Students in the Social Practice program work in real world situations. Students in the past have been involved in such projects as an exhibition at City Hall, contributing work to PICA’s TBA festival, Work Sound Gallery, preparing RFQ submissions for group public art projects.
Most recently we completed Shine a Light: A Night at the Portland Art Museum, and are currently working towards projects with Betonsalon and apexart.
The Social Practice MFA group is also strongly encouraged to participate in the current discourse surrounding social practice and art. As a group in 2009 the Social Practice MFA’s will present in a panel discussion at the SF MoMA as part of the exhibition Participatory Art Since 1950. In addition to this students have attended national and international conferences on socially engaged art as presenters, most recently one of our students, Sandy Sampson, has been accepted to present research at ONEDAYSCULPTURE, a symposium organized by Claire Doherty. Field trips also play largely in the program. Within the past two years of the program students have traveled to Regina, SK (Open Engagement: Art After Aesthetic Distance), New York, Vancouver, Victoria, Joshua Tree, CA (HDTS), San Francisco (Upcoming SF MoMA presentation).
People interested in the program often ask what the graduates from our program go on to do. Since this is a very new program and the first round of graduates who will have gone through the two years of the program here is a list of a small selection of things our current students are doing:
Cyrus Smith hosts Art Talk AM on the Radio. As part of PMMNLS visiting artists are interviewed each Monday on: 12-1 PM. Find it at 98.3 FM on the PSU campus, streaming at KPSU.org and available at arttalkam.blogspot.com. Avalon Kalin organizes Authentic Enthusiasm’s Special Presentation Series. SPS is a free, one-hour, weekly presentation series that gives enthusiastic people the opportunity to present areas of research, expertise, or subjects of interest to the general public during. For example: the novels of Balzac, microbiology, finger painting, hypnosis, how to build websites, etc. Katy Asher and Eric Steen will be presenting together at the 12th Biennial National Conference of Foundations in Art Theory on the topic of expanding art foundations curriculum in a post-discipline world. Zach Springer is the lead co-ordinator and artistic director of a major public art project at Portland’s Down Town YWCA. Helen Reed is the founder and organizer of EC/BC an extracurricular book club that where students share readings with one another. Varinthorn Christopher is an instructor at Portland Community College. Hannah Jickling is co-curating an exhibition of feminist multiples in conjunction with WACK! at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Image: Ariana Jacob’s Serenades project for Shine a Light.