Sunday, February 26, 2017

Cool Site: Medieval Technology and American History from Penn State University


From the early 16th century onwards, European settlers arriving in the Americas brought not only ideas about religious and political freedom, but also the skills needed to build communities, the ways of daily life in the Old World. The technologies in particular differed little if at all from those their medieval forebears used to construct European civilization after the fall of Rome. The colonial American environment in which these technologies were applied led to a reorganization of industry and society outside the aristocratic control of Europe and provided the basis for the political developments that made a new nation.

This website explores some of the core medieval technologies that built the American colonies into an industrial powerhouse: milling and iron manufacture. In-depth articles, short essays, photo archives, videos, comparative timelines, and class projects all seek to demonstrate the transfer of these technologies to colonial America. The site, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities/We the People Initiative, is designed for school teachers, but we hope it will also be found useful to students or any visitor interested in history, technology, art, or literature. 
 
After the title of each article, project, etc, you can find a quick reference symbol corresponding to the subject areas it covers, which may fulfill state standards. Also noted are the presence of lesson plans and original documents.



Medieval Technology and American History is a project of the Center for Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, supported by Grant EE-50095-04 from the National Endowment of the Humanities We the People Initiative. With contributions from faculty in Medieval Studies, Education, History, Food Science, Science, Technology, & Society, and local high schools. PSU faculty: Gerald Eggert, Ben Hudson, Bill Pencak, David Saxe, Steven Walton, Greg Ziegler, Vickie Ziegler; Master Teachers: Ned Eisenhuth, Pete Halapatz, Fred Lutkus, Robert Rich; Center for Medieval Studies Research Assistants: Brigitte Weinsteiger, Jessica Banks. 


Friday, February 24, 2017

Nina Kawar, Clemson University MFA in Art Alum, to Exhibit in the American Craft Show, Atlanta 2017


Nina Kawar (Clemson University MFA’14, Art, ceramics emphasis) has been selected to participate in the American Craft Show, Atlanta 2017.

When:   

March 17: 10am – 8pm
March 18: 10am – 6pm
March 19: 11am – 5pm

Where:  Cobb Galleria Centre, Two Galleria Parkway , Atlanta, GA  30339

Booth: 1019

Nina Kawar is a sculptor whose creative practice explores and aims to push the boundaries of porcelain by layering her work with multiple materials and processes. The elusive and often fragile forms derive from an intrigue with the human condition and healing. Many of her influences stem from psychology, biology, and architecture.

Born and raised in a Palestinian American home in Wisconsin, Nina continues to explore her multi-cultural lens that parallels her curiosity for patterns, boundaries, and perspectives. She started her artistic journey with clay in 2005 at San Diego Community College. In 2011 she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 3D Design and Masters of Fine Arts in Art with an emphasis in ceramics at Clemson University in 2014. Currently she is working in Marshall High Studios in Marshall, NC.

Some of her exhibitions include "Best of WNC Emerging Craft Artists Showcase" at the Asheville Area Arts Council Refinery, in Asheville, NC, the "Winter Show at Greenhill" at the Greenhill Center of NC Art in Greensboro, NC, "The 10th International Ceramics Competition” MINO, Japan; and the “2014 NCECA National Juried Student Exhibition at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Nina was also commissioned to design and create the “Innovative Spirit Awards” for The College of Business and Behavior Sciences at Clemson University.


For more information about Nina, please to to: http://www.ninakawar.com.  


For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program, and to apply, please go to: http://www.clemson.edu/degrees/art.

To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to: http://www.clemson.edu/graduate/academics/program-details.html?m_id=Visual-Arts.
 

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Ella Wesly, Clemson University BFA in Art Graduate, Accepted into an Internship at Sapar Contemporary, Tribeba, NYC


9 NORTH MOORE, NEW YORK, NY 10013

Ella Wesly, BFA in Art (2016) Graduate from Clemson University's Art Department is current enrolled in the Master of Arts in Art Business program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art—New York.  She also has accepted an internship at Sapar Contemporary Gallery in the New York City's Tribeca neighborhood. Ella will function as the sole intern in the gallery, completing research, assisting in event planning, and continuing her dedication to a career in the art market.


