Course Description

This course is meant to be a space for you to examine and deepen your relationship to the field and your own practice through readings, discussions, and presentations.  The readings are meant to expand your perspective on the field of jewelry and metalsmithing, to define its particularities and concerns in relation to the discourses of the contemporary art world.

Together we will explore a series of seminal theoretical texts, seeking ways to relate them to our own practice.  Through these texts we will encounter a series of themes and historical perspectives that are crucial to the field of jewelry, while also delving into fields and areas of inquiry, that have not commonly been related to our field, but perhaps should or could be.  Our aim is to get a historical and interdisciplinary perspective on where we are as artists/makers today, how we got here and where we could go from here. The course aims to bring up critical questions on why we make, whom we make for and the meaning of our practice beyond the studio and the jewelry and metals world.

This is a chance to practice your skills in connecting theory, reading and writing to your work and to build a vocabulary and ground of reference around your ideas, interests and intentions. It’s a chance to take part in an intense discourse around your field, which you might be asked to do many times in the future of your career.

The Wednesday meetings will adopt the form of a reading/talking circle. Your role in the group is important and the success of our conversations will be based on your participation and engagement. We will all take turns in presenting and leading the discussion and also examine what “research through practice” might mean for us, by exploring some ways of connecting theory and making. 

Sep 16, 2009

1. Why we make

Sept 23rd

9AM-12AM

Introduction of course schedule and themes

Discussion: Why do we make - what do we want and why?

Reading: Ellen Dissanayake, Art and Intimacy - How the Arts Began (Introduction + Hands on Competence p 3-17 + 99-128),  Homo Aestheticus – Where Art Comes from and Why (The Core of Art - Making Special p 39-63)

Bring: One piece of your work and one reference.

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1 comment:

  1. CourtneySeptember 27, 2009 at 8:38 PM

    On page 106 of Chapter four, Dissanayake states, "Western children simulate adult activities in their imaginations, with toys or vicariously on television, but in many parts of the world girls and boys actually begin very early to contribute with their hands to family subsistence."
    Since practice/play is not necessary for Western children to learn certain sustaining skills, their innate actions have to be acted out somewhere else. As adults who thrived on our imaginations as children, I wonder how this makes us different from those who grew up without having to substitute the real thing for the imaginary.

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