Art Foundation Teaching
Time Studio
The Time Studio curriculum in the VCUarts Art Foundation program is flexible enough to accommodate multiple teaching/learning approaches to time based media practices. Each iteration of my Time Studio syllabi included an emphasis in experiential learning, community engagement, and historical context for our assignments and group based projects.
One semester we built an indoor garden, planted a crop of green beans and researched the work of Fluxus artist Alison Knowles. The green beans grew throughout the semester and served as a theme for many of the class projects. We built a green bean pontoon boat for the AFO regatta, hosted area chefs to develop a green bean salad recipe from our harvest and devised a series of recipe based public performance art projects.
Additionally my students partnered with the Carver Community Garden and the Institute for Contemporary on two community garden projects.
I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to teach in the Art Foundation program. Working with incoming first year students is as challenging, as it is rewarding and has influenced my teaching strategies at the advanced and graduate levels.
AFO Time Studio - Sample Assignment
UNIT 1: Radical Hospitality:
In the first unit of Time Studio we are going to use art and food to demarcate the virtual/screen space on the internet from the real, physical, visceral space of food production and consumption. We are going to use tutorial sites such as instructables to teach ourselves new food related skills and we will return the DIY gift via our own experimental tutorials.
"Today, the shared meal has become a compelling artistic medium: a surprising number of artists are using meals to advance aesthetic goals and foster critical engagement with our current culture. These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using food as a means to spark encounters and perceptions that aren't otherwise possible within our fast-moving and overly segmented society."
- Stephanie Smith - Curator - Feast: Radical Hospitality and Contemporary Art.
Assignments:
ART.EAT.GIF - Using only stills and Photoshop we will create stop motion animated GIF files using food as a medium for self portraiture.
EAT.ART.IRL - Learn to make or do something related to food/eating using at least three source/recipes for making the same thing. Share the results of that research with your own recipe/set of instructions at a classroom potluck.
DIY.EAT.CYO - Produce online tutorial for newly learned hybrid food/art related skill.
Artists to research:
Theaster Gates, Tom Marioni , Alison Knowles, Michael Rakowitz, Laura Letinsky, Daniel Spoerri, Gordon Matta-Clark
Stone Soup - Classroom Potluck
Basil for Stone Soup Potluck
Tri-Pie by AFO Student Joanna Patzig. A pie within a pie with in a Pie.
Group Video Project
AFO short student video about their Time Studio experience
Kim Peters - Animated GIF
AFO Time Studio Assignment 1
Stop Motion Animation Project by Triet Le - AFO Spring 2015
Sample Assignment: Full Service
Live public performance works by AFO students. They researched a job that no longer exists and created a performance that re-animated the job/work/labor.
Tyme Studio Magazine - Group Student Project
Students co-created a catalog of student works produced during my Time Studio courses in 2016. Download a PDF copy of Tyme Studio Magazine
AFO Time Studio Students weave themselves into a bean trellis.