SAPAR Contemporary Gallery + Incubator is the brainchild of Raushan Sapar and Nina Levent. The project that has been in the works since 2014 while we were looking for a space that was in line with our vision. The gallery has finally acquired a ground floor space at 9 North Moore Street and renovated this older traditional Tribeca space into a modern sunlit gallery space that respects the architectural legacy of the neighborhood and retains its original charm.

SAPAR Contemporary artists span three generations and five continents. They engage in global conversations and develop vocabularies that resonate as strongly in Baku, Almaty and Istanbul as they do in New York, Berlin, Paris and Mexico City. Their artistic practices vary from meditative traditional ink painting to writing programming code; what connects them are the artists’ capacity for empathy, insight, and imagination, their whimsy and generosity of spirit, as well as the rigor and depth of their studio practice.

SAPAR Contemporary has also launched a nomadic incubator program.  The Incubator program, residencies and group shows offer a unique lens that is immediate and global, future-oriented and accessible, multi-sensory and immersive. The gallery program brings together visual artists and creative minds of all disciplines: scientists, engineers, architects, performers, musicians and perfumers. 

SAPAR Contemporary artists’ works have been featured in international Biennials and are included in private and public collections around the world; among them are the MoMA, LaCMA, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, the Smithsonian and many others.

SAPAR Contemporary commissions works that are site-specific to New York, but infused with sensibilities, materialities and traditions of the artists’ backgrounds. 


The Gallery does not accept unsolicited portfolios.

For more information about Ella and her art, please go to: http://ellawesly.com/. For more information about Sapar Contemporary, please go to: http://www.saparcontemporary.com/

 

For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program, and to apply, please go to: http://www.clemson.edu/degrees/art

 


To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to: http://www.clemson.edu/graduate/academics/program-details.html?m_id=Visual-Arts

 

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Springboard for the Arts: an Economic and Community Development Organization for Artists and by Artists


Springboard for the Arts is an economic and community development organization for artists and by artists. Their work is about building stronger communities, neighborhoods, and economies, and they believe that artists are an important leverage point in that work. Springboard for the Arts’ mission is to cultivate vibrant communities by connecting artists with the skills, information, and services they need to make a living and a life.

Their work is about creating communities and artists that have a reciprocal relationship, where artists are key contributors to community issues and are visible and valued for the impact they create. They do this work by creating simple, practical solutions and systems to support artists. Those programs support their goal to help create a local culture movement.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Our way of working is equally important as what we do. There are 9 key principles that drive our work.

Artists are assets
Artists exist in every community, and art is inseparable from the communities in which it is made. Our work helps illuminate the social and economic value of art and creativity.

By artists for artists
Everyone who works at Springboard is an artist. We recognize the expertise and experience of artists and incorporate that into creating effective, relevant programs to meet artists’ needs.

The broadest definition of who is an artist
Everyone has creative capacity and there are many different ways to be an artist. We also know that there are many kinds of success for an artist, and we help artists define success for themselves – financial success, recognition, a supportive community, respect, social change, and more.

More is more
We make and share tools designed to benefit as many artists as possible. We believe interconnected communities of artists create an impact in ways that single interventions do not. By freely sharing our work and creating connections among artists and communities, we work to make substantial, system-wide change.

Equity = vibrant communities
Beyond accessibility, our programs address systemic and structural inequities and seek to build equity, agency and power in communities, neighborhoods and systems.

Reciprocal relationships
We seek mutual respect, trust, commitment, and reciprocity with all our partners. We don’t go it alone. We create and customize programs with partners based on mutual goals, and we invite partners to strengthen and change our work.

