CAA Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Design for Healing: Considering Form, Light, and Space from a Healthcare Perspective Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

In this conversation Steve Rossi, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University, and Lyn Godley, Full Professor of Industrial Design at Thomas Jefferson University discuss their work developing studio art and design pedagogy informed by a healthcare context. Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Lyn Godley is a Full Professor of Industrial Design at Thomas Jefferson University, where she has developed a cross-disciplinary curricula in Lighting Design with a focus on light as experience. She is also the Director of the Jefferson Center of Immersive Arts for Health, an initiative to investigate the impact of dynamic light and interactive art on health. She has spoken at national and international conferences on these topics along with lighting design education. In addition to her academic work, she also is a multi-media artist. Her designs, done individually and as a partner of Godley-Schwan have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous international museums and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2000, her studio work has focused on merging light and art and the relationship between art, technology, and its impact on the viewer. Her studio practice is linked to her research through integrating dynamic light in artwork that can create a deeper engagement by affecting both the environment and, ultimately, the user.

The Museum Worker // Lisa Abia-Smith // Erica Hubbard // Nenette Luarca-Shoaf // Erica Warren Jan 22, 2024

Show notes

The Museum Worker is a subseries of CAA Conversations about pathways to careers in museums, featuring candid conversations with professionals in the field. Museum workers share how they got where they are today, what they do, and the role of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in day-to-day work, as well as hopes for the future of the field. In this episode, Lisa Abia-Smith, Erica Hubbard, and Nenette Luarca-Shoaf discuss challenges facing those working in museum education, engagement, and outreach, as well as their dedication to making museums more accessible. Lisa Abia-Smith is the Director of Education at the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Senior Instructor in the College of Design (School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management). Erica Hubbard is the Director of Chicago Programs at the Obama Foundation in Chicago. Nenette Luarca-Shoaf is the Managing Director for Learning and Engagement at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Erica Warren is a member of CAA’s Museum Committee, former curator and currently assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

Learning from Pedagogical Art // Noni Brynjolson // Izabel Galliera // Jessica Santone Jan 08, 2024

Show notes

In this roundtable dialogue, three art historians discuss pedagogical approaches in socially engaged art practices as they apply to the teaching of art history, paying critical attention to the ways these strategies intervene on and challenge neoliberal educational norms. How have contemporary artists working in various social and political contexts transformed public and alternative spaces into discursive platforms through which knowledge can be generated, shared, or amplified collectively? And what can we learn about teaching art and art history in the North American system by studying these artists’ approaches? This conversation emerged from a panel at CAA 111th Annual Conference, “Generative Pedagogies in Art and Curatorial Practice.” The project will culminate with the publication of Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices, edited by Noni Brynjolson and Izabel Galliera, forthcoming from Routledge in early 2025. Noni Brynjolson is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Indianapolis, where she has taught since 2020 after receiving her PhD in Art History from the University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on collaborative public art projects and examines themes of repair and construction in contemporary art. Izabel Galliera is an Associate Professor of Art History at Susquehanna University, where she is also an Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and co-coordinator of the minor in museum studies. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is at the intersection of contemporary art, activism, and social justice. Jessica Santone is an Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at Cal State East Bay, where she has taught since 2015. She received her PhD from McGill University. Her research concerns pedagogical art and social practice, particularly projects that expand knowledge around climate and science.

Part II: How innovative approaches to assessment help to decolonize the arts classroom Dec 22, 2023

Show notes

Starting from a shared need to decolonize their curricula, ceramic educators Anne Drew Potter, Brendan Tang and Tasha Lewis discuss essential changes to the classroom which can help mitigate systemic concerns. They describe how acknowledging personal and historical bias can help jumpstart an ongoing conversation with students, centering student contributions to the class discourse and increasing student investment. Lewis also shares her experience employing rubric-based self-assessment in order to further these aims. Anne Drew Potter has coalesced a fascination with, adoration of, and abhorrence for the human condition into a unique sculptural language. Raised in Berkeley, California, potter has lived throughout the US and in Mexico, Germany, and Canada. She earned MFA degrees from the New York Academy of Art and Indiana University. Brendan Lee Satish Tang is a visual artist who is widely known for his ceramic work. He earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, both nationally and internationally. Tasha Lewis is a sculptor of many materials. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her academic study has consistently woven literature, theory and art history with her materially expansive visual art practice.

