I’ll start with the plusses.

FACULTY:  The faculty in the Intermedia Department are amazing, supportive, and leaders in their fields. Dan Collins is an expert in data visualization, rapid prototyping, and 3D fabrication. With his wife, they have numerous public installations throughout Arizona and show internationally regularly. He is easy to talk to, helpful, knowledgable, and “gets” art making. Angela Ellsworth is incredibly supportive, and went out of her way to lend me books about art and meditation when I was researching that topic.  She is a master of performance art and art interventions.  As some one who dabbled in this area before grad school I enjoyed learning more about the history of the practice.  Performance art can be exhilarating and intimidating, and is not for everyone, but Angela would be a good person to connect with if you do any kind of interactivity.  Muriel runs the video, flash, and web art arena.  She is the one faculty member who understand the need for easy access to equipment and has defended her stock for video cameras, green screens, editing labs, etc very well.  Gregory Sale is our new tenure track professor who works with community arts and public practice.  He is also very supportive and open to including students in his own massive far reaching projects.  His classroom tactics are somewhat less traditional and he favors group work, but the projects that come out of his classes are often of a scale that is beyond the capabilities of any one student.

It should be noted that most studio classes at ASU are mixed undergrad and grad (usually about 10 undergrad and up to 5 grad).  This has plusses and minuses, but I tend to think the undergrads do more to slow the grads down than the grads do to raise the level of the undergrads.

GPSA: The Graduate and Professional Student Association at ASU is an excellent way to get funding.  They offer research and jumpstart grants every year.  The application is quite long, but I’ve found that is a good exercise and can even help solidify your ideas when writing it out.  I think I applied for six grants from them total over the three years and was awarded four.

ARTCORE:  In my mind, teaching foundation courses through the ArtCore, run by Dan Collins, was the best part of the ASU program.  I came to grad school because I wanted to teach 3D foundations when I was done, but through ASU I was able to teach seven semesters of 3D Design and two semesters of Introduction to Digital Media.  This experience is invaluable, and helps significantly with the cost of tuition.  The way it is set up, you are technically a TA, but have run of your own classroom, do your own projects, and grading.  The wiki we have built for the ArtCore is an immense resource for new art teachers.  I can’t say enough good things about the ArtCore.

And now the areas that need improvement.

FACILITIES: Outside of video art, the Intermedia program has next to no resources.  The way the departments are set up, it is very hard to get access to another departments facilities, like the wood shop or sculpture shop.  Basically, if you are not taking a class in another department, you can not use their tools.  This created some problems for me as an interactive sculptor, to the point where I bought by own table saw (with the help of the GPSA grant funding).  Studio space for Intermedia is an equal problem.  While we do have studio space for all of our grads, I had several problems with facilities management about actually making art in said studios.  These room are more set up to be digital / clean rooms, and cutting wood, girding metal, etc is frowned upon.  There is no Intermedia shop or shared graduate shop.  The sculpture department used to offer a one credit course in sculpture safety that gave easy access to their facilities, but the course has since been cut from the list.  If you are a maker of physical objects, you may want to look elsewhere.

TECHNOLOGY:  While our faculty are amazing, it should be noted from above that we have no faculty in physical computing or computer programming.  It is possible to take undergrad courses in programming but they will not count towards your degree.  There is one class offered in Arduino use, through the sculpture department, and one course sporadically offered in MAX/MSP through the School of Dance, but that’s about it.  We also do not have any faculty in electronic music.  This was such a problem that we actually lost two amazing grads who were electronic / installation musicians in my first year.  Again, if you use physical computing or music in your work you may wish to look elsewhere or be prepared to teach yourself any new techniques you require.  Our faculty do support this kind of work, they just can’t help with any technical problems you may run into.  If hiring were up to me, I’d look for a visiting professor in physical computing / programing as soon as I could fund it.

That about sums it up.  Again, I think it is an excellent program, and am pleased with what I was able to achieve.  

Needs a little work. Why is drawing so evasive?

Here are some photos from my initial set up, making a 14′ box beam to ships the boat on upside down, and the 5 station forms to make up the shape of the boat. Platt, the plan maker, recommends usinf cardboard but I used OSB since I had so much left over from The gallery is no place for artists.

Opening an Etsy shop has been on my to do list for too long, so today I am making it real.  The shop will host a variety of my more fun, functional, and craft based projects, starting with deer head pins and freedom ties at affordable prices.  In the near future, I hope to bring my good friend Aimee Belanger along for the ride by adding some of her wonderful prints.  Here’s the link: http://www.etsy.com/shop/RAWRdesign

To celebrate this new chapter in the wild west I have made a revolver silk screen, an will be happy to print it on any clothing you’d like March 21-22 free of charge. I have colors white, pink, turquoise, and brown, but will print any other color you bring me.

Whether these prints are for or against guns is up to you. I’m for visibility of the issue.

UPDATE: Thanks to all the media coverage of this issue, and a large response from the populace, SB1474 was not passed by the AZ Senate.

I just wanted to let you know about an exciting opportunity to fund my work:  Tranquility is now live on Kickstarter!

Until 5 April 2012, you can be part of what makes the magic happen, and score some cool rewards in the process.  Check it out here.

Also, if you didn’t get enough of Tranquility at the Harry Wood Gallery, the rover will be at the Mesa Festival of Creativity from March 9th to March 19th, Noon – 6:00PM.  Hope to see you there.