News

Fall 2009 Newsletter

Anthony Fontana — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:22:21 +0000

Integrative Teaching ThinkTank
Fall 2009 Newsletter

Message from President:
It has been four months since ThinkTank4. In that time, Integrative Teaching ThinkTank (ITT) has made tangible progress towards its educational goals and planning.

Most significantly, Anthony Fontana (Vice President for Communications) and Stacy Isenbarger have co-edited a publication, State of Play, with contributions from ThinkTank4 participants including Melanie Lowrance, Anna Kell, Kip Bradley, Michelle Illuminato, Oliver Schemm, Matt King, Danica Oudeans, Anthony Fontana and Chris Kienke. Board Secretary and Treasurer Adam Kallish has done yeoman's work in the design of the publication. State of Play can be downloaded here and will be available via print on demand in the near future.

State of Play came about through the initiative of ThinkTank4 participants. It was not a planned objective of the conference. Instead, it came about through ThinkTank's synergy. It is a great example of how artists seize opportunities and create unexpected outcomes.

Within this newsletter is information on ThinkTank5, scheduled for June 2-6, 2010 at the University of Georgia, in Athens. As ITT and ThinkTank become better known, it becomes easier to get the word out to segments of our core constituency. For example, we have lists of individuals who expressed direct interest in ThinkTank at both the FATE and NAEA 2009 conferences. However, there are important divisions of our consistency that we still need reach. Read more...

Participants Sought For ThinkTank5:

Scheduled for University of Georgia, June 2-6, 2010

ThinkTank is a facilitated discussion and intensive workshop forum that is designed to improve Foundations teaching. We bring together emerging educators, master educators, and administrators from around the country to expand the theory and improve the practice of higher education in the 21^st century. We anticipate 90 participants in 2010, and plan to follow up with a 48-page journal, providing sample assignments and describing our results. Read more...

Brochure
Agenda
Application

State of Play
State of Play presents practical, innovative assignments that prepare students to learn the technical skills that ground study in art and design by introducing habits of mind that are the foundation for creative inquiry. It is the first Integrative Teaching ThinkTank publication that developed from ITT’s ThinkTank4 held at the University of Georgia in June 2009.

Edited by Anthony Fontana and Stacy Isenbarger. Contributions from Melanie Lowrance, Anna Kell, Kip Bradley, Michelle Illuminato, Oliver Schemm, Matt King, Danica Oudeans, Anthony Fontana and Chris Kienke. Designed by Adam Kallish.

Download it here

News

Mary Stewart is chairing a SECAC panel titled Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century: Form, Content and Context. Scheduled for Saturday, October 24, presenters Brian Evans, Lucy Curzon, and Susan Krause will explore a variety of contemporary teaching strategies. Stewart will conclude the panel with a presentation on the mission, structure, and accomplishments of ThinkTank.
Anthony Fontana will present on the FATE panel at SECAC his presentation titled "State of Play: Encouraging a Divergent Approach in Foundations Art Making". The topic will explore the role of playful methodologies in Foundations and showcase the first Integrative Teaching ThinkTank publication "State of Play".
Congratulations to Stacy Isenbarger and Anna Kell TT4 Fellowship Winners for landing positions as Visiting Assistant Professors at Eastern Kentucky Universit!
Congratulations Charles Westfall, ThinkTank4 Emerging Educator, who recently exhibited a performance at Alfred University, after connecting with Michelle Illuminato, Assistant Professor, at ThinkTank4!

ThinkTank Meetup @SECAC
There will be a ThinkTank meetup at the Southeastern College Art Conference on Friday, October 23rd. If you will be in Mobile, Alabama for the conference and would like to join us for dessert after dinner, please contact or call or text Anthony Fontana at 567-343-1319 or email at anthonymfontana@gmail.com.

-----
IntegrativeTeaching.org
Integrative Teaching on Facebook
Contact Us

Fall 2009 Message from the President

Anthony Fontana — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:26:14 +0000

Message from President:
It has been four months since ThinkTank4. In that time, Integrative Teaching ThinkTank (ITT) has made tangible progress towards its educational goals and planning.

Most significantly, Anthony Fontana (Vice President for Communications) and Stacy Isenbarger have co-edited a publication, State of Play, with contributions from ThinkTank4 participants including Melanie Lowrance, Anna Kell, Kip Bradley, Michelle Illuminato, Oliver Schemm, Matt King, Danica Oudeans, and Chris Kienke. Board Secretary and Treasurer Adam Kallish has done yeoman's work in the design of the publication. State of Play can be downloaded here and will be available via print on demand in the near future.