Part I: How innovative approaches to assessment help to decolonize the arts classroom Dec 22, 2023

Show notes

Teaching Studio Art to Non-Majors // Susan Altman // Erika Mahr // Steve Rossi Dec 20, 2023

Show notes

Susan Altman, Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College, Erika Mahr an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College, and Steve Rossi an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University discuss their shared experiences related to the many benefits and challenges of teaching studio art to non-majors. Susan Altman is a Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College where she teaches courses in drawing, painting and printmaking to both majors and non-majors. In addition to her studio teaching, she is the Director of The Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching and where her research interest is in the pedagogy of teaching studio art, as well as improving teaching across the disciplines. As a practicing artist, her work is focused on drawing and printmaking. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a NYFA Artist Fellowship. She lives and works in New York City. Erika Mahr is an artist and educator based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College and is currently serving as the Department Chair for the Art + Design and Performing Arts Department. Her studio practice explores drawing with an expanded sensibility and is invested in the act of mediation, reducing, and repeating to locate where the ephemeral and concrete intersect, become blurred, and create tension. She earned a BFA from the University of Florida and MFA from Hunter College and is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Drawing. Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Professional Practices Pedagogy // Steve Rossi // Lauren Whearty // Emma Wilcox Dec 18, 2023

Show notes

In this conversation, Steve Rossi, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph's University, speaks with Lauren Whearty a co-director of Ortega y Gasset Projects and Emma Wilcox a co-director of Gallery Aferro. As non-profit gallery co-directors and artists with dedicated creative practices themselves, they each have a unique vantage point on the topic of studio art professional practices curriculum. In the first half of the conversation the history and founding of each art space is discussed, along with Emma and Lauren’s organizational roles, followed by a discussion of the nuts and bolts of general professional practices skill sets, a discussion of how failure can be framed as a creative act, as well as various employment opportunities explored along with advice offered to students preparing to enter the visual arts field.

Racism Untaught // Lisa Elzey Mercer // Terresa Moses // Cheryl Miller Nov 29, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of CAA Conversations, the authors of Racism Untaught: Revealing and Unlearning Racialized Design–and hosts of the book’s companion podcast—Lisa Elzey Mercer and Terresa Moses, speak with renowned designer Dr. Cheryl D. Miller. Antiracist design interventions can be difficult. Well-intentioned conversations can fuel tensions, activate racialized trauma, and lead to misunderstandings, especially in spaces not typically focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even when progress is made, white supremacist culture can resurface. Antiracist guidelines and approaches that lay bare racialized systems of oppression and fundamentally disrupt their replication are critical. This episode of CAA Conversations makes space for a frank discussion around design equity. In addition to being an advocate for Black graphic designers, Cheryl D. Miller is also a theologian and author. She is a Cooper Hewitt National Design Awardee and AIGA Medalist and has been inducted into the One Club Hall of Fame. Lisa Elzey Mercer (she/her) is a designer, educator, and researcher, and Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Design for Responsible Innovation at the University of Illinois. Terresa Moses (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, and the Director of Design Justice at the University of Minnesota, and a PhD candidate in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto.

