CAA Conversations CAA

What does it look like to actually exist within graduate school? Most grad and post-doc students spend their degrees carefully balancing their schooling alongside holding full-time jobs, building professional connections, supporting themselves financially and physically, and engaging in their creativity outside of school. This podcast explores the question: what does the world of academia look like while situated within these experiences, and how do graduate programs support their students with community and access to resources? Grace Oller and Hannah Warren are currently receiving their master’s degrees in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at New York University. Grace attends the Institute of Fine Arts and is seeking a degree in Art History and Archeology, while Hannah is receiving her MA from the XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement program. In this conversation, Grace and Hannah discuss what brought them to NYU, how they have navigated their first year, and what their hope is for the future of their programs, specifically addressing how community has been fostered in these spaces. This episode hopes to extend empathy to students facing the same battles, while providing a moment of contemplation for those who may exist outside of this specific realm of academia. As creatives and academics, Grace and Hannah explore the integration of art, education, and building connections with others.

Grace Oller is a Graduate Student at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) studying Modern and Contemporary Art History and Curatorial Practice. Born and raised in rural Ohio, she attended the Columbus College of Art and Design and received a BFA in Fine Arts with minors in Creative Writing and Art History. She has held positions as an Exhibition Assistant at the Columbus Museum of Art, co-editor in chief of the online publication, IFAcontemporary, and a contributing writer for a forthcoming book published by NYU’s Grey Art Gallery celebrating the Anonymous Was a Woman award. Her work challenges ideas surrounding accessibility and labor in the art world, and you can find her around New York enjoying the delicious sounds of live jazz.

Hannah J. Warren (she/her) grew up in Upstate NY but currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, obtaining a Master's degree in Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement from NYU. Hannah received her BA in English with an emphasis in writing, and a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Hartwick College in 2020. Recently Hannah has had poetry published in The Bookend Review, and has helped edit the poetry in her programs magazine Caustic Frolic. Beyond her joy for writing, Hannah enjoys spending her time traveling, reading, buying books, and trying to keep her plants alive. Hjw2170@nyu.edu. *This podcast, Past The Door, was recorded by Grace Oller and Hannah Warren, and edited by Hannah Warren.

Ann Lepore and Jeanne Brasile discuss interdisciplinary engagement in the studio art classroom with an emphasis on student-centered activities in an inclusive environment. What lessons were learned by the professor and her students in this period of pandemic? What roles do community, conversation and social justice contribute to a visual arts curriculum and what is that relationship in the inverse?

Ann LePore was raised in the garage under her father’s car. The works she creates are heavily influenced by her experiences as a champion of science, civil society and as a seeker of secret landscapes. Her processes include projection mapping, animation, printmaking, installation, and data visualization. LePore has exhibited with e-Flux and Serpentine Gallery, London, and also shown her work in New York, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow and Art Basel Switzerland. Much of her research has been completed during artist residencies including at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and aboard the Research Vessel Sea Wolf. Ann received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts. She is currently Associate Professor of 3D Design and Animation at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Jeanne Brasile is the Director of the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University. She earned her M.A. in Museum Studies at Seton Hall University and studied art history and studio art as an undergraduate at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Her background in non-profit administration spans over 20 years and she serves on numerous boards and committees within the arts community. Brasile specializes in curating and is primarily interested in developing interdisciplinary exhibitions that challenge visitors to re-think their perceptions about art, art-making and the role of the museum/gallery. Brasile often speaks and writes on issues in contemporary art and art practices.

In this conversation Steve Rossi speaks with Michael Asbill and Amanda Heidel, about Amanda’s Mushroom Shed MFA thesis project, which explored the mushroom lifecycle as a model for community engagement through developing connections between the State University of New York at New Paltz Sculpture Program, the Biology Department, and the surrounding community. Themes relating to interdisciplinary collaborations, faculty mentorship, and individual vs. collaborative authorship are all explored.