State of Play came about through the initiative of ThinkTank4 participants. It was not a planned objective of the conference. Instead, it came about through ThinkTank's synergy. It is a great example of how artists seize opportunities and create unexpected outcomes.

Within this newsletter is information on ThinkTank5, scheduled for June 2-6, 2010 at the University of Georgia, in Athens. As ITT and ThinkTank become better known, it becomes easier to get the word out to segments of our core constituency. For example, we have lists of individuals who expressed direct interest in ThinkTank at both the FATE and NAEA 2009 conferences. However, there are important divisions of our consistency that we still need reach.

There are four areas of focus:

Designers who teach foundations are a particular concern. This may be a small group, as many designers choose not to teach foundations. Nevertheless, designers have been a critical part of ThinkTank since its inception and we need to find voices ready to contribute to the dialogue.

Second, we need to push hard at making sure that the new emerging educators who can benefit from the dialogue and networking opportunities of ThinkTank know about and understand the career significance of their participation. This is where the members of the Advisory Board can be of particular help. You are our national grass- roots organization. You know the young professionals at your local institutions who could benefit. If every one of our Advisory Board members could recruit three emerging educators to apply, we would be able to select from a dynamic pool of applicants. We want ThinkTank to be competitive. We want the best people participating.

Third, leadership is an area that needs to be developed. We need to connect with the administrators who set budgets and establish the conceptual parameters for learning objectives in foundations. We need to do more than assure great teaching in our individual classes. We need to be at the policy table and set the agenda. We need to establish the curricular ideas of ITT as the norm.

These educational leaders are certainly the department heads, or school and college directors to whom we report. They can also be the principals who set standards for the high schools that feed students into higher education foundations programs. Finally, it also includes those higher education administrators who realize that foundation courses do more than develop artists.

Foundations experience develops ways of problem seeking, problem solving, and assessment that are a valuable part of a liberal arts education. This summer, Dr. Zach Kelehear, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership/ Policies, University of South Carolina has joined the Board as Vice President for Policy to assist us as ITT develops this area of focus.

Fourth, we want to reach out to small, targeted group of high school educators who are open to bringing the new ideas and approaches of ITT and ThinkTank into the School Advance Placement Studio Arts and the International Baccalaureate curriculum.

Bringing all of these constituencies into the mix of ThinkTank5 will be a challenge. It remains a priority to keep the scale of ThinkTank small, focused, and intense. Our core mission is improving studio+design foundations. Therefore, we need to find key people, particularly in the last two categories.

Full information for applying to ThinkTank5 is in this newsletter. I look forward to seeing you in Athens in June 2010.

Richard Siegesmund
President
Integrative Teaching ThinkTank

Participants Sought For ThinkTank5

Anthony Fontana — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:50:30 +0000

Participants Sought For ThinkTank5:

Scheduled for University of Georgia, June 2-6, 2010

As a high-intensity and small-scale project, ThinkTank participation is by invitation only. Applications simple, quick, and are submitted on-line. For ThinkTank5, we seek participants in three areas:

Emerging Educators are untenured faculty members, generally with two to seven years of full or part-time college teaching experience. We will offer ten Emerging Educator fellowships that will pay the cost of the event and lodging in the Georgia Center Conference hotel. Fellowship application details will be posted by August 30 and the deadline for application is December 30, 2009. Emerging educators can also fund participation on their own or use funds from their home departments.

Emerging Administrators are experienced teachers who are now seeking or have recently accepted the challenge of leading a Foundations program or Art Department. The opportunity to network with peers combined with discussions of curriculum design, leadership and strategic planning are especially valuable to these participants. Application deadline for Emerging Administrators is November 30.

Master Educators are experienced faculty members and administrators, generally with seven or more years of full-time college teaching experience, including substantial work with Foundations curriculum or coursework. For this group, ThinkTank provides an opportunity to share your knowledge while gathering fresh perspectives. Application deadline for these participants is January 30.

In all cases, we seek participants that are:

· dedicated to developing the best possible Foundations education for the 21^st century;

· high achievers as artists/designers/scholars;

· have strong leadership potential or a demonstrated record of leadership;

· willing to follow up on the event itself with a sample assignment, regional workshop, or peer-reviewed article for the new ThinkTank journal.

ThinkTank5 Agenda

ThinkTank5 Applicaton

Download ThinkTank5 Brochure (PDF)

A note to FATE Members: A strong partnership between FATE (Foundations in Art: Theory and Education) and ThinkTank is natural. FATE provides open access to the widest range of ideas and approaches. ThinkTank is an ideal forum for those interested in further in-depth discussions and those seeking to change their existing Foundations assignments, curricula or administrative strategies.

