SNC TNNUA 台南藝術大學材質創作與設計系 Exchange

Our intention is to develop a summer exchange program that will provide our students with the opportunity to study abroad. SNC and TNNUA will offer a three-week, three-unit course. The course will be team-taught by faculty members from TNNUA and faculty members from SNC. SNC and TNNUA will alternate hosting responsibilities.

While the SNC students are at TNNUA they will have the opportunity to work along side students and faculty from TNNUA. In this unique art making environment students will be in a three week intensive course that meets for six hours a day in the ceramics, metal and fiber studios. This course allows students and faculty to work along side each other while having discussions about art and culture. There will be lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and slide presentations addressing both contemporary and historical trends in art. This class will also incorporate a two-day trip to Taipei to visit museums and galleries. This course not only exposes students to different techniques and philosophies in art and art making while exposing students to different cultures.

While the TNNUA students are at SNC they will have the opportunity to meet and work with students and faculty from SNC. This course is designed around SNC’s summer art studio workshop model. In this unique art making environment students will be in a three week intensive course that meets for six hours a day in the ceramics and sculpture studio. This course allows students and faculty to work along side each other while having discussions about art and culture. There will be lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and slide presentations addressing both contemporary and historical trends in art. This class will also incorporate a two-day trip to San Francisco to visit museums and galleries. This course not only exposes students to different techniques and philosophies in art and art making while exposing students to different cultures.

You will find student reflections, images, videos and art listed on their personal page on the right =>. 

Heath Pierson, Flor Widmar, Rachel Livingstone, Bianca Del Cioppo, Molly Allen, Amanda Dabel, Sheri Leigh O'Connor, Anza Jarschke, Rick Parsons, 森 アリス (Alice), Kerrigan Leijon, Sally Hammel, Matt Mattson, Karl Schwiesow, Po-Ching, Madeline Blair, Fang Wang Shinyu

The participants were challenged on day one to "Pick Something Up And Take It With Them" either physically, mentally, or emotionally. My goal on trips like this is for the participants to learn something about themselves. The itinerary of the trip creates structure, while the act of being in a new place challenges them to use their values, morals and personal perceptions to navigate their new surroundings. It's this space that creates a place of hyper-awareness. Students use everything they know up to this point to comprehend and position themselves, not only where they are, but also where they are from. 

Life can be crazy and unpredictable like rush hour traffic at 5pm. When I went to Taiwan, I learned that in life you sometimes have to go outside yourself and embrace the situation. During my time there, I asked myself a lot of questions such as “What I'm making?,” “How far I can push myself?,” “Why I'm I making what I'm making?” These are questions that I never thought about before I was making art. The everyday experiences of being in Taiwan were also enlightening. The experience of not knowing the language, the wonderful people I met,  and all of the food food food!!!! It was amazing to find out how to order food without knowing what to say--the only why was to point at and hope it was good. I tried to be very outgoing and wanted to try everything. If it was food and it smelled good I ate it. The eating experience was strange because there were no forks or spoons so eating was challenging with everyone eating 5 different dishes at once. People were friendly, coming up to stare at you and be amazed. They look up to Americans because they think we are rich and famous and they value light skin because it means you don't work. We were all so all so hot but all of them had sweaters and pants in the hot sun because they did not want to get sunburned .

 

The work that I made in Taiwan was mostly influenced by "lose work" not tight before rigid, narrow, and smooth now: loose and wabi-sabi. I did a lot of looking to find the out what makes me me and why am I am doing what I do.

 

I think that going to Taiwan was good for me. To be able to have time to my self and to see what I don’t ever have time to see in my work and in life at home. Since I am usually running all over and have 100 things to do all day every day, I sometimes forget to think about my art and where it is going or where I want to take it. There was so much to learn that I don’t even know how to tell it all although I feel that I do have a better understanding of where my concentration will be taking me.

A Life Changing Experience

(The SNC exchange group)

 

Taiwan was one of the greatest experiences of my life so far and what I learned there will remain with me forever. When I first signed up for this course, I didn't fully realize what I was getting myself into. Not only was I going across the globe to a country and culture I have never experienced, but I was with little to no knowledge of the culture and language. I have traveled before, but whenever I traveled, I knew a language to help me get around and I knew a little about the culture already. This was completely out of my comfort zone, but in the best way possible. I think I needed this trip and it was at the best time in my life to take it.

