Tyler Alum Takes On Two Year Sculpting Project

Photo Credit: Myers Creative Images.

Tyler alum Albert Paley (BFA ’66, MFA ’69) has prepared 13 sculptures that will be displayed at New York City’s Park Avenue.

As an undergrad, Paley studied sculpture and then went on to do his Master’s work in the metal department. After graduating, he taught in the university system for 25 years and is now a well-known metal sculptor based in Rochester.

Paley was invited to do this project by the Fund for Park Avenue Sculpture Committee almost 2 1/2 years ago. Since then, PBS from New York City has been filming a one hour documentary on the Paley on Park Avenue project which will be broadcast this fall.

“You could either apply or be invited,” Paley said. “I was invited because of the work I do with public sculpture. ”

Paley’s 15 person staff have working on massive sculptures for the show. Several of them are more than 20 feet high and one is 50 feet long.

“Public sculpture, especially large scale sculpture, creates a dialogue between architecture and public display,” Paley said. “Most of the work that I do is large scale.”

The sculptures, installed June 14, will stay up through November 8 between 52nd street and 67th street.

After being a practicing artist for 40 years, Paley no longer worries about how his work will be seen by the audience.

“All the artist can do is deal with the integrity of his or her vision,” Paley said. “People will respond with whatever their own background is.”

Coming up, Paley will be featured in many exhibitions. In September, the Gerald Peters Gallery in New York will be showing Paley’s conceptual drawings and will then publish a major book about the work. Then, in 2014, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. will be hosting a 50 year retrospective of Paley’s work.

To learn more about Albert Paley and his work, visit http://www.albertpaley.com

Temple Contemporary Receives Pew Grant

Temple Contemporary has received a Pew Grant for $160,000. For Director of Exhibitions & Public Programs, Robert Blackson, this is a very important step for Temple Contemporary.

“This is the first time Tyler School of Art has received an implementation grant from Pew…and such a large amount of support will build our competitive capacity to apply for other large grants in the future,” Blackson said.

To apply for the grant, Temple Contemporary had to go through a very thorough and lengthy process.

“It begins in October by submitting a Letter of Intent. The purpose of this letter is to describe the project and how much money the project is likely to cost. This letter is peer-reviewed by a panel of experts and based on this decision you may be asked in December to submit a full application. If you are asked to submit a full application it is due in February,” Blackson said. “Thankfully, Temple Contemporary was asked to submit a full application and by the time we were done it was over 300 pages long.”

This grant will help support Temple Contemporary’s mission and allow for more collaboration with the community.

“Temple Contemporary’s mission is to creatively re-imagine the social function of art through questions of local relevance and international significance. With Pew’s support we can apply our mission in collaboration with a range of publics, artists, and scholars that would have previously been out of our reach due to funding limitations,” Blackson said.

The project, “A Funeral for a Home,” is one of the projects that will benefit from Pew’s support. It will arrange a funeral for a row home that is about to be pulled down in North Philadelphia.

“This project has obvious resonance with our local community, but thanks to Pew’s support we can also draw connections to the housing market collapse, the depopulation of post-industrial cities like Philadelphia, and artists from around the country who are building creative solutions for urban revitalization,” Blackson said.

Tyler Students win Carpet Design Competition

Tia Bianchini and Caleigh Stednitz, Grand Prize Winning Design, Fauna Category

Fibers and Material Studies area students Tia Bianchini and Caleigh Stednitz were announced as the grand winners in the Fauna category and will have their design woven by the Langhorne Carpet Company. Kate Corcoran and Ashley Rodriguez Reed were announced as second place winners in the Flora category and received a cash prize.

The winning patterns, which will kick off Langhorne’s Conservation Collection, was revealed to the public last night and will ultimately be woven by the legendary Bucks County mill and sold to customers around the world. Winning teams receive cash prizes and non-profit organizations, including the Philadelphia Zoo and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, will share in all sales proceeds for the benefit of conservation education.

