Prospective and current students often have questions about building a career in the arts and the choices they should make as undergraduates:
Should I apply for internships?
Is a Minor important?
How do I find that first job in the arts?
How do I format a resumé?
To help answer these questions, the Art History faculty have put together a new guide to entry level art history. It provides insights and guidance specific to UConn Art History students about resources both on- and off-campus.
Senior Julianne Norton, who is minoring in Studio Art, has received a prestigious Mitchell Scholarship to study in Ireland and work on a graphic novel next year. The George J. Mitchell Scholarship is awarded to applicants with unusual depth in their academic interests and exceptional records of focused contributions to society – those identified as having the potential to become national leaders.
At UConn, Norton is completing an individualized major in international relations with a concentration in cross-cultural relations and a minor in studio art. In Ireland, she plans to earn a graduate degree in creative writing as she continues work on a graphic novel that includes a cross-cultural comparison with postmemory of the Holocaust and the Irish Famine.
Early on Norton cultivated her interests in the analysis of artwork. As a freshman in the honors program, she received funding as a Holster Scholar for a project that examined postmemory in five generations of her family’s artwork and included original paintings. Building upon this work, last year she presented at the U21 International Research Conference in Amsterdam and has since received a UConn IDEA Grant and a SURF Grant to fund work on her graphic novel.
Norton also earned a SHARE Grant in 2013 to work with Kathryn Myers in the Department of Art and Art History, researching Jewish Indian art and culture. She spent time in Israel during her Holster project and later studied abroad in the Czech Republic. On campus, she is active as a UCAELI Volunteer, HIPS Volunteer and event coordinator for the International Relations Association.
Professors Deborah Dancy, Ray DiCapua and John O’Donnell led a group of 35 freshmen students from the Foundations class on a fantastic day trip to New York City’s Chelsea gallery district. They visited an amazing slew of exhibitions, including Louise Bourgeouis, Neo Rauch, Judy Pfaff, Arturo Herrera and many more. Along the way, they made time for a short stop in at Printed Matter, a walk on the High Line, and a lunch break. The art was challenging and inspiring, and a fabulous group of students totally rocked it!
Higher education has embraced rigorous education abroad programs to encourage students to think like global citizens. The Institute of International Education notes that international experience is one of the most important components of a 21st century education.
Globalization is changing the way the world works, and employers are increasingly looking for workers who have international skills and experience. Alum Shane Milano (BFA Studio Art: Communication Design ’12), a designer at national ad agency Hill Holiday, notes that during job interviews prospective employers asked many questions both about his internships and also about his study abroad experiences. Art history students aiming to build careers in museums and non-profits need global experience to complement their studies.
Our Study Abroad programs are faculty-led and provide classroom and experiential learning opportunities that are directly integrated with our curriculum. The semester-long program in Florence, Italy, focuses on observational drawing, painting, and photography, and uses the city and its art traditions for inspiration. The semester-long program at Central St. Martins, London, takes students to a leading European art school to study design, typography, and book arts alongside their English counterparts. Art History students often participate in UConn’s Florence and Paris programs, both of which offer specialized art history courses. Learn more by visiting UConn Education Abroad.
Our new Stop-Motion Labs in Bishop Center are open and Professor Alison Paul is teaching her first classes there. The students will experiment with a range of materials and methods in creating their stop-motion animations. The shooting stations in the lab are state-of-the-art and were built for maximum installation flexibility and image quality. Graduate students in the class have a separate lab. Demand for the course is high, with students from Puppetry and Digital Media joining our Art & Art History students.
Alum Chris Cater (Illustration) published his first New Yorker magazine cartoon on August 1, 2014. Chris’s hard work and creativity has landed him a spot in the magazine noted for a being a venerable showcase of the smartest cartoonists publishing today.
The Culture Trip, an influential website, has named the Department’s Contemporary Art Galleries as one of the Top Ten places to view Contemporary Art in Connecticut. The article notes that CAG focuses on “forefronting the biggest trends in contemporary art and exploring interdisciplinary crossover. Architecture, design, photography, performance, music, film, video and fine art all rub shoulders within and on its walls, and series of artists talks and art criticism also provide debate and discussion.” CAG is in good company on this list, which also cites the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and Real Art Ways.
BFA student Cat Boyce worked with four of her fellow students to document their recent exhibition “As Is” (March 2014) at Art Space Windham. A Photography concentrator, Cat filmed a group interview as well as an in-depth artist profile with Antonio Campelli (BFA 2015).
Our BFA students won several major awards at the Connecticut Art Directors Club Awards Night. Recent graduate Mikey Karpiel earned the Judge’s Choice Award and a Gold Award for “Dog Days,” and a Silver Award for “New Appliance.” Juror Aaron Goodman said, “The combination of style and substance made it one of my favorites in the show.” Current students Fei Fei Luo and Haley Taylor also accepted scholarship awards for Illustration and Graphic design, respectively.
