Spring advising begins Feb. 21
On-line registration begins March 3
Spring quarter begins April 4
Spring quarter ends, Commencement, June 16
There is a university wide major change in the summer schedule this year. There will be an Intersession period of four weeks when courses are not being held. This would be a wonderful time to plan vacations and take a break before the summer academic quarter begins. The summer session will last 9 weeks instead of being 11 weeks long.
Intersession June 18-July 14
Summer schedule
Instruction begins July 16
Labor Day University Holiday — University is closed September 3rd
Instruction ends September 15
Monday, February 20, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
I recently was asked to jury an exhibition for the Sebastopol Center for the Arts around the theme of "Blue" and found the process deeply engaging. Two books helped me to prepare: Color, a Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay and The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy. I also gathered blue objects, studied the history of the blues in music, and generally opened myself to the color's energy.
The following is an excerpt of the statement that I wrote for the exhibition:
When the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote, “Without blue eyes, how may we really see the blue sky? Without black eyes, how may we look at the night?” he was not speaking literally but from a symbolic understanding that the concept of blueness must become alive in ones consciousness in order to awaken to its layered presence in our lives. In selecting work for this exhibition I focused on four distinct levels of engagement with the concept of blueness that seemed to be arising in the submitted art works.
The first type of engagement is present in works that encompassed a focus above the surface (sky, light, aerial imagery). The second includes works that focused on physicality (the body, objects, materials, and environment). The third includes works that focused on blue as fluid surface (water) and the fourth includes works with a focus below the surface (emotion, memory, spirit, and symbol). The content of the art works may also move between these areas in a multifaceted journey that is a testament to the power of creative imagination.
The exhibition includes the work of A&C alumni Cindy Cleary, Margi Rhode, faculty Fariba Bogzaran and a current student T.C. Moore. If you are in the Sebastopol/Santa Rosa area between now and March 11 when the exhibition ends stop by and immerse yourself in the world of this primary color.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Winter 2012
We are engaged in entering the well of our life and in reaching as deeply into its sources as we can.
~Ira Progoff
In many cultures winter is traditionally a time of gestation and reflection. Moving into a deepening relationship with individual and collective sources of creative energy is an integral component to the flowering of new life. It allows us to trust in the greater cyclical processes that continually move around and within us. As artists, each time we reach toward the sources that support us in our creativity, we find a place of renewal and inspiration.
Program updates: Every six years each program enters into a university review process to examine the strengths of the program and to consider areas that need to be modified. These areas include enrollment, assessment, course content, learning outcomes and professional development. 2012 is designated as the official review year for A&C although we began a process of re-visioning last year based on our own internal needs. Input is continuing to be gathered on possible directions for A&C’s future through student and faculty meetings, a student survey and a series of meetings with MA and MFA alumni who were selected from a wide range of criteria including graduation dates, creative practices and career applications. Future actions to be taken include student and alumni meetings, an alumni survey and the development of an A&C program advisory committee.
Staff changes: Core faculty Robbyn Alexander will be leaving her position as an A&C administrator as of January 14th. She will continue to teach, be on Review committees and be available for Final Project Advising. Adjunct faculty Amy Conger has accepted a part time Affiliate faculty position and will be coordinating Midpoint and Final Reviews and the Mentorship program as well as advising students on academic choices as they move through their programs.
Welcome to new faculty Sas Colby who will be facilitating A&C5670 Group Studio Practice: Art as Improvisation in the Winter quarter.
Upcoming events:
NexUS12, the A&C Community Art Exhibition reception is Saturday, January 14 from 6:30-9pm.
Bring a pot luck dish, family and friends and celebrate the dynamic and vital creativity that of our program.
An Open House for perspective students will take place on the Berkeley Campus on Saturday, January 28 at 10:30am. Please pass on this information to everyone you know who could benefit from an A&C immersion into creative practice. Many people who enter the program have said that a talk with a student or alumni convinced them to explore Arts & Consciousness. You have the capability to create a growing A&C community through your inspiration and actions!
Partial Spring course preview:
New course and faculty: A&C5670 Group Studio Practice: Writing and the Creative Process with faculty Alisa Golden, 1 unit, Thursdays, 4:30-7pm
New course: A&C5670 Group Studio Practice: Dream Collage with faculty Robbyn Alexander, 2 units, Saturdays, April 14, 28 and May 12, 10:30am-6pm
Returning: A&C5342 Art and Shamanism with faculty Dr. Mark Levy, 3 units, Mondays, 4:30-7pm
A&C5675 Career Pathways with faculty Seth Eisen, 3 units, Wednesdays, 7:30-10pm
A&C 5320 Art and Symbolic Process with faculty Margaret Lindsey, 3 units, Tuesdays, 4:30-7pm
~Ira Progoff
In many cultures winter is traditionally a time of gestation and reflection. Moving into a deepening relationship with individual and collective sources of creative energy is an integral component to the flowering of new life. It allows us to trust in the greater cyclical processes that continually move around and within us. As artists, each time we reach toward the sources that support us in our creativity, we find a place of renewal and inspiration.
