Eric Steen, alumni of the Art & Social Practice concentration at PSU, was awarded Outstanding Instructor of the year in the Letters, Arts & Sciences college at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The prestigious award was given to only two instructors out of a total of twenty departments in the college. The award was based on recommendations from colleagues, students, and after class-visits from committee members. Eric has taught community based and socially engaged art classes at the university for three years and began his teaching career as Faculty of Record while a grad student at PSU.

faculty,visiting artists, and alumni of Portland State University's Art and Social Practice MFA Program. Visitors

of the exhibition will be able to assemble their own workbook from printouts of the text designed by students of 

the program, Erin Charpentier and Travis Neel. Visitors will also be invited to submit their own assignments for 

possible use in the workbook. This exhibition will accompany a lecture by Professor and Co-director of the 

program Jen Delos Reyes, regarding the topic of education and Art and Social Practice. Also on display, a 

collective bibliography and relevant framing questions by Paul Ramirez-Jonas, a visiting professor in the program.

Participating Artists:

The exhibition will run from March 20 - April 7 at Civic Space in Windsor, ON.

The lecture will take place on March 21 at 12pm at the School of Arts and Creative Innovation, University of Windsor.

For this exhibition of the work at Field Work, the Art and Social Practice MFA program has displayed these pieces of advice in their neighborhood. The posters are displayed in the windows of Field Work, as well as in the windows of nearby organizations and businesses.

For more information on the project visit: www.communityadvice.org

Bio

In her socially-based art practice, Susan O’Malley uses simple and recognizable tools of engagement – offering Pep Talks, asking for advice from strangers, installing roomfuls of inspirational posters, distributing flyers in neighborhood mailboxes, conducting doodle competitions at high schools – in order to offer entry points into the understood, and sometimes humorous, interactions of everyday life. Interested in shifting these otherwise mundane exchanges into heightened experiences, O’Malley’s projects rely on the backand- forth between herself and others in the creation of the artwork. Ultimately O’Malley’s projects aspire to incite hope, optimism and a sense of interconnectedness in our lives.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, O’Malley received her MFA from California College of the Arts’ Social Practice Area. As both an artist and curator, she has participated in programs and exhibitions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally in Denmark and Poland.

Today started early, with a committed group of PDX students attending a serene hour of Yoga led by teacher in training, Nikki.  None of us would have believed it was her first class teaching, we were so calm. 

A quick check-in with our classmates afar, then we headed downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Craft to meet with curator Sarah Margolis-Pineo to discuss our residency there leading up to Open Engagement.  

Then we had Lunch. (Some of us went to Little Big Burger for junk food, and others to Yogapearl for health food).  

The first of our afternoon meetings was at the new space of the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.  There we were greeted by Visual Art Curator Kristan Kennedy.  We spoke with her about two related opportunities. The first was possibility to use PICA's space for programming for Open Engagement, which we graciously accepted.  The second order of business was to talk about the possibility of our program curating an artist in residence in the resource centre. It looks like we'll be artists in residence there starting somewhere near April 1st, 2013.  

Join us on Friday, November 30 for a talk in which Carmen Papalia, MFA candidate in Art & Social Practice at PSU, will share his approach in creating solidarity around the goals of the Disability political movement through the production of participatory socially-engaged Art.

See for Yourself
Friday, November 30, 2012
Project Grow (2124 N. Williams Ave.)
6:00PM – 8:00PM
FREE!

Bad at Sports has started posting their interviews from Open Engagement.

Check it out:

http://badatsports.com/2012/episode-376-shannon-jackson-jen-delos-reyes/

This past week, adjunct faculty member and artist in residence at the Portland Art Museum, Paul Ramirez Jonas, came to Portland to lead us in a three day intensive.

The purpose of the intensive was to collectively develop a curatorial statement for Shine a Light 2013, an annual collaboration between the Portland Art Museum and the PSU Art and Social Practice MFA program. Every year for Shine a Light, MFA students host a collection of projects that enable museum goers to engage with the art and the museum itself in unconventional ways.   

The intensive was structured around ideas of the museum as site-specific, time-specific, and people-specific.  

We read a number of articles from a variety of thinkers including Tom Finkelpearl, Miwon Kwon, Claire Bishop, and Jurgen Habermas.  We also read sections of Disenchanted Night a book by Wolfgang Schivelbusch that chronicles the effects of artificial light on our relationship to the night.  

Perhaps the highlight of the intensive was an excursion in which a dozen of us explored the city on foot and bicycle 'observing the night'.  We split up and met back at the museum and compared notes until about 11.30 pm. 

SAVE THE DATE: Sine a Light Friday, May 17th, 2013.

From September 19-23, 2012 the Hyde Park Art Center will host Jen Delos Reyes and the Center for Art and Social Practice at Expo Chicago where they will present, “Selling It.” The Center for Art and Social Practice is directed by Jen Delos Reyes and was developed out of PSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA program. “Selling It” is an extension of and precursor to the Center for Art and Social Practice the Center which Delos Reyes will bring to the Hyde Park Art Center the summer of 2013. “Selling It” provides representation for artists who have created socially engaged work from across the country at the fair exploring of the place and role of socially engaged art in a market system.

Who and what is represented and how if the work is not primarily by nature object based? How can these practices be financially viable? Are there alternate funding sources to support this kind of work that can come from the market system? How are artists, participants and collaborators compensated, or not?

The Center for Art and Social Practice addresses the need for the support of research, consulting, presentations/interventions, and public programming within the field of art and social practice. The Center is dedicated to the idea that artists can develop and utilize their own artistic skills to engage in society and their own communities, as well as hold the mission of serving as a hub that fosters dialogues between artists and institutions invested in this way of working.

Represented artists and projects included at Expo:

Harrell Fletcher

Lee Walton

Lori Gordon

Ariana Jacob

Crystal Baxley

Songs on Conceptual Art

July 3, 2012 - 12:00am — Philip De Give