Cross-sector collaborations that last
We help artists collaborate with existing resources and systems, both because there is abundant potential in those resources, and because we believe they will be strengthened by artists’ contributions. We focus on building bridges and mechanisms that help relationships continue to thrive without us.

Boldness and creativity
Our work is characterized by optimism that change is possible, and belief that the boldness and creativity of artists can address the challenges facing our communities. We also know that in order to engage people, this movement has to be fun.

Real Half & Half
We value hospitality and an attitude of abundance over scarcity. Our goal is always to create an environment, real or virtual, that is welcoming to newcomers and existing partners and friends alike. Hot coffee and real Half & Half out of the carton is something we always have available – a symbol of offering the best of what we have to our guests and our staff.

Springboard for the Arts is committed to providing access to programs and resources for all artists. We are committed to unbiased treatment of all individuals without regard to race, color, gender, age, national origin, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, citizenship, disability, veteran status or any other basis. All of the program sites we work with are accessible and Springboard staff is trained to support individuals with accessibility needs. Please contact Springboard for the Arts for specific information about our programs or services. Springboard for the Arts can make publications and materials available in alternative formats (Braille, large type, and by recording) with at least 2 weeks notice. We also work with VSA Minnesota to provide interpreters or technical needs for our programs.


 

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

CALL FOR Studio Art PRESENTERS: SECAC 2017, “Rapid Review: Graduate Studio Art Programs in Their Own Words and Images” Greg Shelnutt, Session Chair


Jason Adams, Sipper's Digest, Clemson University MFA in Art, 2013 (sculpture emphasis)
2016-2017 North Carolina Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award recipient

Seeking Presenters for my SECAC 2017 Session, "Rapid Review: Graduate Studio Art Programs in Their Own Words and Images"

Abstract:

“Presentations about graduate studio art programs.  Conducted in rapid-fire, Pecha-Kucha style, this session invites currently enrolled graduate students, faculty, graduate coordinators, department chairs, and program directors to talk about their work and their programs.   In addition to the 'nuts & bolts' of credit hours, assistantships, emphasis areas, and facilities, what makes your program unique?  Is there an underlying philosophical ethos?  What’s essential that we know? In true Pecha-Kucha style we will go with the 20 images / 20 seconds each format.  You can decide exactly how to split your focus, but roughly plan on 14 of the 20 images to be about the program, and the remaining 6 of the 20 images to be about your work (and/or your peers’ works).  Selection will be made based upon presenting a diversity of geographic locations, types of programs (public and private), types of degree programs, and a breadth of presenters’ backgrounds (current graduate students, tenure-track faculty, and seasoned academic veterans).  Finally, given there will inevitably be a finite number of speakers to represent a wealth graduate studio art programs nationally; It is hoped that this will become a recurring session that will be offered for multiple years at many SECAC conferences.”

Please note:


Hilary Siber, Clemson University MFA in Art, 2015 (painting emphasis)

Please understand that SECAC membership and payment of the conference registration fee are required of all presenters. Here is a link to join: JOIN.

Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) looks forward to hosting "Microscopes and Megaphones," the 73rd annual SECAC Conference, October 25-28, 2017. Eleanor Fuchs, Associate Provost at CCAD, will serve as conference director. The Hilton Downtown Columbus will host attendees and all sessions; this official conference hotel is located in the south end of the Short North, Columbus’ arts district. Attendees may easily walk to the many wonderful restaurants, boutiques, and art galleries this neighborhood has to offer. Those coming in from out of town are strongly advised to reserve their hotels well in advance of the conference to avoid competing with Ohio State University football fans. For reservations: https://aws.passkey.com/go/SECAC2017

Thank you for your consideration! If you have questions, please contact me via email. 