Program updates: Every six years each program enters into a university review process to examine the strengths of the program and to consider areas that need to be modified. These areas include enrollment, assessment, course content, learning outcomes and professional development. 2012 is designated as the official review year for A&C although we began a process of re-visioning last year based on our own internal needs. Input is continuing to be gathered on possible directions for A&C’s future through student and faculty meetings, a student survey and a series of meetings with MA and MFA alumni who were selected from a wide range of criteria including graduation dates, creative practices and career applications. Future actions to be taken include student and alumni meetings, an alumni survey and the development of an A&C program advisory committee.
Staff changes: Core faculty Robbyn Alexander will be leaving her position as an A&C administrator as of January 14th. She will continue to teach, be on Review committees and be available for Final Project Advising. Adjunct faculty Amy Conger has accepted a part time Affiliate faculty position and will be coordinating Midpoint and Final Reviews and the Mentorship program as well as advising students on academic choices as they move through their programs.
Welcome to new faculty Sas Colby who will be facilitating A&C5670 Group Studio Practice: Art as Improvisation in the Winter quarter.
Upcoming events:
NexUS12, the A&C Community Art Exhibition reception is Saturday, January 14 from 6:30-9pm.
Bring a pot luck dish, family and friends and celebrate the dynamic and vital creativity that of our program.
An Open House for perspective students will take place on the Berkeley Campus on Saturday, January 28 at 10:30am. Please pass on this information to everyone you know who could benefit from an A&C immersion into creative practice. Many people who enter the program have said that a talk with a student or alumni convinced them to explore Arts & Consciousness. You have the capability to create a growing A&C community through your inspiration and actions!
Partial Spring course preview:
New course and faculty: A&C5670 Group Studio Practice: Writing and the Creative Process with faculty Alisa Golden, 1 unit, Thursdays, 4:30-7pm
New course: A&C5670 Group Studio Practice: Dream Collage with faculty Robbyn Alexander, 2 units, Saturdays, April 14, 28 and May 12, 10:30am-6pm
Returning: A&C5342 Art and Shamanism with faculty Dr. Mark Levy, 3 units, Mondays, 4:30-7pm
A&C5675 Career Pathways with faculty Seth Eisen, 3 units, Wednesdays, 7:30-10pm
A&C 5320 Art and Symbolic Process with faculty Margaret Lindsey, 3 units, Tuesdays, 4:30-7pm
Sunday, December 18, 2011
In Memoriam
Born:1932, Chicago, Illinois
Died: November 13, 2011, Inverness, California
I was focused in the moment and began to paint without intention, very subtle impulses, from an inner world of my psyche, passed through my hand to become marks on the canvas.
John Anderson, from his book Beginner’s Beginning, 2001
John Anderson was a gifted artist whose work will have a continuing impact in the contemporary art world. His inquiry into the relation between meditative practice and the outward manifestation of internal space is an important inspiration for all of us who are journeying in that creative territory.
The Arts & Consciousness gallery exhibited the work of John Anderson in Through the Light curated by Fariba Bogzaran along with works by Richard Bowman, Lee Mullican and Gordon Onslow Ford. A second exhibition in 2007 featured the paintings of John Anderson and the painting/mixed media works of his wife Mary Mountcastle Eubank. He was an artist associate and advisor of the Lucid Art Foundation at Bishop Pine Preserve where he had lived since 1966 at the invitation of Gordon Onslow Ford.
John’s paintings can be seen at the Weinstein Gallery, 383 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA through January 28, 2012 in the group exhibition Surrealism: New Worlds.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Winter 2012 (Jan. 9-March 24) A&C Course Preview
New Arts & Consciousness Faculty
Welcome to Sas Colby who will be teaching A&C 4675.2 / 5670.2 Group Studio Practice: Art as Improvisation, 1.5 units Saturdays, 10am-5:30pm, March 3 & 10
This course is devoted to discovery and to breaking all the rules. Working with basic materials such as ink and string, mud and cardboard, we’ll gradually build a visual vocabulary by following a set of game-like instructions. We will experiment with drawing, word play, chance operations and outsider techniques, surprising ourselves with the results. We will delve deeply into improvisation and experimentation, learning how some of the best art comes from getting our minds out of the way.