Cindy Lee (aka Big White) at a hot pot restaurant in Madou.

The grad studio at TNNUA.

We were asked to concentrate on one thing about Taiwan that struck us. One thing that moved us or changed us or made us think. The one word that kept running through my head was "ornate". Everything in Taiwanese culture involved some adornment or decoration and color, even the plants and animals. I think that's what inspired this culture to become so ornate, the ecosystem there lent itself to an array of colorful plants and animals filling this tiny, but proud island. Also, it wasn't just decoration for decoration's sake, everything had a meaning, a story to tell and some history behind it. That's what really made me think, I have been doing decoration of my pieces for a little while now, not sure of it's meaning. Now I have to think about what my pieces mean to me and I think I have found an answer. I feel as though this trip was the beginning to something, and I am not even sure what yet, but I know it has started fueling an already big fire in my belly. I feel even more excited and driven by my art and I want it to take me as far as possible. I know I will go back one day soon, I can feel the presence, that this trip has left with me, fuel me and surround me each and every day since I have been back.

The male side of the temple, with open-mouthed lions

A temple along the way to TNNUA

The same temple in the day light

The night view at the top of Taipei 101.

A snail with a spiky shell, it was very bizarre and very awesome.

Even the burial grounds were ornate.

The National Palace Museum- Taipei

Ferocious temple guard dog

One of my favorite parts of the trip was the butterfly house at the Taipei Zoo

Female Lion with baby, guarding the temple.

The old and the new, in Tainan.

Pottery studio, you pay by the hour.

Gorgeous view on the gondolas overlooking Taipei.

The funnier moments in Taiwan.

Street art.

More street, building art.

There was nothing more magical than Tainan at night time.

Some pieces of mine from the wood kiln

At a ceramic gallery

SNC and TNNUA: Karl Schwiesow face value Seeing the object. Literal interpretation.   Removing an object from its contextualizing surroundings or partners. Observing then contrasting and comparing. Identifying similarities and differences. See the object again for the first time. Break down the object into its smallest refined units. This is a method I use to release objects from their constraining historical and contemporary identity.

 

going to the edge

"Going to the edge" has been a phrase that has surfaced in many of my  conversations about contemporary art,  lifestyles, and passions.    I feel we can bring ourselves and our creations to precipices defined only by our imaginations.  The edge is an uncomfortable place for many, myself included.   However, it is a place that must be visited for progress to be achieved.  The edge is defined by taking a chance, pushing the envelope, as it is said.   Only by being there on the brink- at one's limit- can their be a retreat to the bountiful green pastures of the creative mind. 

   

 

 

 

 

 

stacked brick, glass, and steel.

It's true, my artistic work recently has succumbed to the joys of summer and the freedom that a warm climate offers: cycling, swimming in lakes and rivers, and socializing with friends.  Yet I still have a project or two simmering on a back burner.  The thing I realized, was that from this lackadaisical existence I could clearly see the the "edge" from which I had come.   I could now view my progress -not always forward- as an artist and a person.  This was a vantage that offered a broad scope of the landscape which I had previously been so immersed within.  From this retrospective I could conceive of new potential for existing projects and ideas as well as ways to push them further toward the an edge.  I could also see ways in which things could be moved back from the metaphorical edge to become concrete amalgamations of my experiences and beliefs and not just ideas floating through the ether.

Understanding the push and pull of the ability to create meaningful objects; the subtle balancing act that the artist must practice and research through experimentation with the medium they are choosing to work with is a life long leaning process.  It is an evolution that is tempted and driven by the edge.  

I can never stop pushing the limits of my capacity to reinterpret perception.  To me, there are a million ways to see any object and there are a million ways to use tools that create objects we see.  In turn, the product of this interpretation speaks a new language.   I relate this interaction  between the creator and object as a symbol of what the "edge" might look like.   The "edge" is a place that has never truly been explored because the imagination exists beyond the body.  To me going to the edge is about pushing the limits of ones self to interpret new and unfamiliar things in a light that brings them into cultural and personal relevance.