The Connecticut Art Directors Club is the leading independent professional organization serving the Connecticut creative community.
Congratulations, UConn artists!
Studio Art major and University Scholar Antonio Campelli has inaugurated our new Visual Arts Installation Space with an exhibition, “Stray Light,” funded by UConn’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fund and IDEA grant fund. The piece is hauntingly beautiful, visually and emotionally compelling. On April 24, over a hundred students, faculty, staff, friends and family came to support Antonio and celebrate our new professional-calibre installation space. Many thanks to Ray DiCapua and Gary Krewson for their dedicated work in creating VAIS over the course of the past year. Check out a video clip of this piece here: QuickTime Movie download
Design Center students Haley Taylor, Gina Croteau and Natalie Sequeira created editions of two broadsides they designed for visiting poet Paul Muldoon’s new poem “Firing Squad.” The works were published under Counterproof Press, a collaborative initiative between the Creative Writing Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Communication Design, Illustration and Printmaking in the UConn Art & Art History Department.
Paul Muldoon has published over thirty collections of poetry and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He is Poetry Editor at The New Yorker. In an event that was very special to us all, Paul Muldoon read “Firing Squad” from the Counterproof Press broadside during his reading for the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program.
Counterproof Press facilitates collaborative studio projects in which students, faculty, and visiting artists/scholars from various disciplines work together to produce limited edition art objects, artifacts, and publications.
Art & Art History students have proved themselves to be high achievers, sweeping some of the University’s most prestigious awards for undergraduate academic achievement and research.
Three Art & Art History students have been awarded University Scholar status, the highest honor for academic achievement, and one which enables students to undertake an independent research project with a team of faculty advisors. To put this achievement in context, only twenty-two awards are given.
Six Art & Art History students received IDEA grants, which enable students to pursue an independent project that i s creative, innovative and entrepreneurial. Only twenty IDEA grants are awarded to the entire student body.
“We’re very proud of the academic and creative success of our students,” said Department Head Anne D’Alleva. “This reflects the faculty’s strong commitment to mentoring our students, and the University’s willingness to embrace and promote achievement in the arts.”
BFA student Hayato Jin Kawai’s illustration, “FUN WITH KIM AND DENNY”, has been officially selected by the Society of Illustrators in New York, for their Student Scholarship Show. In addition, Jin was one of a select few students to receive a scholarship from the Society.
The Society of Illustrators exhibition is truly the top showcase for up-and-coming illustrators, and we are proud to have Jin be a part of it. His work will not only be exhibited in the Museum of American Illustration in New York, but it will also be featured in the Society’s catalog, which is distributed to editors and art directors around the world.
This is the first time the University of Connecticut has had a student selected. The selection process is highly competitive, as the Society only selects about 5% from their pool of entrants for the exhibition. Of those, only a select few receive scholarships.
From the conceptual to the material to the technical, contemporary sculptural practices represent a rich, multifaceted area of investigation for art students.
Utilizing various techniques such as metal fabrication, constructed environments with sound and video projection and labor intensive installations, Ashley Frato, Antonio Campelli, Andrew Janevey and Katrina Orsini are four young artists and students who are consciously embracing the formal, historical, technical, political and personal features of this practice in ways that deserve our attention.
AS IS is an exhibition that reflects both the depth and span of some of the artwork being created in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut.
We hope you can join us the opening at ArtSpace Windham, on March 27 at 7:30 PM.
Counterproof Press is an exciting new collaboration between the Creative Writing Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and programs in Printmaking, Communication Design and Illustration, as well as the Design Center Studio, in the Department of Art + Art History at the School of Fine Arts.
Counterproof Press will facilitate collaborative studio projects whereby students, faculty, and visiting artists/scholars from various disciplines collaborate to produce limited edition art objects, artifacts, and publications.
We will develop a collection of yearly projects, events, and collaborations that will be documented and published by Counterproof Press.
Counterproof Press also plans to initiate internships, courses, donor subscription programs, membership programs, fundraising events, and operate on a regional, national, and international level by leveraging internal and external funding support.
This initiative will have high visibility via its online presence with a dedicated identity, website and associated exhibition, print, social media marketing, PR and promotion.