Steve Rossi is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he has been developing interdisciplinary studio art pedagogy connected to the varied fields of environmental ethics and occupational therapy. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000 and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2006. His work has been exhibited at Dorsky Curatorial Projects, Eco Art Space, NURTUREart, the Open Engagement Conference at the Queens Museum, Bronx Art Space, the Wassaic Project, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Vermont Studio Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Gallery Aferro in Newark, New Jersey. As a part-time faculty member, he has taught in the First Year Program at Parsons School of Design and the Sculpture Program and Art Education Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Michael Asbill weaves arts advocacy, community engagement, environmentalism, and curatorial endeavor into his installation and public art practice. His work has been experienced in venues such as Sporobole and Galerie Zybaldone (Sherbrooke, QC), Flux Factory (Long Island City, NY), The Oregon City Elevator, and the Poughkeepsie Train Station. As a core collaborator with Habitat for Artists, Michael contributed to eco and social engagement projects for Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Arts Brookfield (New York, NY), Washington DC’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Corcoran Museum (Washington, DC), and 601 Tully (Syracuse, NY). He has received numerous grants, awards, commissions, and honors including the New York State/Province of Quebec Artist in Residence Exchange Grant, inclusion in the “Introducing” series at the Roger Smith Hotel, and was honored, at the 2018 Arts Mid-Hudson/Ulster County Executive Arts Awards, with the title of “Artivist” which was invented to acknowledge his community contributions. Michael is the founder and director of CHRCH Project Space (Rosendale, NY), a residency for the development of pioneering, community-based, participatory artworks. Michael is a visiting lecturer, and currently head of the sculpture program, at the State University of New York in New Paltz.

Amanda Heidel is an artist and educator living in Ithaca, NY. Her research in life cycles, collaborative structures, and community engagement led to the creation of Mushroom Shed, a community project that looks to the mushroom lifecycle as a model for community engagement. In addition, Amanda teaches outdoor mushroom cultivation and facilitates the Community Mushroom Educator program through Cornell Small Farms Program. She is also the Grants Manager for Choice Words Ithaca, a grant writing and fundraising firm that helps businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, and municipalities identify and acquire grant funding.

This is a rebroadcast of an episode of This Thing We Call Art, a podcast where the host Kelly Lloyd speaks to people in the arts about their livelihoods. Lloyd originally interviewed artist Gordon Hall on March 1, 2021 and the 43-minute episode featuring portions of the three-hour-long conversation was released on February 17, 2022. The podcast features a conversation about Hall and Lloyd’s experiences in art education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, how art institutions handle interdisciplinarity, and the ethical responsibility of art school educators. Hall, currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Vassar College, has included an addition to this rebroadcast to highlight how in the Spring of 2022, the contingent faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago formed a union, Art Institute of Chicago Workers United, (AICWU) which is now certified with the National Labor Relations Board. The union is currently preparing to negotiate their first contract. You can follow their efforts and support them at aicwu.org and on social media at AIC_WU on Instagram, AICWUTweets on Twitter, and AIC Workers on Facebook.

Kelly Lloyd is a transdisciplinary artist who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production and prioritizes public-facing collaborative research. Lloyd has recently held solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy Schools (London), Crybaby (Berlin), Bill’s Auto (Chicago), Demo Room (Aarhus), and Dirty House (London) for which she won the Art Licks Workweek Prize. Lloyd was the Starr Fellow at the Royal Academy Schools during the 2018/19 school year and is currently studying at The University of Oxford's Ruskin School of Art and Wadham College for her DPhil in Practice-Led Fine Art with support from an All Souls-AHRC Graduate Scholarship and an Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Programme Studentship. In 2021, Lloyd launched This Thing We Call Art, a podcast and online archive featuring excerpts from 50+ interviews with people in the arts she has conducted since 2017.