Twenty teams of students representing six area colleges and art institutes submitted original designs as part of the rigorous competition that began eight months ago. Their research included site visits to the legendary carpet mill in Penndel, as well as special tours of the Zoo and Philadelphia Flower Show. Among the competition’s numerous creative and technical criteria, the teams were required to submit at least one pattern evocative of the fragile plant kingdom and another representing the world of threatened wildlife. In addition, they needed to demonstrate that their proposed carpet designs could be woven on the mill’s Jacquard Wilton looms – the gold standard of global carpet making dating back to 18th century England using hand-cut punch cards to “program” the looms. The panel of judges will also take into consideration the market appeal of the designs and input from representatives of the Zoo and Horticultural Society.

Bill Morrow, Langhorne’s President and a member of its founding family, has personally provided the nearly 50 student designers an in depth behind-the-scenes mill tour. “Every student has been intensely interested in our dedication to the time honored methods of Jacquard Wilton weaving and use of the finest wool. As one of the remaining mills of its kind in the U.S., we are as excited as the students and honored to sponsor this competition, “ said Morrow. “Every team will have a great addition to their portfolio upon graduation as a result of the competition and the winners will forever be able to boast they have their own line.”

Judges included Philadelphia decorator Bennett Weinstock, an Architectural Digest Top 100 member; New York-based designer Alex Papachristidis, Elle Décor “A List“ member, and Hilary Jay, Executive Director, DesignPhiladelphia.

Design teams represent: Philadelphia University, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Drexel University, Arcadia University, University of the Arts, and Art Institute of Philadelphia.

More about Langhorne Carpets is can be found at:
http://langhornecarpets.wordpress.com/
http://www.langhornecarpets.com/

Amber Cowan on the Cover of Glass Line Magazine!

Glass Professor Sharyn O’Mara writes:  Amber Cowan, MFA Glass 2011 and adjunct faculty in Glass, has been awarded the prestigious international Stephen Proctor Fellowship in Canberra, Australia.

She is also on the cover of the new Glass Line magazine, and featured in an article in the publication.

And, she is one of only eight invitational finalists for a prestigious invitational residency at the Toldeo Art Museum to commemorate one of the most significant historic events in the American Glass Movement.

We are all thrilled for Amber and to share this news.

Exciting News About Tyler Alumnus Dean Daderko

In light of his exciting new position, Daderko spoke to Robert Blackson, Director of Tyler’s Exhibition and Public Programs Department, about his curatorial philosophy. In conversation Daderko explained that it is complicated for him to “articulate the difference between [his] creative career and personal ethics” as he views the two as deeply interrelated. But, it is because of this meaningful relationship that he has gone into curatorial work. Such work, Daderko says, can be viewed as, “a way to ask questions in an intentionally public forum. It’s not about providing better answers, but about asking better questions.”

Since earning his BFA in Sculpture, Daderko has worked within the art  world in a variety of roles, and is perhaps best known for his curatorial work. In addition to Parlour Projects, his five year transformation of a spare room in his Williamsburg apartment into one of the most adventurous curatorial projects in New York, he has curated exhibits nationally and internationally for Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and in Argentina, Canada, and Lithuania. He is also credited with being one of the first curators to work with artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, the 2011 United States delegates at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, he has joined the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston as Curator (www.camh.org). His first show at CAMH is scheduled to open in May of 2012 and will address the presence of the readymade in contemporary artistic practice, and will attempt to recuperate some of the radicality of Duchamp’s initial gesture by showing work by artists who use the readymade’s simple materiality and economy of means to address a diversity of social, political, aesthetic and temporal issues.

Daniel Roman, MFA Candidate in Painting, In Frieze Magazine

Bernardo da Bicci, 'Let This be a Space of Light, Beauty and Truth’
installation view (2011) (From Frieze Magazine)

Daniel Roman is an MFA candidate at Tyler in painting.  His alter ego, Bernardo da Bicci, had a solo show in Rome this past summer, which was recently reviewed by Mike Watson in Frieze Magazine, a prestigious international art journal.  You can read the full review here, but here’s a taste:

Da Bicci presents an interesting constellation between art, politics and mysticism, a feat which can only be all-consuming for the artist himself. Indeed, one cannot be sure quite where the artist – who was born in Chicago to Mexican immigrant parents – is heading, such are the diverse ranges of references within his work and his enigmatic nature. Yet the boldness of the installation at extraspazio heralds the emergence of a talent for whom the resolution of various disparate elements may contribute a social significance which goes far beyond the evident personal psychical development of the artist.

