Ecological disasters often harm the most vulnerable people, animals and ecosystems, and yet this unequally distributed damage remains insufficiently seen, realized and discussed, a group of scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder contends.
Four acclaimed video artists from Vietnam and Cambodia are traveling to the University of Colorado Boulder to take part in an immersive art program—in the hopes of taking a cross-disciplinary look at environmental issues.
“The new program will challenge traditional and mainstream understandings of art by unpacking, contextualizing and decolonizing the term (art),” Cordova says. “We’re not just here to appreciate art,” he says. “We’re here to analyze and to be critical of the forces that surround its production, consumption and interpretation.”
“We are trying to make things more flexible for students who don’t want to put themselves in some sort of disciplinary box,” Mark Amerika, professor of distinction, art and art history
Art has always taken our imaginations to unexplored places, and now two University of Colorado Boulder art professors are finding it can also encourage freshmen, through a first-year seminar, to actively explore the campus, community and, hopefully, the wide world of academia.
While living and working together in rural environments, students create artwork specific to the landscape using a variety of mediums, from sculpture and printmaking to photography and ephemeral assemblages. The field school is designed to expand students’ definition of what a studio practice can be while exposing them to new vistas.
The Ceramics Graduate Program in the Department of Art and Art History is meant to be a transition from classroom learning to individual learning in a private studio practice. The program offers a solid foundation from which students can take risks, be challenged and stretch themselves as artists.
The ceramics program is one of eight University of Colorado Boulder programs to be ranked in the top 10 graduate specialty programs nationwide, but it is the only one of the CU Boulder group to hail from the arts and humanities.