Greg Shelnutt, Professor of Art & Chair
Art Department, 2-121 Lee Hall
College of Architecture, Arts & Humanities
Clemson University, Clemson, SC  29634
864-656-3880, gshelnu@clemson.edu 

En Iwamura, MFA in Art, 2016, (ceramics emphasis, Long-term Resident Artist, Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT
 
For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program, and to apply, please go to: 










To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to:


 

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Clemson University MFA in Art Candidate, Mandy Ferguson, in the 2017 Atlanta Print Biennial

Mandy Ferguson, Demolition (Transitional Landscape II)
Clemson University MFA in Art Candidate, Mandy Ferguson, will exhibit in the 2017 Atlanta Print Biennial. Her work was one of the 73 prints chosen from 787 entries from around the world to represent the current cutting edge of works on paper. 


Mandy is an artist from Easley, South Carolina. Originally a graduate from the University of South Carolina with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marine Science, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Converse College in May 2015 while working as a photographer/ page designer at a weekly newspaper.  She is currently pursing the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art with an emphasis in printmaking at Clemson University.
 

Ferguson’s work has recently shown at the Bite, Scratch, Expose: New Printmaking exhibit at the Morean Arts Center in Saint Petersburg, Florida, the Southern Graphics Council International member portfolio exchange, “Expectation of Privacy,” which displayed in Knoxville, Tennessee and Signs of the Times Contemporary Broadside Juried Exhibition at the Flakoll Gallery in Fargo, North Dakota. She has also received recognition for her prints by the
Spartanburg County Library College Invitational Art Exhibition and Creative Quarterly: Journal of Art and Design. In addition, her photojournalism has garnered several awards through the South Carolina Press Association’s annual
competition.
 

Her eclectic interest in the visual arts is realized through her prints, which combine photographs, drawings, printmaking and sculptural elements into works that explore technological dependency and loss of identity.
 


March 15 – April 14
Kai Lin Art
999 Brady Avenue NW Suite 7
Atlanta GA 30318
Wednesday - Friday 12 - 6 pm
Saturday 12 - 5 pm
Sun - Tues by appointment. 
Opening reception and awards ceremony: Thursday, March 16th from 7:00-19:00pm. 
The winners of the awards will be announced March 16th during the opening reception. 

The juror is the 2017 SGC International Printmaker Emeritus Awardee Sydney Cross.

Sydney A. Cross, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts: Northern Arizona University in 1977 and her Masters of Fine Arts: Arizona State University in 1980. She taught printmaking and art for 33 years. In 2015, she retired from teaching at Clemson University where she was awarded the title of Distinguished Alumni Professor of Art. Always professionally active, she held the office of vice president and then President of the Southern Graphics Council (1996-2000), the largest printmaking society in North America. She has also been awarded residencies at Frans Masareel Graphic Center in Belgium and the Virginia Center of Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, VA. Cross has given numerous panel presentations at regional, national, and international conferences and symposiums. As an artist she has participated in several important portfolio exchanges, including Suite X, Printer’s Almanac, Tempe Suite, Images 2010, and Drawn to Stone, a celebration of Two Hundred Years of Lithography. Her work has been exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally, and can be found in numerous collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Smithsonian Museum, and Boston Museum of Fine Art to name just a few.

For more information about Mandy's work, please go to: http://mlfergus.weebly.com/

For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program, and to apply, please go to: 

To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to:

 

Monday, February 6, 2017

Parker Barfield, Clemson University BFA in Art Alum, is a Resident Artist at Redux

Parker Barfield, Close Your Eyes and Sleep, 45 x 96, ink, graphite, and charcoal on paper
 
Parker Barfield is a recent BFA graduate from Clemson University [BFA in Art, drawing emphasis, 2016], and is originally from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Growing up, Parker moved around the country as the son of a Marine Corps Officer. Experiences living among wide array of American landscapes serve as a primary driver for the artist’s work. Once at Clemson, he began to contemplate, understand, and communicate these experiences through art. In his experience landscape serves as a gateway into immaterial, imaginative, fantastical and spiritual aspects of existence. Because landscape is such a strong influence in his life, it is through interaction with the things of the landscape that deeper questions are asked and answered not only by the artist’s cognition, but he suggest that the elements themselves have something to tell him.  
 
