I spent the past year writing and implementing a series of ceramics lesson to be used in the primary art curriculum at my school. These lessons integrate childrens literature focusing on Native Americans and the culture of pot making. In order to use these lessons I developed some basic control over clay and learned how use the electric kiln in my classroom. The objective of my project was to embrace an art form with which I had very limited experience and a media, clay, with which I had very little control. I had to gain skills that would allow me to help my primary school students consistently produce objects of which they could be proud. I made hundreds of pots with children this year. I helped my students form their pots by using my hands with their hands, and I learned a lot about fire and what it takes to change. The big electric kiln had sat in a corner of our art room for years and I was afraid to turn on the power. Working through the project this year I overcame that fear. As a result of this project I am confident we can make ceramic art at our school. We will still have firings that do not produce great results, but we can learn from our mistakes and we will have firings that bring joy and a sense of achievement to many young artists.

Most students believe that their teachers are experts in all aspects of the field they teach in. In April of 2009 my drama students asked me to teach Commedia dellArte during the upcoming school year. I did have a strong knowledge of the subject but I decided to approach the project with a beginners mind and take a risk teaching a form of theatre I knew little about. Over the course of the school year, my students and I learned together. We researched the history, movement, and production elements of Commedia dellArte. The end result was a Commedia inspired performance where Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet collided with A Midsummer Nights Dream. While studying Commedia dellArte the students learned how to take risks, work together, write a show, produce a show, and enjoy the journey to an end result. I discovered that it is not necessary to be an expert in everything I teach. All it takes is a willingness to risk and approach the subject with a mind open to possibilities.

This paper is written both as a compliment to and in defense of Yaro Shon Neils' Master's Thesis Exhibition Suspension of Belief, an art installation and performance during which the artist created a bedroom-like space and slept in the Gallery of Visual Arts for the three week duration of the exhibition. The statement for the show read: Suspension of Belief explores the line between the fantastical and the mundane, loosely investigating the role that fairy tales and other myths play in shaping personal identity and our larger cultural mythology. When engaging with a story, a temporary willing suspension of disbelief is necessary to fully connect to the events unfolding. But what happens when this suspension of disbelief is carried over into the everyday; illusory messages being reiterated until they create a foundation for a cultural identity, until weve forgotten that theyre mere mythology, until they become belief? Is anything lost when we regain cognizance of the mythology that constructs so much of our cultural underpinning? Are there parts of these myths worth holding on to?

Color/Shape/Form/Space begins at its title. The show is named with the same directness that I want the work to have: accessible, ready for consumption. Stripped of unnecessary information, the exhibitions title needed to match the work itself, which expresses minimalistic tendencies, avoiding the superfluous. Everything needed to be consciously put together to operate as a well-designed whole. Simple and clear. It is the age that we live in that prompts me to be so forthright. Our present is defined by attention deficit digital connectivity. Accessibility and information sharing are rampant. With the possibilities being seemingly endless, it is an exciting time to be an artist. However, there too exists the daunting quality of trying to keep up with contemporary culture and the rate at which it expands. My research considers our culture of instant gratification and contemplates how to compete with it. We are consumed by pleasure and the ease of its acquisition. It is my intent to express this via an experience of fabricated eye candy to examine our cultural wants and needs. Color/Shape/Form/Space reclaims the primacy of the formal elements of visual communication. It is an amalgam of sources and ideas that nexus design, craft and fine art. It places fundamental importance on composition, color and spatial integration; and also expresses the immediacy and streamlined efficiency that we desire as contemporary human beings. The final product coalesces objects and their space to create a push-and-pull that is not just pictorial, but sculptural and experiential. I believe this helps to manifest the transcendent and euphoric qualities that I am after.

My thesis work references dynamic river processes as a metaphor for relationships and the processes by which these relationships form us as individuals. The images stem from my experience as a professional and recreational whitewater river guide (memories that were powerful in shaping my life) and observations of others candidly interacting. I use river-like references (such as holes, deep pools, eddies, currents) with figurative images to explore the idea of surface and subsurface: the apparent and the obscure. Rivers, like people, have such a depth of current and dynamic change that gives them shape and form. Even with the most stable and seemingly unchanging river systems there are still small changes in flow, current, erosion and sediment transport that shape and carve the banks and boulders. In order to navigate obstacles and dangers in a river one must learn to read the water or the surface of the water. What can be seen on the surface is such a small indication of what is happening in the undercurrent. When on the river, being able to see the various signs on the surface of the river can provide opportunities to protect yourself and others. These small tells not only allow you to avoid danger, but also allow you to enjoy the various features of the river to a fuller extent. Through experience one can learn to read and attempt to understand the surface tells to understand what is happening below the surface. As with rivers, we as individuals are constantly being shaped through our relationships as well as participating in the shaping of those we interact with. These relationships, whether intimate or casual, are a significant human experience. My hope is that my work will draw attention to the process by which we as individuals are shaped by our relationships, and our importance to each other.