ThinkTank 4 Complete!

Anthony Fontana — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:14:05 +0000

ThinkTank4 Stage 2 finished on Wednesday June 10th at the Georgia Center at UGA. Particpants were engaged by breakout groups that included:

• Critiques & Critical Thinking (Matt King, facilitator)
• Constructing Meaning (Peter Winant, facilitator)
• Leading Change (Mary Stewart, facilitator)

Slide Shows and Hands-on Workshops with Master Teachers:

• Drawing Intensive #1 & #2 with Cindy Hellyer-Heinz
• Composing Narrative, Traditional and Digital Approaches with Anthony Fontana
• Visual Structures, with Kristie Bruzenak
• Using MacGyver in the Classroom, with Tony Reynaldo
• 3D: Problems and Possibilities with Matt King

Stay up to date with information about ITT and ThinkTank5 adding this blog to your favorite RSS Reader (such as Google Reader) by following the "Blog RSS" feed in the right hand column of this page.

ThinkTank4: Stage 1 Complete!

Anthony Fontana — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:14:11 +0000

Stage one of Thinktank4 has been successfully completed. The four breakout sessions were intense, driven, and shared many common threads within this year's topic Divergence, Convergence, Emergence: Expanding Cross-Disciplinary Creativity.

The notes from this year's event have been posted to the wiki and will be viewable for a limited time. You will hear more about their findings over the course of the next several months.

Breakout Groups:

The Power of Names: Rethinking Curricular Structures
- Facilitator: Joyce Hertzon
Living in the Question: Creative Inquiry As Fuel for Cross-Disciplinary Research
- Facilitator: Jim Elniski
Crossing the Wires Without Blowing the Circuits
- Facilitator: Larry Millard
Critical and Creative Thinking: Partners in the Dance
- Facilitator: Mary Beth Koos

ThinkTank4 Saturday Presentation

Anthony Fontana — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:21:14 +0000

Attached is the short initial presentation by Adam Kallish, Board Member of the Integrative Teaching Thinktank, and instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This is a Download TT4_Opening_Small Use your space bar or press on the screen to advance the presentation.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter

Anthony Fontana — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:12:45 +0000

We have set up a Facebook page for the Integrative Teaching Thinktank at http://tr.im/IntegrativeTeachingTT. Log into Facebook to become a Fan! There is also an event listed for TT4 where participants may RSVP.

These pages may be used to upload pics, notes, and start discussions about TT4.

Do you Twitter? We will be using the hashtag #TT4 for all Tweets regarding ThinkTank4. You can follow the RSS feed here: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23tt4

You may also follow along on the right hand side of this blog under the heading "TT4 on Twitter (#TT4).

Fair Use of Photo Reference

Anthony Fontana — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:01:52 +0000

This month I want to talk about a couple of contemporary artists and fair use of photo reference.

I first became aware of Elizabeth Peyton’s work in early 2007 as I was preparing my Everything is Appropriated in a Post Modern World session for NAEA (National Art Education Association http://www.arteducators.org/olc/pub/NAEA/home/) and for a panel discussion by the same name at FATE (http://76.162.42.140/index.html)

I rather like many of her images, and I think they are important in the conversation I have with art students about how they use photo reference that they did not shoot. The controversy (if there is one) is that she often uses compositions directly from photo reference of pop icons as her painting inspiration. She has an amazing career as a contemporary American painter with a recent retrospective at the New Museum in New York City http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/400 and the cover of the February 09 Art in America. In the AiA article about her by Nadia Tscherny no controversy is alluded to in any way. While Ms Tscherny admits that Peyton collected photographs from magazines for pictorial inspiration, she goes on to say “The transformative power of her vision becomes especially apparent when a photographic source is compared to the painting it inspired.” W magazine commissioned Peyton to paint Michelle and Sasha Obama. Here are the links to W http://www.wmagazine.com/artdesign/2008/11/elizabeth_peyton and a site that compares the image to its photo reference and a famous photo of Coretta Scott King with Bernice King

http://michelleobamawatch.com/sometimes-a-painting-is-just-a-painting-elizabeth-peyton-painting-controversy

While Elizabeth Peyton gets accolades for her adaptations, Shepard Fairey is definitely in the hot seat about his now famous graphic portraits of Obama used to benefit his Presidential campaign

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29023218/

This online article offers a well researched critique of Fairey before the current accusations http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm I love Fairey’s aesthetic, but it looks like I could end up with my art on his T-shirt if he decides he likes mine! This shows that there is no formula for using the photo reference of others. I think it is a question for each artist to address.