Redux Contemporary Art Center (Redux) is a nonprofit organization committed to  fostering creativity and the cultivation of contemporary art through diverse exhibitions, subsidized studio space for visual artists, meaningful education programs, and a multidisciplinary approach to the dialogue between artists and their audiences. Redux offers free year round art exhibitions, artist and curator lecture series, and film screenings, while educating art patrons of all ages through fine art classes and workshops, community outreach, and internship opportunities. Redux is instrumental in presenting new artists to our community through our artist-in-residency program, and our many artist and music performances. In addition, Redux remains a bustling center for contemporary art with 16 private artist studios, and the only community printmaking and darkroom facilities in the lowcountry. 
 
136 St. Philip Street
Charleston, SC 29403 
 
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday - Friday 10am-6pm
Saturday 12pm-5pm

Artist's statement: In my work I play out my existential search, born of collective experiences in American landscapes spanning the continental United States. Landscapes and natural objects as both actors and old friends are touchstones, representing my dialectical desire for both familiar and mystifying experiences. I acknowledge my grounded, bound, and potentially comprehensible experience in my local situation, yet am always drawn deeper into immaterial, metaphysical, and spiritual aspects of existence. Because landscape is such a strong influence in my life, it is through interaction with the things of the landscape that deeper questions are asked and answered not only by my own cognition, but I suggest that the elements themselves have something to tell me.
 
 
Parker Barfield, ink, graphite, and charcoal on paper

For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program and to apply, go to: 

To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to:

 

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Thin Ice: Art professor saves National Park glaciers as woodcut prints, work acquired by national galleries

Todd Anderson, assistant professor of art and printmaking at Clemson University, displays one of his reductive woodblock prints in “The Last Glacier”, an artist book of 23 image plates of glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana, by him, Bruce Crownover and Ian van Coller.
Image Credit: Ken Scar / Clemson University



Todd Anderson, assistant professor of art and printmaking at Clemson
University, displays one of his reductive woodblock prints in “The Last
 Glacier”, an artist book of 23 image plates of glaciers in Glacier
National Park, Montana, by him, Bruce Crownover and Ian van Coller.

CLEMSON — With a heavy mug of coffee in one hand, Todd Anderson moves through his personal studio like a chef moving through a four-star kitchen: fluidly, efficiently, among the tools of his trade: neatly stacked cans of paint sorted by color, saws and drills tucked away without a hint of sawdust, brushes hanging neatly, chisels gleaming. Every label of every can and jar and bottle faces outward, lest confusion disrupt the rhythm of his work.

Anderson, an assistant professor of art at Clemson University, is a printmaker, skilled at transferring beauty and wonder from landscapes onto paper to share his experiences with the public.
When guests arrive at his studio, which used to be his garage, Anderson slips on a pair of shoes, turns off a stream of classical jazz and begins to tell a story about his latest project, which recently gained national attention.

https://youtu.be/EKzsLzJudts

“I think we all understand that the world is changing in sweeping and dramatic ways,” Anderson says, his voice quiet and earnest. “My belief is that those places need to be seen, they need to be experienced and they need to be creatively documented.” It’s a holy trinity that guides his work.
Since its founding 100 years ago, Glacier National Park has lost more than 80 percent of its glaciers. Over the past six years, Anderson says, he hiked more than 500 miles through that park for a project called “The Last Glacier.” He and two collaborators, painter Bruce Crownover and photographer Ian van Coller, recently finished the project, resulting in original artwork that includes 15 specially bound 25- by 38-inch books with Anderson’s original prints, Crownover’s paintings and van Coller’s photos.

“My intent as an artist is to share the beauty of a changing world,” Anderson says.

In demand
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the New York Public Library are sharing the work; they each bought a book on the spot. The Library of Congress bought another. Clemson’s Emery A. Gunnin Architecture Library, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale, and several private collectors have also invested in the artistic, historical records.

