MFA Semester 1 Message

Greetings Grads,

Welcome to the start of the MFA core curriculum which will begin this Monday 26 October.

This is a LONG email with lots of information you need.

Please read carefully.

The schedule for Grad Studio Monday night visits will be coming from Laura shortly and you should have already received the revised Group Critique schedule.

Here are a few reminders for Graduate Studio and Group Critique:

Your education, your health, and safety, as well as the health and safety of our staff and faculty are top priority for all of us now. We have configured both the Grad Studio and Group Critique classes with this in mind.

During the first nine weeks of MFA Semester 1 you will have a studio visit with a graduate professor each Monday night. These instructors are:

Regine Basha
Susanna Coffey
Delphine Fawundu
Ajay Kurian
Justine Kurland
Leeza Meksin
Shelly Silver
Pamela Sneed
Sara VanDerBeek

In the last four weeks of the semester you will have the opportunity to schedule followup visits with these faculty according to your preference and  their availability. This is part of the class. Do not hesitate to ask for these visits.

Our COVID guidelines allow for only one person to be in your studios at a time. This presents obvious challenges for holding studio visits and group critiques. As members of a community, caring for each other, we each have to make choices as to how best to do this according to our ability and comfort level with the pandemic.

After safety, in both studio visits and group critiques, our next priority is the quality of the experience we have with your artwork and the clarity of the communication about the work.

To these ends there are at least four approaches most students and faculty will be choosing from when arranging visits:

1) Schedule a time prior to your meeting when faculty can go to your studio on their own to look at and spend time with your work. Then meet them to talk, masked and spatially distanced, in another place where it is safe to do so.

2) Open your studio for faculty as above and then meet with them remotely with documentation of the work.

3) Reserve time to install your work and meet faculty in-person, masked and spatially distanced, in one of the three spaces that are rated safe for more than one person: Prentis Hall 101, Prentis Hall 315, and Dodge Hall Neiman Center Gallery. Details re: the reservation system for these rooms are forthcoming.

4) Share your work and talk about it with faculty remotely. In addition to documentation of the work consider using a separate mobile device or webcam.

Please be responsive in your communication with faculty beforehand when planning how you will do your visit.  And please send any time-based work or documentation prior to meeting to reserve more time for discussion. In all four scenarios above you should have clear and evocative documentation of your work, even if you meet in person you may want this for followup or other COVID-related needs. We plan to schedule a second workshop on documenting artworks and enhancing remote studio visits.

Visiting critics will have the same options for meeting that you and faculty have. And, because the University requires everyone entering campus to have a UNI and gateway COVID test, etc., many Visiting Critics will likely elect to do visits remotely—another reason to have the best, detailed, documentation possible.

With graduate faculty you have the opportunity to schedule your visit at another time during your assigned week. This is at the discretion of faculty according to their availability. They may also ask you to move your meeting time according to your availability.

And otherwise, as you know, you are required to be available via phone, text, or email and Zoom during Graduate Studio hours on Monday nights in case faculty, visiting critics, or others need to reach you for rescheduling or any other reason.

Group Critique will be meeting when possible in the three rooms mentioned above on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. These spaces will also be available to reserve for installing work on the day of your critique. Work must be removed by the end of the night.

Group Critique leaders are:

E. J. Hauser
Jon Kessler
Sable Elyse Smith
Sara VanDerBeek

Even though Group Critique is scheduled for rooms that can accommodate more people the class will still be taught in hybrid or remote mode when students and/ or faculty are not able to be there in person. Faculty and staff are making every effort to be able to bring remote members of the community to the critique space and vice versa via technology.

I’m SORRY for such a long email, but there are many, many moving parts to what we plan to do and I want you to have as much information as possible. I’m sure I have left things out and no doubt you will have questions. Please be in touch.

I’m very excited that we are starting this next phase of your education and cannot wait to see the work you are making.

Best,
Matthew Buckingham