Erica Prince at The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts

Erica Prince, an MFA Candidate in Painting, is participating in a major juried show of MFA Candidates at various regional institutions which explores the role of art education while asking the question: What does it mean to have an MFA?  You can see the Exhibit at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, Delaware from this Friday, October 7 through February 5, 2012.  Admission to the center is free.

From the official description of the exhibit: In contrast to an exhibition that seeks to find the next Art Star, Masters of the Visual Universe explores the constellation of artistic mediums, concepts, and practices rotating around 2011. Drawing upon themes of mastery in art, Masters of the Visual Universe probes the notion of art education, aesthetics and display. Conventionally, Masters of Fine Arts programs train graduate students to gain control of a particular medium such as painting or sculpture, and monumental thesis exhibitions like biennials strive to showcase the “best” examples of art under a particular theme. Such traditions in art have long been critiqued through a postmodern lens, yet these practices still persist in the art world and academia. Masters of the Visual Universe questions whether educational mastery in and of art is still a fact or a science fiction relic in the eyes of many young artists today. The exhibition also queries if an MFA Biennial can adequately reflect an awareness of all of the art being made in MFA programs in this geographic region. The viewer is asked to form his or her own opinion of educational traditions and museological practice today. Masters of the Visual Universe explores how recent graduate students and MFA candidates approach aesthetic traditions in ways that go beyond the creation of precious objects to mine the gallery of ideas as a free and galactic space.

Mollie, a curatorial intern at the DCCA, interviewed Erica about her work, and posted it on the DCCA blog.  Here’s an excerpt from the blog:

Q: tell me a little bit about the ideas behind your work and what you hope to convey to your audience. How would you describe your art to someone who had never seen it?

EP:A lot of the ideas behind my work are focused around the idea of the utopian society. I think it’s important for art to be able to explore utopian ideals because that’s the only place they can exist. The primary piece that I am showing, Permission Granted, has 35 images in a grid installation. It contains imagery of architecture, landscape, invention, monument, celestial bodies, alchemical devices, etc. …..

Q: How has the MFA influenced your development as an artist and as a person?

EP:I’m still in the midst of it so it’s hard to have a completely clear perspective. It’s given me the opportunity to focus on my work without having a billion distractions. It has allowed me to figure out what I’m truly interested in, and I’ve started pursuing these things more intensely. I’ve developed a lot of respect for different types of work that I was never interested in before. When I came to Tyler I thought I knew what I liked and what I didn’t like, what was good and what was bad. But now, I am more curious about the wiggly line between “good” and “bad”. I’ve discovered that what I like and don’t like might be a little less concrete than I thought.

Tyler Student Included in National Juried Exhibition For Emerging Artists With Disabilities

First year graduate student Rea Walsh, who is hard of hearing, has been included in the annual juried show presented by VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, and Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.  Rea earned her BFA in Metal and Jewelry Design at R.I.T, School for American Crafts.  She is currently working towards her MFA in Jewelry/Metals/CAD-CAM at Tyler.

This year’s theme was Momentum, which asks emerging artists to examine the vital creative spark behind their work.  This exhibition features the work of 15 emerging artists with disabilities.  Rea’s sculpture, The Wall, (pictured above, 20.5″ x 7″ x 21″) was created in 2009 of steel, spray paint, water and smoke.

Besides Rea, this year’s honored artists include Dimelza Broche (Florida), Holiday Campanella (Pennsylvania), Will Copps (District of Columbia), Angela Godoy (Maryland), Brian Kellett (Ohio), Krista Kuskye (Indiana), Emily Gail Lyles (South Carolina), Artur Matveichenkov (Puerto Rico), Emily McPeek (California), Caitlin Miller (District of Columbia), Xi Nan (Maryland), Sonya Seitz (Pennsylvania), Jansen Smith (Florida), and Beth Zarden-Benson (Wisconsin).

VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide  arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase  access to the arts for all. With 52 international affiliates and a network  of nationwide affiliates, VSA is changing perceptions about people with  disabilities around the world. Each year, 7 million people of all ages and  abilities participate in VSA programs, which cover all artistic genres. VSA is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Momentum is the 9th exhibition in this series presented by VSA and Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. The partnership supports young artists at a critical time when many are deciding whether to pursue the arts as a career. The award validates and supports that life-defining choice. Presented in coordination with the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian’s Office of Accessibility.