The Last Glacier quickly garnered the kind of attention artists dream of. But Anderson couldn’t look lighter, more carefree. He says he spent a great deal of his life camping, hiking and climbing his way through the Rocky Mountains, sleeping with the stars overhead. It’s easy to picture him on a mountain in a three-day beard and a worn flannel shirt, accidentally hip.

On being outside, Anderson says, “If you’ve felt frost on a sleeping bag, or seen dew on cobwebs in the woods, you can understand the value of that experience.”

Rock climbing shaped his arms and hands; they’re strong, purposeful. His blue eyes sparkle with an infinite appreciation for wonder, reflecting a scientist’s curiosity and exacting patience. There are stories in those hands and eyes, and a quiet urgency to tell them.


An Anderson woodcut print of the Grinnell glacier in Glacier National Park.

An Anderson woodcut print of the Grinnell glacier in Glacier National Park.
In the late oughts, Anderson heard the Rockies’ glaciers were melting. “My first thought was, this is the environment that I love, these alpine environments, the beauty of these places. I felt sad, first and foremost. And then I thought, ‘Well, who is documenting these places?’”

When months of searching for someone recording the glacial recession turned up empty, Anderson decided to do it himself. “It was really out of a sense of responsibility,” he says.

The three collaborators are currently wrapping up a second project, documenting glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park. Anderson is also waiting to hear about a grant from the National Science Foundation that would send him to Antarctica.

The Last Glacier is a compelling and invaluable work, said Gary Machlis, the University Professor of Environmental Sustainability and scientific adviser to the director of the National Park Service for eight years until early January 2017. “Climate change is the environmental challenge of our age, and responding to this challenge requires a constellation of voices — including those of artists like Todd.
“Art can be a portal for understanding in a visceral, emotional way what science attempts to demonstrate through theory, data and analysis,” Machlis said. “Todd’s work is powerful, and his collaborative team is unique and so committed to their task. Viewing the images in ‘The Last Glacier’ is a reminder of what is at risk and what might be lost if we do not act.”

In 1910, there were 150 glaciers within the new 1 million-acre Glacier National Park in Montana’s Rocky Mountains. When Anderson started his work, in 2010, all but 25 had melted.

Glaciers, the marvelous remnants of the last ice age, are made from the bottom up by layer upon layer of snow that melts into ice, the accumulating weight pressing the earth, picking up and setting down boulders as they slide incrementally. For the past 7,000 years, the glaciers in the park have stretched for miles, like giant beached whales caught between mountains and frozen by time.

Lakes dot a valley in Glacier National Park that a glacier once filled. Photo courtesy Todd Anderson.

Melting ice, rising seas 

Lakes dot a valley in Glacier National Park that a glacier once filled. Photo courtesy Todd Anderson.

When glaciers melt they don’t simply disappear, they become water. Increasingly, they’re adding to rising sea levels.

Melt from all the glaciers and ice sheets in the world are responsible for two-thirds of global sea level rise (the rest is attributed to warming seas), according to Andrew Fountain a glaciologist at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, who agreed to write a scientific note about the next project by Anderson and his colleagues.

Twenty years ago, Fountain said, alpine glaciers, like the ones in Glacier National Park, were the first to melt. “Now Greenland is beginning to melt,” he said.

By 2040, with a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperature, sea levels will rise significantly along 90 percent of the world’s coastlines, affecting hundreds of millions of people, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fountain has introduced many artists to the wilderness in Antarctica, where he conducts some of his research. When Anderson asked him, out of the blue, to contribute to an artistic project, Fountain considered it a way to tell more people about the melting glaciers.

“Getting this information out to people is super important,” said Fountain. “It’s a gateway to science. I might be attracted to the subject by graphs and plots, but others might be attracted by art.”
It’s a symbiotic relationship, Anderson said, as scientists wrap the art in a scientific context.
“Working with scientists is very critical to my projects. We’re trying to bridge gaps and we’re trying to connect with as many folks as we can,” Anderson said. “What the scientists provide is things that we can’t provide – analytical analysis and whole, unique perspectives of what’s going on with the landscape.”