This is a YouTube link to hear a little from the artist directly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVY8PXr3z90 This is specifically about the Obama work - but not about the controversy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxhgIoXzMrQ&NR=1

If you are on Facebook and you care to comment on the Shepard Fairey controversy, visit this link to Portfolio Creative Staffing’s discussion board http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/updates.php?id=38216235776&sent=1&e=0#/pages/Portfolio-Creative-Staffing/38216235776

go to their discussion board topic

Legal Wrangling over Obama Hope Poster--Right or Wrong?

I think it is so important for artists to carefully consider how they are using, borrowing and manipulating the images of others. After all, the artist being referenced could be us.

Brooke Hunter-Lombardi

Independent Art and Education Consultant, TT Board member

ThinkTank4 Stage Two Fellowship Award Winners Announced

Anthony Fontana — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:03:06 +0000

ThinkTank has chosen the following emerging educators as participants in the Stage Two of ThinkTank4 at the University of Georgia, Athens from June 5-10, 2009:

Kip Bradley, Adjunct Faculty of Foundations and Painting, Savannah College of Art and Design

Amanda Burnham, Foundations Coordinator at Towson University

M. Michelle Illuminato, Alfred University

Stacy Isenbarger, MFA candidate in Sculpture, University of Georgia

Anna Kell, MFA candidate in Painting, University of Florida

Selena Kimball, Hunter College

Melanie Lowrance, University of Central Missouri

Erin Mcintosh, MFA candidate in Painting and Drawing, University of Georgia

Danica Oudeans-Coale, University of Wisconsin − Barron County

Oliver Shemm, MFA candidate, Florida State University

Rena Leinberger, Foundation Coordinator, State University of New York − New Paltz

High School Art Teacher Inspiration Update

Anthony Fontana — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:37:29 +0000

I have been invited by Mary Stewart and Adam Kallish to add a new category to the TT blog especially for high school art teachers so that they may be more connected to the future of college foundation art programs and to help them locate sources of inspiration and resources on the web. I will post once monthly (usually mid-month) and include links for artists, designers and institutions. I will also offer book recommendations and lesson plan resources.

In honor of Black History Month, I am featuring some prominent African American artists and resources in this post:

First I offer the rich textures and soul filled messages of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, an international artist and local legend from Columbus, OH. A prolific art maker, she has a large catalog of "rag paintings", assemblage/sculptures and has illustrated children’s story books (Sophie, The Shaking Bag, To Be a Drum and others). I love using story books as a resource with high school and college art students for two reasons. First, it is the genre that introduced most of them to visual art - they can be comforted by familiarity while encouraged to look deeper into the communication of visual storytelling. Secondly, children's book illustrators are making a legitimate living as artists, we all need that positive reinforcement! I found a fantastic web resource for Aminah Robinson created by Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) that is fun, interactive and full of resources for teachers: http://aminahsworld.org/

The second artist is a Somali-born photographer, Abdi Roble: http://www.abdiroble.com/

I saw his exhibit at CMA and have been sharing his images and looking carefully at his Somali Diaspora project, http://www.somaliproject.org/index.elements/bios_abdi.html to learn more about this new immigrant population in the US.

To purchase the book, The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away, you can use this link:

http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/mShowDetailsbyCatAmazon.cfm?Catalog=MU012&CFID=4108114&CFTOKEN=93854164

The third artist is illustrator AG Ford who was my student at Columbus College of Art & Design. He has just published his first children's book, written by Jonah Winter called, Barack. It came out in September 2008 and is a biography about our new President. I got copies through Amazon and also saw it on the shelf at Target. www.AGFordIllustration.com

Another amazing children's storybook that relates this month is Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits by Winton Marsalis, which combines jazz, poetry and illustration. It is illustrated by Paul Rogers.

http://www.paulrogersstudio.com/ check out his amazing sketchbooks

And one more illustrator is Kadir Nelson, his newest book features the words of President Barack Obama and his artwork is being featured in a Coca Cola Black History Month campaign: http://www.kadirnelson.com/

From the exaggerated hands in Aminah’s paintings and AG and Kadir's striking likenesses to Paul Rogers amazing portraits and New Orleans street scenes, they all rely heavily on figure drawing and the traditions of observations drawing. More great evidence for our students!

Brooke Hunter-Lombardi

Independent Art and Education Consultant, TT Board member