Gordon Hall is an artist based in New York who makes sculptures and performances. Hall has had solo presentations at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, The Renaissance Society, EMPAC, and Temple Contemporary, and has been in group exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Hessel Museum, Art in General, White Columns, Socrates Sculpture Park, among many other venues. Hall’s writing and interviews have been published widely, including in Art Journal, Artforum, Art in America, and Bomb, as well as in Walker Art Center's Artist Op-Ed Series, What About Power? Inquiries Into Contemporary Sculpture (published by SculptureCenter), and Documents of Contemporary Art: Queer (published by Whitechapel and MIT Press.) A volume of Hall’s collected essays, interviews, and performance scripts was published by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in 2019. Hall is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Vassar College.

This is a rebroadcast of an episode of This Thing We Call Art, a podcast where the host Kelly Lloyd speaks to people in the arts about their livelihoods. Lloyd originally interviewed artist Nicole Morris on February 25, 2021 and the 44-minute episode featuring portions of the two and a half-hour-long conversation was released on February 24, 2022. The podcast features a conversation that includes discussion of navigating being a solo artist and an art educator, the limitations of the formats of the solo show and the retrospective, motherhood, reproductive labor and care labor, and incidental interruptions in the creative process.

Kelly Lloyd is a transdisciplinary artist who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production and prioritizes public-facing collaborative research. Lloyd has recently held solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy Schools (London), Crybaby (Berlin), Bill’s Auto (Chicago), Demo Room (Aarhus), and Dirty House (London) for which she won the Art Licks Workweek Prize. Lloyd was the Starr Fellow at the Royal Academy Schools during the 2018/19 school year and is currently studying at The University of Oxford's Ruskin School of Art and Wadham College for her DPhil in Practice-Led Fine Art with support from an All Souls-AHRC Graduate Scholarship and an Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Programme Studentship. In 2021, Lloyd launched This Thing We Call Art, a podcast and online archive featuring excerpts from 50+ interviews with people in the arts she has conducted since 2017.

Nicole Morris is an artist working across gallery, education and community settings both in a solo and collaborative context. Her work uses textiles and film to explore themes of domesticity and labour and how these are performed or re-presented in new contexts. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions and projects at The Foundling Museum, London; Southwark Park Galleries, London; Royal Museums Greenwich, London; The Drawing Room, London; [SPACE], London; Baltic, Gateshead; South London Gallery; Bluecoat, Liverpool; G39, Cardiff; Jerwood, London and The National Gallery, Prague.

How can authors improve their chances for publication in academic journals? In this podcast, editors Cara Jordan and Robin Veder approach the topic with empathy for all who are navigating what can be an unnecessarily mysterious and intimidating process. We share strategies for how to prepare your manuscript for the best possible outcome, including how to select the right venue for your article; what you can do to ensure that journal editors and peer reviewers focus on your ideas; and what to expect in editorial relationships. Among other resources for pre-submission feedback, we discuss offerings from the Flatpage editorial agency and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Toward Equity in Publishing professional development program, which aims to remediate the inequitable conditions that precede and impede publication. Upcoming deadlines are September 15, 2022, and March 15, 2023. To apply, click here: https://americanart.si.edu/research/toward-equity-publishing.

Cara Jordan received her PhD in art history from the Graduate Center, CUNY, and is currently the president and chief editor at Flatpage, an editorial agency and publishing house based in Washington, DC. With a roster of academic editors with PhDs (many in art history) and varying expertise, Flatpage offers manuscript evaluation and editing, as well as job application assistance, book proposal critique, and other forms of writing support for authors of all backgrounds and levels. Cara has seen many sides of the academic journal publishing industry: as an author, a managing editor of a journal, and as a freelance developmental and copy editor.

Robin Veder is the executive editor of American Art, the peer-reviewed journal co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and University of Chicago Press, and founder of the journal’s Toward Equity in Publishing program. Before joining the journal in 2017, Veder was a tenured associate professor of humanities, art history, and visual culture at Penn State Harrisburg. She is a cultural historian whose publications include a study of kinaesthetic modernism in early twentieth-century US art—The Living Line: Modern Art and the Economy of Energy (2015)—and various articles on visual culture, landscape, pastoralized labor, and history of the body. She earned her BA (1991) in interdisciplinary art from San Francisco State University and her MA (1995) and PhD (2000) in American studies from the College of William and Mary.