There is also common ground among artists and scientists, and aficionados of each. Science, Fountain said, can be incredibly creative, like when it’s time to choose the right approach to finding a solution. And when looking at Anderson’s art, the glaciologist sees clues to the glacier’s life, such as whether it’s advancing or retreating.

 Democratic medium
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Anderson found work at Tandem Press, an international printing house affiliated with UW’s School of Education. Tandem has a tradition of attracting famous artists to experiment and print in its studio. David Lynch, Chuck Close, Art Spiegelman and Judy Pfaff are among its alumni.

Essentially, Anderson worked with artists accustomed to producing singular pieces of art and helped them create prints that “would be totally and wholly unique, but you could make 20 or 30 of these things and more people could have it.”

Printmaking, he said, “is an inherently democratic medium, and for me that was really what grabbed me.” “The Last Glacier” project is similarly intended to be shared with the masses, Anderson said. “Our mission is to get the work into the public sphere,” he said.

And he wants future masses to experience the work, which makes acquisitions by the Met, the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress special.

“One of the things I want to do as an artist is to talk about the immediacy of things going on in the world. But art, as I understand it and the way I approach it, it’s a multigenerational conversation,” Anderson said.

In museums, “when we look at a painting from the 1800s it helps us understand what people’s values were, what people thought about.

“It’s just as important when future generations who go to museums and get to see this work. It’s not just saying, ‘Oh, there used to be a glacier here,’ but it’s also saying, ‘This is a little bit about us.’ In a very, very small way. Of what we valued as a society and what we thought about, the challenges we were trying to face and engage.”

Working with collaborators also amplifies the message and grows the audience. Anderson initially planned to work alone, but the glaciers were so vast and distant – 10 to 15 miles from an access road – that he enlisted Crownover and van Coller to help cover the territory.

The result, Anderson said, is “three very unique artistic visions of essentially the same thing. The hope is that by presenting the viewer with three different versions of three different artists, that folks might be able to latch on. If they don’t like my work, maybe they’ll really like Bruce’s. Or if they don’t like Bruce’s, maybe they’ll like Ian’s.”


Todd Anderson, assistant professor of art and printmaking at Clemson University, carves out a “stamp” to create a reductive woodcut print of a glacier for “The Last Glacier”. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Todd Anderson, assistant professor of art and printmaking at Clemson University, carves out a “stamp” to create a reductive woodcut print of a glacier for “The Last Glacier”. (Photo by Ken Scar)

Mirroring the glaciers 
If you’ve stood on a glacier, or on a mountain two miles high, standing in front of Anderson’s finished prints will stir a familiar chill in the air, as if someone opened a window 10,000 feet up. The prints reveal scars from the violent upheaval, subduction and collision of the Earth’s crust. You’ll feel the cool blues of the ice, the ancient gray of the rock and yellow, purple, pink and blue of sunrises and sunsets seen through thin air.

Anderson spent weeks each summer working in situ, researching the glaciers – which ones to document, how to access them, seeing them at different times of day as the sun shifted shadows and revealed new details. He hiked, sketched and photographed, getting to know each one before it ceased to exist.

Back in his studio, where the prints come to life, a mixture of fluorescent bulbs balance the blues, reds and greens to shine as white as possible.

In the middle of the space sits a printing press, perched atop tiny feet, perfectly level. The press is new; at least it’s new to Anderson. It arrived recently by freight to his home in one of Clemson’s leafy neighborhoods. The press is his six-burner gas range, where the ingredients of his art – science, nature, light and the wonder of the Rocky Mountains — mingle and fuse.

Slowly, they develop as reductive woodcut prints in a process involving time, pressure and the deliberate carving of a landscape until nothing is left but a picture, a life cycle that mimics his subjects. Anderson chose to recreate the glaciers as woodcut prints because, he says, he wanted “an organic, visual language,” and woodcuts, by their nature, provide a “visual texture.”