Abstract: The purpose of this final creative project addresses the pursuit of a dual professional career and the impact this pursuit has had on my classroom instruction. Traditionally, my passion for art education has been rivaled by my drive to contribute to the professional field of ceramic arts. However, this project led to my understanding that this duality could benefit both of my professional worlds. ! While I do not struggle with the act of making art, I have battled with pursuing and maintaining a professional art career. I anticipated that this creative project would be an avenue by which I could start anew with my professional art career. I did not anticipate, however that I would discover a transformation in my role as an educator in addition to the change this project would have on me as an artist. In the field of ceramics, a passionate and responsible educator requires constant studio practice to maintain a level of mastery of technique. Additionally, an educator must remain current in his knowledge of contemporary artists and in the field of ceramics as a whole. Through my final project, I would also argue that the act of making art is not the only approach to teach students how to learn. The merit of outwardly communicating the internal dialogue of the artist serves as an extremely valuable opportunity to educate. Sharing in the developmental stages of idea creation allows students the opportunity to gain insight to the creative problem solving process. Ultimately, My creative project came directly from a desire to be producing within the field of ceramic arts in addition to being an educator. This paper provides an outline of the creative process and personal reflections that led to the culmination of a complete body of work. The goal in this creative project was to produce and exhibit a finished ceramic installation in a professional setting. The installation entitled, Polar Opposites will be exhibited in the Missoula Art Museum through the months of July, August, and September of 2011. i

Just Leftovers is intended to offer an understanding of the womans role within the domestic realm and its evolution over time in American society. My ultimate goal is to create an awareness of womens inequality historically, but also to expose the inequality, biases, and double standards that continue to exist in our contemporary society. I choose to create this awareness through visual art with the manipulation of recognizable objects that the general public, stereotypically speaking, would associate with femininity and domesticity. I am fascinated by how these feminine objects and their historical content [e.g. bread pan] have been socially constructed through rhetoric and material culture. Since these objects have been removed from their original context, I see them as not only symbols of a time period, but also a representation of the women who were striving to express themselves individually, intellectually, and creatively in a society that did not allow them to do so in the public sphere.

Once Achieved, What is it Worth? examines the contemporary social, political and physical landscape of the American West. My research for the past three years has been exploring the myths and misconceptions associated with this region and how these illusions inform, misinform, distort and taint the cultural norms of the region. My intention is to create a more factual representation of the American West relative to my own experience. The American West is a region that has been marauded for its resources, historically to the present day. There is little difference between the fracking boom that North Dakota is currently experiencing than the gold rushes of the late 1800s in South Dakota or the copper boom that made Butte, Montana, the richest hill on earth. The boom and bust culture of this region is part and parcel to what it means to be a Wyomingite, a South Dakotan or a Montananall of which are monikers that we Westerners adopt, wear and identify with. At its most basic, the American West is a cash cow for the two coasts and the inhabitants of the region will continue to be subject to benefits and detriments of boom and bust culture. My goal is to remove the romantic façade of the West in favor of a more austere interpretation built upon greed, brutality and guilt. The body of this thesis delves into a variety of aspects of my practice, touching on personal experience, the myth of the American West, mapping, art and critical theory, socio-economics and aesthetics, forming the body of a thesis. This paper may be seen as a more direct examination of my thesis exhibition. The writings should be considered in relationship to my studio practice, however, I also think of the writings as self-contained thoughts on specific subjects. The writings serve as reflections of my process and the various currents that run within it and largely represent my intellectual approach to art practice and making, and as such slightly break from the traditional format of the thesis paper. I hope for this effort to be a more insightful approach as it is a more specific representation, where ideas and concepts are paramount, continually expanding and informing one another, resulting in the visual articulation of these ideas.

From the late nineteenth century, works inspired by Western art spread to China and Korea through Japan. Thus, Western art came to be accepted in China and Korea as a reinterpretation of Japan’s development of Western art, rather than a direct transmission from Western sources. This act of reinterpretation went on to have a lasting effect on the practice of Western-style painters in East Asia with their own acceptance modes. This thesis provides a study of self-portraits and nude paintings, two categories of painting without precedent in East Asia prior to the late nineteenth century, created by Kuroda Seiki, Li Shutong, Go Hui-dong, and Kim Gwan-ho in order to illustrate how East Asian countries established their own versions of modern art.

En 1988 s’ouvrait à Paris la première session de l’Institut des Hautes Études en arts plastiques fondé et dirigé par Pontus Hulten. Ce dernier, des artistes comme Daniel Buren, Sarkis et l’écrivain Serge Fauchereau y furent enseignants. Jusqu’en 1995, l’IHEAP accueillit de jeunes plasticiens, venus du monde entier. Dans la lignée des cafés de Montparnasse, des institutions avant-gardistes, le Bauhaus et le Black Mountain College, cet institut éphémère expérimenta une pédagogie éloignée des traditionnelles écoles des beaux-arts. Son fonctionnement et ses pratiques d’enseignement ont été étudiés d’après archives et témoignages. Plus largement, l’histoire de cet institut permet d’étudier les enjeux réels et imaginaires de l’enseignement et la transmission de l’art à l’époque contemporaine. À l’heure où les écoles d’art réfléchissent et mettent en place le 3ème cycle du cursus LMD, conformément au processus de Bologne, la thèse met en œuvre une réflexion historique et critique sur un précédent exemplaire. / The first session of the “Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques” founded and managed by Pontus Hulten took place in Paris in 1988. Artists like Daniel Buren, Sarkis, and the writer Serge Fauchereau were teachers there. Until 1995, IHEAP welcomed young artists coming from all over the world. In the tradition of “cafés de Montparnasse”, institutions “d’avant-garde”, such as the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College, this ephemeral institute experimented a new pedagogy far from traditional schools of fine arts. Working methods and teaching practices have been observed from archives and testimonies. Even more, the history of the institute gives the opportunity to study the real and imaginary issues of education and transmission of the art in contemporary era. At the present time when schools of fine arts deliberate and organize the third stage of LMD in accordance with Bologna process, the PhD presents an historical and critical analysis of a perfect precursor.