Mission        

"for the aim to be realized
it must not be completely realized

and for something to be said
it must not be said absolutely" -Maurice Merleau-Ponty

 

Distance Education offers an opportunity for learning that is intense and profound. Offering an art class through distance education has exciting implications, some of which are new and some of which are standard practices in making art.

The unfamiliar aspects would be the computer itself and all that it offers in both resources and reflective communication that I will encourage through our mailing list. 

The standard practices are the solitude of working at home that offers productive time to create. The access to images, histories or scholarly texts that will stimulate interesting solutions to problems in art is traditional fodder for artists, and allows for the exploration of individual paths.

Asynchronous access to both the instructor and to other class members at any time is a different way of dealing with ideas or dilemmas. The accustomed support system of people in a classroom is not available, and especially not available at a known time and place. 

Time and place will have to be up to the individual- accountability is not easy when there is no precise moment to present one’s progress. If a paper is due on a certain date, for example, preparation is done accordingly. However, to interrupt a process in the middle, especially if it is a creative process, is likely to be both irritating and enlightening. It isn’t pleasant to take an objective view mid-process. It may feel threatening, as if a natural flow is being interrupted. But the objective look and accountability will also serve to strengthen and solidify a point of view, one that may be evolving in legitimate directions apart from the original theses.

So, there’s a freedom of access (feel free to e-mail me any time about anything!!!) that is uncomfortably qualified by a need for self-discipline and a need to have your research, your comments, your intuitive or cognitive decisions up for inspection and posted to the mailing list at least once a week for nine weeks.

I will help by:

1. -Asking specific questions about what you are doing 

2. -Giving immediate feedback to your e-mails. -At least as immediate as I can manage. I want to encourage all of you to respond specifically to one another so that our archived mail will be interesting to read when the class is over.

3. -Working with each of you, step-by-step, so that the work of the drawings is not overwhelming.

 I am committed to accepting each member of this class at exactly where he/she is in age and training. There is probably a wider range of experience and ability in Art 93 than in any class you’ve ever had. What that means is that I will offer detailed advise if you want it, like exactly the kind of paper to buy etc. -But I will also leave the independents alone. The formal demands of each problem are few but I hope are very clear.

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