MFA: a Pursuit
In all work with graduate students I am informed by my own artistic practice and research which is grounded in the belief that being well informed in the field is foundational for a search as to what unique contributions each of us can make due to our individual humanity—further even as we respect what has come before we are obligated to be un-stifled by precedent and tradition. We must reinvent form, context and methods of dissemination as we seek an intelligent creative production that embodies our humanity, engages with the most profound issues and challenges of our time, and seeks to perpetually better reflect deeply held principles and ideals not as mere image and surface but as the very substance of our aesthetic practice. For aesthetics in this century transcend the visual and formal and must be inclusive of relationships to power, democracy, privilege, sustainability and shared authorship. Artistic practice from: the processing and collection of raw material and labor resources, through the propagation of imagery and actions in the world, and extending to include arts’ venues audiences and modes of dissemination must all be considered and actually crafted if we are to model something as opposed to merely pointing towards…. We must explore the very nature of the artistic voice, what constellation of social critic, creator of pleasure, defender of the idiosyncratic, therapeutic meditation, launch pad for intellectual proposition, spiritual divining rod, Formal interrogator or internal laboratory for the introduction of innovation drives the individuals work to new frontiers. I do not promote an ideology beyond a belief that how we spend our lives, what we produce, and how we bring this production into the world is a legacy that should reflect from marrow to aura the beliefs, agendas and provocations of its maker(s). Every action and every object is a collection of ramifications set into motion—these ramifications are what we form—forms, materials, theories and allegiances are methods and means. Good solid critical buttressing can be impressive or a crutch.
Early in my teaching one of my graduate students Caroline came to me–she said “I don’t know what I’m doing, I feel I’m in the dark somewhere and just barely have hold of the tail of some beast”
I said to hang-on let that bushy thing pull you through the dark you don’t have to see where it’s going nor be able to name what you have a hold of as long as you know when you have ahold of it and when you’ve lost it or let it go.
Some Sculptors are guardians of traditions of making, perpetuators of established values (extracting value from seemingly ‘obsolete’ technologies & skill sets).
Some Sculptors are radical reformers/challengers to tradition—(indeed the irreverent challenge to Art’s own institutions, quality measures and standards are one of the strongest traditions in contemporary art.) This involves work by artists that forge work outside of existing paradigms and definitions, (community service arts, ethereal works, time based medias, live art, conceptual art, activism as art etc.) and on conceptual and ideological fronts, (paradigms that question arts role in community, relationship to commodity, and substance as physical, status as un-mutable, authorship as singular). Innovative expansion and work situated within new and emerging territories of the field, like tradition is an important value in contemporary sculpture, each can produce their own term spatial material or wave-based propositions.
Our MFA is a quest that lacks singular definition– we start with what is the artist’s motives–and from there explore the nature of each artistic voice and create a criteria for them to use to evolve their work forward.
duane mcdiarmid 