Fine Art Department
1990 to 2018 :
Professor and Associate Chair
2018 to 2023 :
Professor and Chair
Fine Art and Trans-Disciplinary Studio Classes:
Installation Concepts
A studio course designed to introduce space as a medium and as content to undergraduates of all skill levels and in any medium. The class removes the “frame” and explores making works which are encountered as environments. Multiple histories are discussed, from cave painting to 19th century dioramas to 20th century land-art and beyond.
Hand-Made
This class focuses on crafting as an aspect of studio process. Students are encouraged to learn new skills, many of them traditional: sewing (both hand and machine,) embroidery, knitting, crochet, paper-making, wood-working, and more and to share skills that they already have. The history of craft and art is explored through multiple texts, concentrating on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and addressing issues of gender, capitalism, the machine and digital age, and labor as content.
Portrait Reconsidered
A trans-disciplinary studio seminar addressing portraits from the standpoint of specific historical traditions of portraiture and identity, gender, ethnicity, power and politics; across platforms of painting, photography, sculpture, installation, literature and film.
Second Nature
A trans-disciplinary studio with a comprehensive approach to issues in landscape, nature (including animals and environments) and culture. The class incorporates literature, film, history, painting, photography, actual landscape, both urban and rural, landscape design, food, environmental movements, photography, land-art, and site-specific art.
Senior Projects
An exhibition-based class that prepares the upper-term student to create with a level of professionalism that prepares them for a career as an artist, however that might be defined, beyond graduation. Students prepare their own exhibitions, write about their own and each other’s work, lead critiques, and are responsible for their own publicity.
One on One
Mentorship for undergraduate Fine Arts students in their first few terms of study.
Garden as Site
A course which utilizes Descanso Gardens, a public garden in La Canada, CA. as the platform for art and design based site-specific projects.
Humanities Classes:
Into the Garden
A history of Garden design through the ages, with an equal balance of seminar sessions and garden tours.
Introduction to Modernism:
Art and Design and Culture 1850-1960, a multi-disciplinary class.
Other Academic Activities:
Elected Director for Humanities and Sciences: History Program 2014-2016
Elected Co-Director for Humanities and Sciences: Histories and Critical Studies 2011-2014
WASC Program Review for Fine Arts Program, 2012 and 2014-15
Member, Faculty Commons – a self-governed body responsible for workshops and summits encouraging best practices in teaching at Art Center College of Design. 2012-2014
Chair, Art Center Faculty Council, 1996-2000
Conferences
College Art Association,
Los Angeles 2012 and New York 2013
Art and Environment Conference,
Nevada Museum of Art, 2014