Sas Colby has more than forty years of experience making, exhibiting and teaching art.
Her innovative workshops are combinations of the nontraditional with a solid grounding in art basics. Sas’s mixed media artwork has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. Her recent work includes participation in the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition artists book exhibition. She currently teaches workshops in Taos, New Mexico; Mallorca, Spain; and at the San Francisco Center for the Book. She has inspired many with her ability to make the creative process come alive. See her work at: www.sascolby.com.
Other Winter classes include:
Stacy Hassen, an artist and educator is also the San Francisco Curator for ARAS (Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. She will be teaching A&C 5300.1 Applied Alchemy: The Feminine in Alchemy, 3 units, Wednesdays, 4:30-7pm. Alchemy is an ancient tradition that belongs to Nature herself. This transformative process informs all creative endeavors and connects one with the intrinsic meaning that connects us all at the core. Alchemy invites an imaginal way of seeing and weaves myth, dreams, symbol and the creative arts into a tapestry that nourishes the soul and calls us to live life in a sacred manner. During this course, the intention is to connect with what is true and real as we explore, through the creative process, the three stages and the four elements of the alchemical process. The journey is initiatory as it explores the healing power of incubation, of symbols and of engaging the opposites to reveal the deeper meaning and the potential of the divine coniunctio.
Seth Eisen will be teaching a course focused on installation and the ways that space and place become resonating areas of transformation. A&C 5670.1 /4670.1 Group Studio Practice: Sight, Site, Cite, 3 units, Thursdays 7-9:30pm. This class will explore location-based installation and the continuum between personal and political, private and public, individual and collective. Classes will include interdisciplinary history and research as well as creative exercises and a final project presented to the public. We will respond creatively to aesthetic, political, and philosophical questions by considering elements of creating environments in community, gallery, installation, theater, Life/Art, streets or classroom. Student research and artwork will synthesize the streams, styles and genres leading towards a solo or group installation, exploring and animating sites in and around JFKU’s Berkeley campus and the Bay Area.
A&C 5255.1 Transformative Arts Seminar: Purpose & Practice, Robbyn Alexander, 3 units, Tuesdays, 7:30-10pm. Students will explore “calling” as it relates to their own creative purpose and practice. Through participation in a “creative group inquiry,” students will learn to forge a collaborative, inter-relational learning environment in which they uncover and safely examine personal, cultural and/or social issues actively influencing their artistic development and the realization of their personal creative potential. Individual art works and their origins, meanings, intention and impact, will be intimately explored and synthesized from multiple perspectives, becoming vehicles of psycho-spiritual growth for both maker and viewer. The course will include experiential studio practices, creative research projects and a day-long transformative ritual.
A&C 5361.1 Beyond the Studio: Community Collaboration B, Sharon Sisikin, 3 units, Wednesdays, 7:30-10pm. This course continues to take a new look at contemporary art issues. We will examine art that incorporates spiritual and ethical renewal as well as social and environmental responsiveness, as methods employed by a growing movement of artists. The heart of this course is the notion that we as artists are natural problem solvers, and with this inherent skill we can work on solutions to many of the important issues of our times, as artists. Part A of this course is theoretical and included creative inquiry, research and project proposal development. Part B of this course will include practical experience in the community with projects in process and completed outside of the classroom, in the public realm. Additionally, projects will be visually documented and exhibited at JFK along with completed project proposals and oral presentations of the projects in process this quarter.
A&C 5312.1 Creativity and Consciousness, 3 units, Karen Sjoholm, Tuesdays, 4:30-7pm
This course will explore the impact that myth, psychology, spirituality, and culture have on the embodiment of the individual creative process. The focus of the class centers on how archetypal energies of creation are mirrored in contemporary artistic practice. Guest lecturers, readings, experiential exercises and studio work will offer a deepening experience of this primal and powerful vitality.
A&C 5800.1: Studio Critique Seminar, 3 units, Jeremy Morgan, Mondays 7:30-10pm
The MFA Studio Critique Seminar allows students an ongoing critical dialogue with their peers under the supervision of an experienced artist. Students present original artwork to the group several times over an eleven week period and receive in-depth responses regarding issues of technical and formal resolution as well as more profound insight into issues of mean¬ing and culture. Students work to develop critical awareness and a sense of community as well as fostering the development of language for the examination of issues critical to a fully func¬tioning artist.
Welcome to Sas Colby who will be teaching A&C 4675.2 / 5670.2 Group Studio Practice: Art as Improvisation, 1.5 units Saturdays, 10am-5:30pm, March 3 & 10
This course is devoted to discovery and to breaking all the rules. Working with basic materials such as ink and string, mud and cardboard, we’ll gradually build a visual vocabulary by following a set of game-like instructions. We will experiment with drawing, word play, chance operations and outsider techniques, surprising ourselves with the results. We will delve deeply into improvisation and experimentation, learning how some of the best art comes from getting our minds out of the way.
Sas Colby has more than forty years of experience making, exhibiting and teaching art.
Her innovative workshops are combinations of the nontraditional with a solid grounding in art basics. Sas’s mixed media artwork has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. Her recent work includes participation in the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition artists book exhibition. She currently teaches workshops in Taos, New Mexico; Mallorca, Spain; and at the San Francisco Center for the Book. She has inspired many with her ability to make the creative process come alive. See her work at: www.sascolby.com.
Other Winter classes include:
Stacy Hassen, an artist and educator is also the San Francisco Curator for ARAS (Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. She will be teaching A&C 5300.1 Applied Alchemy: The Feminine in Alchemy, 3 units, Wednesdays, 4:30-7pm. Alchemy is an ancient tradition that belongs to Nature herself. This transformative process informs all creative endeavors and connects one with the intrinsic meaning that connects us all at the core. Alchemy invites an imaginal way of seeing and weaves myth, dreams, symbol and the creative arts into a tapestry that nourishes the soul and calls us to live life in a sacred manner. During this course, the intention is to connect with what is true and real as we explore, through the creative process, the three stages and the four elements of the alchemical process. The journey is initiatory as it explores the healing power of incubation, of symbols and of engaging the opposites to reveal the deeper meaning and the potential of the divine coniunctio.
Seth Eisen will be teaching a course focused on installation and the ways that space and place become resonating areas of transformation. A&C 5670.1 /4670.1 Group Studio Practice: Sight, Site, Cite, 3 units, Thursdays 7-9:30pm. This class will explore location-based installation and the continuum between personal and political, private and public, individual and collective. Classes will include interdisciplinary history and research as well as creative exercises and a final project presented to the public. We will respond creatively to aesthetic, political, and philosophical questions by considering elements of creating environments in community, gallery, installation, theater, Life/Art, streets or classroom. Student research and artwork will synthesize the streams, styles and genres leading towards a solo or group installation, exploring and animating sites in and around JFKU’s Berkeley campus and the Bay Area.
A&C 5255.1 Transformative Arts Seminar: Purpose & Practice, Robbyn Alexander, 3 units, Tuesdays, 7:30-10pm. Students will explore “calling” as it relates to their own creative purpose and practice. Through participation in a “creative group inquiry,” students will learn to forge a collaborative, inter-relational learning environment in which they uncover and safely examine personal, cultural and/or social issues actively influencing their artistic development and the realization of their personal creative potential. Individual art works and their origins, meanings, intention and impact, will be intimately explored and synthesized from multiple perspectives, becoming vehicles of psycho-spiritual growth for both maker and viewer. The course will include experiential studio practices, creative research projects and a day-long transformative ritual.
A&C 5361.1 Beyond the Studio: Community Collaboration B, Sharon Sisikin, 3 units, Wednesdays, 7:30-10pm. This course continues to take a new look at contemporary art issues. We will examine art that incorporates spiritual and ethical renewal as well as social and environmental responsiveness, as methods employed by a growing movement of artists. The heart of this course is the notion that we as artists are natural problem solvers, and with this inherent skill we can work on solutions to many of the important issues of our times, as artists. Part A of this course is theoretical and included creative inquiry, research and project proposal development. Part B of this course will include practical experience in the community with projects in process and completed outside of the classroom, in the public realm. Additionally, projects will be visually documented and exhibited at JFK along with completed project proposals and oral presentations of the projects in process this quarter.
A&C 5312.1 Creativity and Consciousness, 3 units, Karen Sjoholm, Tuesdays, 4:30-7pm
This course will explore the impact that myth, psychology, spirituality, and culture have on the embodiment of the individual creative process. The focus of the class centers on how archetypal energies of creation are mirrored in contemporary artistic practice. Guest lecturers, readings, experiential exercises and studio work will offer a deepening experience of this primal and powerful vitality.
A&C 5800.1: Studio Critique Seminar, 3 units, Jeremy Morgan, Mondays 7:30-10pm
The MFA Studio Critique Seminar allows students an ongoing critical dialogue with their peers under the supervision of an experienced artist. Students present original artwork to the group several times over an eleven week period and receive in-depth responses regarding issues of technical and formal resolution as well as more profound insight into issues of mean¬ing and culture. Students work to develop critical awareness and a sense of community as well as fostering the development of language for the examination of issues critical to a fully func¬tioning artist.
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