Teaching Color Theory // Lauren Whearty // Eric Hibit Oct 31, 2023

Show notes

Lauren Whearty and Eric Hibit are artists, curators, and educators, who both think deeply about the importance of color as a subject in art, society, and in how they teach painting and design courses. Color is a vital component in foundational artistic studies, it also plays an important role in culture, technology, history, science, and more. In this episode Lauren & Eric will discuss the ways they use and think about color in their studios, Eric’s “Color Theory for Dummies” book, book recommendations, and how they each approach color in the classroom. Lauren Whearty is an artist, educator, and curator living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She received her MFA from Ohio State University, and her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She has been a Co-Director at Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and non-profit in Brooklyn, NY since 2017. Lauren has attended residencies such as Yale’s Summer School of Art through the Ellen BattelStoeckel Fellowship, The Vermont Studio Center, Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat, and the Golden Foundation Artist Residency. She has recently received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and Joseph Roberts Foundation. Lauren also received the President’s Creative Research and Innovation Grant from University of the Arts, to develop work for her first solo exhibit which was recently at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia. Lauren currently teaches 2D Design, Color, Painting & Drawing courses at University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia. Eric Hibit (born Rochester, NY) is a visual artist based in New York City. He attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design (BFA,1998) and Yale University School of Art (MFA, 2003). In New York, he has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Dinner Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, My Pet Ram, One River School of Art + Design, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Underdonk Gallery, Anna Kustera Gallery, Max Protetch Gallery, and elsewhere. He has exhibited nationally at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, VT, Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Wege Center for the Arts at Maharishi University in Fairfield, IA, Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA, The University of Vermont, Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, CA and internationally in Sweden, France and Norway. His work has been covered by the Washington Post, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic, Newsweek, New York Times and New York Post. Hibit has taught studio art at Drexel University, The Cooper Union, Suffolk County Community College, 92NY, Tyler School of Art, NYU and Hunter College. Artist residencies include Terra Foundation in Giverny, France (2003), and Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts (2019) and Green Olives Arts in Tetouan, Morocco (2019). Publications include Dear Hollywood Writers, with poet Geoffrey Young (Suzy Solidor Editions, 2017) and Paintings and Fables with Wayne Koestenbaum, a limited edition artist’s book (2017), and Color Theory for Dummies, published by Wiley (2022).  He is currently Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery based in Brooklyn, where he has curated exhibitions since 2014.

Asset Framing: Engaging Students in the Art History Classroom Aug 02, 2023

Show notes

In this podcast, Christina (Chris) Penn-Goetsch and Celia Stahr discuss how Trabian Shorters’s “asset framing” could be used as a model in the college art history classroom, providing numerous examples throughout their conversation. Asset framing is a narrative model that defines people by their gifts and assets instead of the challenges they may face. Shorters’s model for pedagogy may prove useful for the art history classroom, a space where we create narratives on a regular basis that probably affect our students more than the facts and research that we share. Shorters’s observations, based on the work of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, argues that we internalize what we see as part of a narrative before we even employ the conscious mind. This suggests an even more imperative role for how we study the visual arts. Celia Stahr, who received a BA and MA from San Francisco State University and a PhD from the University of Iowa, has been teaching art history at the University of San Francisco for 18 years. As an adjunct who was named one of the top professors in Fifteen Noteworthy Art Professors in San Francisco, Celia specializes in modern, contemporary, African, and transnational or “traveling” artists with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Stahr is particularly interested in artists who cross cultural boundaries and the importance of place. Her book Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist was published in 2020 by St. Martin’s Press and has received many positive reviews in publications such as the New York Times, Art in America, and Publisher’s Weekly. Stahr is also interviewed in the forthcoming BBC three-part docuseries on the life and art of Frida Kahlo. Christina (Chris) Penn-Goetsch (They/She) finished their BA at the University of Virginia and a PhD at the University of Iowa. This professor has taught at Cornell College for 26 years now and was the recipient of Cornell’s Exemplary Teacher of the Year in 2018. They have had an active career in college service that includes serving as the chair of the college’s Diversity Committee and acting as advisor for Alliance and Gender Safe Space. Their main areas of research focus on early modern Italy and contemporary feminist art. Penn-Goetsch has taught for the Smithsonian Journeys program in Southern Italy and continues to offer college classes about architecture and imperialism in Rome, Italy. Their interest in asset framing stems from teaching classes in African, African American, Native American, Chicana, and Feminist art, as well as a new course last year, “Queer Eye for Art History.”

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