#uconntype

Design Students Study Abroad in London and Explore the UK Design World

Junior-year Communication Design students are spending their Spring Semester studying at Central St. Martins in London, one of Europe’s premier art schools.  In a unique curriculum, they undertake projects collaboratively with their UK counterparts.  The program also incorporates an ambitious schedule of visits to design studios and museums.  To find out more, visit the UCdesignUK blog.

AAH and Creative Writing Establish Counterproof Press

Counterproof Press is an exciting new collaboration between the Creative Writing Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and programs in Printmaking, Communication Design and Illustration, as well as the Design Center Studio, in the Department of Art + Art History at the School of Fine Arts.

Counterproof Press will facilitate collaborative studio projects whereby students, faculty, and visiting artists/scholars from various disciplines collaborate to produce limited edition art objects, artifacts, and publications.

We will develop a collection of yearly projects, events, and collaborations that will be documented and published by Counterproof Press.

Counterproof Press also plans to initiate internships, courses, donor subscription programs, membership programs, fundraising events, and operate on a regional, national, and international level by leveraging internal and external funding support.

This initiative will have high visibility via its online presence with a dedicated identity, website and associated exhibition, print, social media marketing, PR and promotion.

FACULTY MEMBERS 
For upcoming projects in 2014 and 2015
Penelope Pelizzon: Creative Writing Program, English Department
Mary Banas: Communication Design, Art + Art History Department
Cora Lynn Deibler: Illustration, Art + Art History Department
Alison Paul: Illustration, Art + Art History Department
Laurie Sloan: Printmaking, Art + Art History Department
Edvin Yegir: Communication Design & Design Center, Art + Art History Department
Mark Zurolo: Communication Design, Art + Art History Department

VISITING / CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS for 2014
Paul Muldoon: The 51st Wallace Stevens Poet, English Department
Sharon Butler: Visiting Artist in Residence; Art+Art History Department

UPCOMING INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS / PUBLICATIONS in 2014

PROJECT 01 
PAUL MULDOON / WALLACE STEVENS POEM PROJECT
Widely considered to be the greatest English-language poet of his generation, Paul Muldoon was born in Ireland in 1951. He has published over a dozen collections and has been honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He will visit UConn on April 10 as the 51st Wallace Stevens Poetry Program guest. His visit is sponsored by The Hartford, the UConn Humanities Institute, and the English Department Speaker’s Fund in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Muldoon will generously allow students to print one of his new poems as a limited-edition letterpress booklet created by Design Center and hand-printed by student artists in the Printmaking studio. This will be the inauguration of what we plan as an annual project to coincide with each year’s visiting Wallace Stevens Poet.

PROJECT 02
HAPPENSTANCE CHARRETTE
Happenstance involves a collaboration/encounter between a group of student poets, artists, and designers. Happenstance is an improvisational and experimental creative charrette to be held at the Printmaking facilities in Bishop to facilitate dialogue between poets and visual artists; this encounter will result in a collaborative product in the form of a limited edition publications and an exhibition.

PROJECT 03
SHARON BUTLER PRINT SERIES
Sharon L. Butler, an artist and writer, maintains an award-winning art blog, Two Coats of Paint, blogs for The Huffington Post. Her art work is included in private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore, Tampa, Philadelphia, Providence, Berlin, London and Kyoto.

Sharon Butler will be in residence throughout this semester to create a series of prints. Students will benefit by learning to professionally edition the works and by observing Sharon’s art and process.

AAH Convocation: Brave New Art World

Featuring “Two Coats of Paint” art blogger and artist Sharon Butler and New Zealand multimedia artist Shigeyuki Kihara, this panel will explore the contemporary art world from two perspectives.  What are the emerging trends in contemporary art? How can young artists get their work shown?  How does social media affect what happens in art? Sharon Butler is a long-time commentator on and participant in the New York art scene, and Shigeyuki Kihara is a visitor to New York, currently serving as artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn.  Kihara has exhibited recently at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Trondheim Museum, Norway; and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.  Butler is represented by Pocket Utopia gallery in New York, and has exhibited at Real Art Ways in Hartford and Season in Seattle, WA.

“Brave New Art World” will take place Thursday, September 19, at 6 pm.  This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the William Benton Museum of Art, with the generous support of the Gene and Georgia Mittelman Lecture Fund.  It is free and open to the public.  All Art and Art History students are required to attend.