arnold - Exhibitions, installations, and commissions include; Chroma Passage-Grand Rapids Art Museum, Palace Yurt-Fashioning Felt-Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and Site-specific permanent installations: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Corporate Headquarters Reception Area Furniture, Chroma Voyage - Seattle Center Key Arena, Seattle Center and The Bar at the Edge of the Earth-Cirque du Soleil.

Ted Hallman - ACC Fellow and longtime Fiber artist, a retired professor. Recent work or show-Suspended Harmonies, Michener Art Museum, 2012-13, Secret Garden, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mark Hark, Professor at University of Wisconsin in Madison. She is a papermaker who also works in Ghana. Fullbright fellow.

Moon Jung Jang, RISD MFA, who teaches at the University of Georgia in Graphic Design, RISD/Brown University/Sheridan Teaching and Learning Award recipient

Amy Putansu, artist, Professor weaving and textiles at Haywood Community College in the Professional Crafts Program

Jeffrey Clancy, Artist, Metals professor University of Wisconsin, Madison, KU alumni, Recent work or show- 40 under 40: Craft Futures, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Renwick Gallery.

Theo Uliano, KU Alum, Tyler School of Art MFA, Senior Studio Technician Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA

EXHIBITION ONLY:


Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Sculptor and Fibers artist, Batik, Kumasi, Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KUNST), Exhibition only.

Ritsuko Harai - RISD MFA, Artist & Textile designer, Japan & San Francisco, CA

Barbara Tetenbaum, Artist, Professor and Department Head of Book Arts, Oregon College of Art and Crafts. Honors include a 2012 Koopman, Distinguished Chair at the Hartford Art School, a 2010 Sally Bishop Fellowship at the Center for the Book in NYC.