Both glaciers and prints are constructed of layers, but  while glaciers are built from the bottom, prints begin at the top. They require the artist to complete the piece in his mind, then work backward.
Anderson transfers a sketch to a rectangular block of basswood, imported from Japan, then begins working in negative space – using fingers and hands that once routinely clung to rock to slowly, expertly, carve away wood, creating an image by removing what he doesn’t want in the print. The first layer he carves away, from the top of the block, will be the first image on the paper, the bottom layer of color.

“I might do that 10, 15 or 20 times. So I’ll have 15 or 20 sheets of paper that look the same,” he says. “Once I’m done doing that, I’ll take that same block of wood, clean it off, carve it out a little bit more, I’ll ink it up with a new color this time, then I’ll print it on top of what I printed before.”
He has to print light colors first, and he’s constantly calculating “the value of the color and the opacity of my ink, so that I can make a whole image look right. At least in my mind how it looks right.”

One layer, one carving, one color, one pressing at a time, all the while thinking backwards, or upside down, removing negative space from the top that becomes the bottom. Eventually, the full image appears. But, at a cost.

“By the time I get done making these artworks, the blocks themselves are really exhausted, and there’s no way of going back and remaking the artwork,” Anderson says. “The process is mirroring the fate of the glaciers themselves.”

Anderson said he doesn’t create “message” art. He’s not delivering a political statement. Not directly, anyway.

“There’s a complexity to these ideas” of art, experience, climate change, he said. “What I’m trying to present as an artist is visual complexity. But there’s moments where, when it works right, you can get lost in these things and you start seeing the cobwebs. You start seeing things. There’s an experience that art can give you, which is just wonder, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Anderson received funding from the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts for this work.

For more information, and to see the work by Crownover and van Coller, go to TheLastGlacier.com.


For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program and to apply, go to: 

To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to:

 
 

 

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Clemson University MFA in Art Candidate, Caren Stansell, in the 2017 Atlanta Print Biennial


Clemson University MFA in Art Candidate, Caren Stansell, will exhibit in the 2017 Atlanta Print Biennial. Her work was one of the 73 prints chosen from 787 entries from around the world to represent the current cutting edge of works on paper.
 

March 15 – April 14

Kai Lin Art
999 Brady Avenue NW Suite 7
Atlanta GA 30318

Wednesday - Friday 12 - 6 pm
Saturday 12 - 5 pm
Sun - Tues by appointment. 

Opening reception and awards ceremony: Thursday, March 16th from 7:00-19:00pm. 

The winners of the awards will be announced March 16th during the opening reception. 

The juror is the 2017 SGC International Printmaker Emeritus Awardee Sydney Cross.

Sydney A. Cross, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts: Northern Arizona University in 1977 and her Masters of Fine Arts: Arizona State University in 1980. She taught printmaking and art for 33 years. In 2015, she retired from teaching at Clemson University where she was awarded the title of Distinguished Alumni Professor of Art. Always professionally active, she held the office of vice president and then President of the Southern Graphics Council (1996-2000), the largest printmaking society in North America. She has also been awarded residencies at Frans Masareel Graphic Center in Belgium and the Virginia Center of Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, VA. Cross has given numerous panel presentations at regional, national, and international conferences and symposiums. As an artist she has participated in several important portfolio exchanges, including Suite X, Printer’s Almanac, Tempe Suite, Images 2010, and Drawn to Stone, a celebration of Two Hundred Years of Lithography. Her work has been exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally, and can be found in numerous collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Smithsonian Museum, and Boston Museum of Fine Art to name just a few.

For more information about Caren's work, please go to: http://www.carenstansellstudio.com/

For more information about Clemson's BFA in Art Program, and to apply, please go to: 

To learn more about Clemson University's Master of Fine Arts in Art program and to apply, please go to: