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.