FACULTY MEMBERS
For upcoming projects in 2014 and 2015
Penelope Pelizzon: Creative Writing Program, English Department
Mary Banas: Communication Design, Art + Art History Department
Cora Lynn Deibler: Illustration, Art + Art History Department
Alison Paul: Illustration, Art + Art History Department
Laurie Sloan: Printmaking, Art + Art History Department
Edvin Yegir: Communication Design & Design Center, Art + Art History Department
Mark Zurolo: Communication Design, Art + Art History Department
VISITING / CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS for 2014
Paul Muldoon: The 51st Wallace Stevens Poet, English Department
Sharon Butler: Visiting Artist in Residence; Art+Art History Department
UPCOMING INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS / PUBLICATIONS in 2014
PROJECT 01
PAUL MULDOON / WALLACE STEVENS POEM PROJECT
Widely considered to be the greatest English-language poet of his generation, Paul Muldoon was born in Ireland in 1951. He has published over a dozen collections and has been honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He will visit UConn on April 10 as the 51st Wallace Stevens Poetry Program guest. His visit is sponsored by The Hartford, the UConn Humanities Institute, and the English Department Speaker’s Fund in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Mr. Muldoon will generously allow students to print one of his new poems as a limited-edition letterpress booklet created by Design Center and hand-printed by student artists in the Printmaking studio. This will be the inauguration of what we plan as an annual project to coincide with each year’s visiting Wallace Stevens Poet.
PROJECT 02
HAPPENSTANCE CHARRETTE
Happenstance involves a collaboration/encounter between a group of student poets, artists, and designers. Happenstance is an improvisational and experimental creative charrette to be held at the Printmaking facilities in Bishop to facilitate dialogue between poets and visual artists; this encounter will result in a collaborative product in the form of a limited edition publications and an exhibition.
PROJECT 03
SHARON BUTLER PRINT SERIES
Sharon L. Butler, an artist and writer, maintains an award-winning art blog, Two Coats of Paint, blogs for The Huffington Post. Her art work is included in private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore, Tampa, Philadelphia, Providence, Berlin, London and Kyoto.
Sharon Butler will be in residence throughout this semester to create a series of prints. Students will benefit by learning to professionally edition the works and by observing Sharon’s art and process.
The Florence 2013 Study Abroad Exhibition will be on display in the Arena Gallery of the Art Building, from February 10-14, 2014.
An exhibition reception will be held on Wednesday, February 12, from 5:30-6:30 p.m., in the Arena Gallery.
For additional information, please contact Professor Deborah Dancy at deborah.dancy@uconn.edu or (860) 486-3371.
SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fund) Awards provide students with up to $4,000 to undertake summer research or creative projects under the supervision of UConn faculty members. The application deadline is February 3, 2014. More information about SURF can be found at http://ugradresearch.uconn.edu/surf/. The Office of Undergraduate Research is holding an information session on Thursday, January 23 from 12:30-1:30 pm in Laurel Hall 305 and students are also welcome to email the Office of Undergraduate Research at our@uconn.edu.
If you are interested in studying abroad in Copenhagen during Summer 2014, applications (including references) are due on February 1.
ARTH 3993 Copenhagen Architecture and Cityscape is a 3-credit course that runs from May 25 to June 14. The course is open to all upper-level students with an interest in art, architecture, urban and open-space planning, and architecture –from the Middle Ages up to and including exciting, new projects currently underway to make Copenhagen a terrific place to live.
This is the fourth time Professor Givens has offered the class, and it attracts an interesting mix of students from different fields. It’s an enjoyable way to meet a major requirement and to introduce yourself to travel abroad.
Copenhagen’s many museums are outstanding, and the local art scene in nearby Malmo Sweden has proved appealing for Art and Art History majors, too.
Please contact Professor Jean Givens (jean.givens@uconn.edu) with questions. And apply ASAP if you are interested in the course, since space is limited.
Communication Design students will spend the Spring Semester 2014 in London studying at Central St. Martins under the guidance of Art & Art History Professor Mark Zurolo. The students are writing a blog, full of great stories and images, to document their experience: http://ucdesignuk.tumblr.com.
The Central Saint Martins BA (Honours) in Graphic Design is structured around small group tutorials, workshops and critiques and emphasizes solving visual communication problems through experimentation beyond the commercially driven constraints of contemporary design practice. UConn students will be distributed across tutorial groups and engage with project briefs and other required and extra-curricular activities as faciliated by CSM BAGD faculty alongside regular CSM degree students. UConn students will concurrently enroll in Communication Design 3 and Design Survey that will be taught on-site by UConn Associate Professor of Design, Mark Zurolo.
Students will live in the Central Saint Martins student housing where they will share kitchen and living facilities with a range of other UK students. By living in the center of London, students will have the opportunity to visit studios, museums, and historical sites, and attend a wide variety of cultural events. The goal of the program is to produce designers with a global perspective who are prepared to develop their interests cultivated upon this trip into their professional and academic lives. Each student will return with an understanding of the international design community, a network of designers whom they can contact in the future, and a skill set honed at the premier art school in the UK.