Tyler Alum Joy Holland Receives Fulbright Award

Joy Holland, BFA Sculpture 2006, was recently awarded a Fullbright Program scholarship to Italy in Installation Art, the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced recently. Joy is one of over 1,600 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2011-2012 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

Since its establishment in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program has given approximately 300,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

Joy writes:
As my work in Los Angeles increasingly involved architecture and design, this influenced my research in Italy. I found many instances of vacant or overlooked urban spaces in industrialized Italian cities being converted into domains for public use, becoming open fields of investigation and human interaction. This has inspired me to challenge my own approach to site planning, design development and community involvement in Milan. The city of Milan is home to a wide range of industries, educational institutes and public events incorporating environmentally sustainable design. My studio research will integrate new technologies and fabrication methods aimed at waste reduction, energy conservation and material re-application. This work will culminate in a temporary public art project for Milan Design Week, and will be presented in my public lectures in Milan and Rome, Italy.

Since she graduated from Tyler School of Art, Joy has received an MFA from UCLA in California, and has been working as an installation/architectural sculptor.  Many of her designs have appeared in publications such as Wired magazine.

Congratulations, Joy!

Professor Alan Braddock Receives Smithsonian Fellowship

Tyler Art History Professor Alan C. Braddock was recently named a Senior Fellow in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s 2011-2012 academic fellowship program. The museum’s program grants awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including senior, pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships

During his fellowship Professor Braddock will complete a new book titled Gun Vision: The Ballistic Imagination in American Art, which explores the relationship between art and arms, seeing and shooting, during the years leading up to the emergence of the Avant-garde in the early twentieth century.

From his project description: This book project critically explores the relationship between art and arms in American culture from the Civil War to World War I, a period during which ballistic phenomena acquired new metaphorical meanings that implicated seeing with shooting in powerful and unprecedented ways. I have coined the term gun vision to designate that catalytic metaphorical relationship and the rich cultural discourse it produced—a discourse forged amid the technological revolutions of modernity, and yet so commonplace today as to seem primordial or timeless. Whenever we “shoot” a photograph, peer through a gun “sight,” or feel physically riveted by “bullet time” special effects in a Hollywood movie, such discourse speaks through us, but any number of other visual forms can similarly conflate or closely relate the act of looking with the explosive potential of ballistics. The discourse’s pervasiveness in our time bespeaks the naturalization of violence in American culture, including art, but it also reveals an important modern innovation in aesthetics and perception. Since the late nineteenth century, when the market for images became exponentially more diversified, industrial, and competitive through mass media and mechanical reproduction, artists have increasingly leveraged their ballistic imagination in order to make an impact and attract attention. The guns spectacularly pointed in our faces in recent works such as James Rosenquist’s Blue Nail or Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (directed by Don Siegel), for example, belong to a tradition established by Winslow Homer, Charles Schreyvogel, Edwin S. Porter, and other post-Civil War artists whose works I examine. Although American artists were by no means alone in pursuing such ballistic effects, the peculiar configuration of historical factors in this country—frontier ideology, imperialism, and an extraordinarily productive arms industry—made the United States especially conducive to the invention of gun vision. That invention is the subject of my book.

The Smithsonian notes that, since 1970, the museum has hosted more than 380 scholars who now occupy positions in academic and cultural institutions across the United States. Fellowship opportunities include the Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowships for the cross-cultural study of art of the United States; the Patricia and Phillip Frost Fellowship for research in American art and visual culture; the Wyeth Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship for the study of the traditions of American art; the Sara Roby Fellowship in Twentieth-Century American Realism; the Douglass Foundation Fellowship; the Joshua C. Taylor Fellowship; and the James Renwick Fellowship in American Craft. The museum also hosts fellows supported by the Smithsonian’s general fellowship fund.

Research resources at the museum include extensive photographic collections documenting American art and artists and unparalleled art-research databases. An estimated 180,000-volume library specializing in American art, history and biography is shared with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. An active publications program of books, catalogs and the critically acclaimed journal American Art complements the museum’s exhibitions and educational programs.

Our congratulations to Dr. Braddock for receiving this prestigious fellowship!