Interviews

Take a look through the interviews with artists, writers and filmmakers on bombsite, one of our news and views links. These are all interviews of artists by artists which date back to the early 1980s, so they are a good model for what we are trying to achieve here. 

Independent Curators International compiled Inside the Studio a very useful collection of interviews with some of the most interesting American artist from the last twenty years or so. In both of these examples we have an oral presentation of ideas.
 

Guidelines
You must record the interview. You should then transcribe it into written form. Don't just take written notes, you will miss too much.
 

You must go to your partner’s studio/workplace. Take some time to look around, don’t leap straight in. If they don’t have a studio then spread out sketchbooks and print outs, or pin up work. Don't just look at final pieces.

You must see the work your partner is working on at the moment as well as a selection of their older work

Ask open questions, why, how rather than questions that can be answered with yes or no.

If you only ask questions you only get answers. This means that you should aim for a discussion rather than a quiz

Start with a discussion of what you can see, with what is tangible and real.

Continue with a series of questions about why they use certain materials, forms, subjects.

Try to uncover themes, whether these are in materials, forms or subjects in their work.

Move on to a discussion of their influences, artists, writers, movies etc.

Look for themes and connections between their work and that of those who are influences.

Finish with a discussion of their plans for developing their thesis proposal. Where do they see their work developing over the next year?

Look out for further posts and examples.

Welcome Back Show at Mason Gross Galleries

Welcome Back Exhibition

Second Year MFA Candidates and Mason Gross Faculty/Staff

Wednesday, September 1 – Saturday, September 18, 2009

Reception: Wednesday, September 1, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.

An exhibition of works by second year MFA candidates and faculty and staff members, will open September 10^th at Mason Gross galleries in New Brunswick, New Jersey.


For second year grad students, the welcome back show marks the midpoint of their graduate career and the opportunity to show their work alongside Rutgers faculty members.  Hit It Big represents all departments and includes examples of painting, sculpture, photography, video, and printmaking.


 

Art and design writing for artists and designers

We posted about Donald Judd as a model for artists writing about their work. Designers, film makers, photographers also do this, in fact we all do it to some extent as part of our practice. A great example of a designer/writer is Ellen Lupton who seems to produce a couple of books a year while also practicing as a designer and a design educator. She teaches a design writing course at MICA. Another new design criticism course is headed by Alice Twemlow at SVA. Both have some great links and resources, so check out their web sites 

http://www.elupton.com/writing/

http://dcrit.sva.edu/

Some of the relevant links are 

http://abriefmessage.com/ a collection of design comments with a 200 word limit

http://www.designobserver.com/ probably to most high profile design blog

http://www.dot-dot-dot.us/ an experiment in design writing 

Lupton includes general writing advice, for instance

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/beyond.html

On writing your blog posts and Donald Judd

Your blog posts do not need to be lengthy. Just a few sentences can be sufficient as long as your thought(s) are clearly expressed. The goal is to effectively explain yourself in as concise a manner as possible.

The iconic writings of minimalist artist and critic Donald Judd are an interesting example of how this can be achieved.

See these two articles on his writing style with a few examples of his reviews:
Conversation starter: Mel Bochner on the republished writings of Donald Judd
Look, See: Donald Judd Archives

For those of you who are interested, a book of these writings is available: Donald Judd Complete Writings 1959-1975

Blog privacy settings

You decide whether or not you would like to share your blog with the rest of the class (as well as the rest of the internet via search engines). If you decide to restrict privacy settings, you must allow access for both Gerry and Megan by adding our email addresses (beegan@earthlink.net and meganeflaherty@gmail.com) to the "Blog Readers".

When you set up your blog, please email Megan your blog's web address and your level of privacy. For all those who wish to share their blogs with the rest of the class, we will post your links here.

For all of our protection, this blog will only be viewable by members of this course. We have not yet restricted the privacy setting but will do so once everyone is all set up on google.

This video will explain how to adjust your privacy settings.

How to set up your blog video