Art in Other Places by Kate Collins

“They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds” by Ana Maria Economou

Art in Other Places is a special topics course I designed and teach for the students in the M.A. program in Interdisciplinary Arts Infusion (MAIAI). In this class, students look across all of the various art forms to explore the many ways in which artists and arts organizations are engaging with vulnerable and marginalized communities. In the home video below, you’ll see the original spoken word poetry of TU graduate student, Jess Kless, who is an elementary school music educator in Anne Arundel County, now in her final year of the MAIAI program. And with the still photos, you’ll see the work of MAIAI graduate assistant, Ana Maria Economou, a fantastic teaching artist who specializes in ceramics, now in her final semester of the MAIAI program. Each student takes a deep dive into researching one particular population. Jess chose to focus on chronically ill children in the hospital setting and Ana Maria chose to focus on undocumented immigrants. Typically in this course, students take all of the research they’ve collected over the course of a semester and create a visual art installation designed to create greater awareness and understanding for the population itself and also the artists who strive to meaningfully engage and support them.

This year, students had the added challenge of using a large corrugated cardboard box as their main source of material for a 2D or 3D work. The photos of Ana Maria’s project show how she took up this task so skillfully. She crafted a unique box with imagery and text both inside and out, but especially noteworthy is the central element, a beautiful mask that she made using paper pulp in a clay mold. She titled her work They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds.

The video reflects yet another stellar project from Jess Kless. To account for the fact that we have graduate students with interests and skills in both visual AND performing arts, I decided to shake things up this Fall and bring in a performative option for the final projects. Given how it is often touted for its healing and transformative potential, the whole class had been introduced to spoken word poetry with a fantastic local guest artist, poet, and MICA faculty, Unique Robinson. The COFAC Diversity and Inclusion committee graciously funded Unique’s contribution to our class. For the final project, 5 of the 16 enrolled students volunteered to work with Unique to write and perform a poem with their research in lieu of an art installation. Each student had two coaching sessions with Unique and under her tutelage, they created some truly moving works. Synthesizing collected research and then being cautious to not speak on behalf of a population for which they are outsiders was no easy task, but these students rose to the task. Jess Kless really wowed us with her creative work titled This Room. Take a look…

"This Room" by Jess Kless
“This Room” by Jess Kless

MORE STUDENT WORK…

Artist: LaVerne Miers-Bond, MAIAI graduate and a high school art teacher, explored what she learned about art-making in and with Native American communities through the creation of a dynamic research poster that folds down into a book.
Artist: Gabrielle Amaro, current MAIAI student, and kindergarten teacher used a cardboard box and other repurposed materials to create a 100% touchable installation which captured what she learned about art-making in and with the visually or hearing-impaired community.
Artist: Sarah Zablotney, current MAIAI student and kindergarten teacher, explored what she learned about art-making with those who have intellectual or developmental disabilities through the use of text, image, and light.
Artist: Lauren Elfring, a current MAIAI student and K-12 art teacher, created a sculptural representation of her research combining her special skill with portraits along with cardboard, text, and image to explore what she learned about art-making with youth and adults on the autism spectrum.

 

About:

Kate Collins joined Towson University and became Program Director for the new Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts Infusion (MAIAI program) in August 2014. Prior to this position, Kate was at Ohio State University completing her doctorate in Arts Administration, Education and Policy. Her action-research dissertation focused on socially engaged arts and cultivating the civic imagination of student and youth artists. Read more

With all of the hardships and difficulties brought by the pandemic, I have to say that the work my grad students did on their final projects in the Fall semester was an absolute silver lining. These students are largely working teachers and teaching artists so they already had a lot on their plates, but even so, every one of them truly stepped up for a really challenging task and just shined!

Breathing is universal

Embody
Image: Embody, Erica Hansen, 2012. Description: X-Ray photo of Shodekeh’s lungs taken at Harbor Hospital.

Listen Now: Shodekeh Talifero Gives a Master Class on Breath Art

For the last few years, I’ve been exploring the possibility of something much deeper taking place at the core of my practice as a Beatboxer and Vocal Percussionist and found that breath is at the very center and foundation of what I do. This has inspired me to go deeper into how breath has been and can be used creatively beyond the functional necessity of it all, in music, dance, art, speech, meditation, and so on. So when Covid-19 emerged, and the centuries-long narrative of people of African descent living in an institutional & ideological chokehold around the world re-emerged, my practice and research of Breath Art has become a much larger focus of how I see everything around me.

by Melissa Katz ’19

Breathing is universal, but not only that, we live in a “Breath Culture” all over the planet, with each other, our environments, everywhere, and our current way of thinking, appreciating and understanding our relationship with the air that we breathe will probably never be the same. So if breath can be thought of as an artistic medium all unto itself, which is what I maintain Breath Art to be, can it also be weaponized in a way to fight back against these systems of crisis and oppression?

Before the world caught on fire, I was already experiencing a deep, personal crisis of my own, which became amplified by everything going on around the globe, but I’ve also never been more inspired and activated by the very air I breathe and the way I use it as a musical creation of expression and intention. Clearly the air that surrounds me every single day is a constant reminder and reflection that there is something much bigger than myself that I need to focus my energy on.

I don’t have a single moment or experience of air to waste. I have to strike with everything that I have inside of me, right now…

–Shodekeh, Innovator-in-Residence

About

With 34 years of personal, professional and community-based experience, Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero continues to make musical strides as a groundbreaking and highly adept Beatboxer, Vocal Percussionist and Breath artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of Hip Hop music and culture.

Shodekeh currently serves as TU’s very first Innovator-in-Residence anchored by the College of Fine Arts & Communication, allowing him lecture, collaborate, experiment & perform within the departments of Music, Art + Design, Art History, Art Education, Dance, Communication Studies, Electronic Media + Film, Mass Communication, Theatre Arts, Arts Integration & Interdisciplinary Arts Infusion, as well as the Asian Arts & Culture Center, the Community Art Center & the Center For the Arts Galleries.

Biography  | Follow Shodekeh on Facebook  | shodekeh@gmail.com