2023-24 Book Clubs
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Why I Make Art: Contemporary Artists' Stories About Life & Work by Brian Alfred
Are you interested in teaching contemporary art? Do you want to know more about designing conceptual art assignments?
Eyes On Contemporary Art is joining with the PAEA Book Club this year! We are collaboratively reading Podcaster and PSU Fine Arts Professor, Brian Alfred’s beautiful book, Why I Make Art. In the book, he has selected thirty illuminating profiles (from around 400 interviews he has created for the podcast) of working artists and they share their influences and experiences that inspire them to create art in America today.
Schedule - (First Thursday of the month starting 11/2)
Session 1: November 2, 2023
Session 2: December 7, 2023
Session 3: January 4, 2024
Session 4: February 1, 2024
Session 5: March 7, 2024
Session 6: May 2, 2024
This compelling volume explores the practices and life stories of artists across multiple mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture and land art. Offering readers an intimate, contemplative view of each remarkable creator, Why I Make Art examines themes as varied as music and skateboarding, immigration and statelessness, community and identity.
Some of you may believe you don’t have time to read and we get that. As an alternative, you can listen to the podcasts and hear the artists in their own words. All material for this book was gathered from the archives of Sound & Vision, a podcast directed by American artist and educator Brian Alfred, Why I Make Art presents interviews with artists conducted between 2016 and 2020—four tumultuous years in America and around the world.
Artists include: Diana Al-Hadid, Dove Bradshaw, Gregory Crewdson, Heather Day, Jules de Balincourt, Inka Essenhigh, Amir Fallah, Louis Fratino, Karel Funk, Dominique Fung, Vanessa German, Allison Janae Hamilton, Loie Hollowell, Kahlil Robert Irving, Clinton King, Chris Martin, Tony Matelli, Tomokasu Matsuyama, Geoff McFetridge, Maysha Mohamedi, Liz Nielsen, Helen O’Leary, Carl Ostendarp, Hilary Pecis, Erin M. Riley, James Siena, Devan Shimoyama, Cauleen Smith, Salman Toor, Robin F. Williams and more.
To Purchase Book
Sessions Cost: PAEA Members: Free | NAEA Members: $25 | Non-Members: $50
Act 48 Hours: Up to 18
Artmaking, Play, and Meaning Making by Sydney Walker
Schedule
Tuesday Nights, 2024 | 7 PM – 8 PM | January 9 & 23 + February 6 & 20
Are you interested in using play in your classroom to provoke new ways of thinking? Do you struggle with finding ways to get students to take risks and experiment without the fear of failure? Was Wicked Arts an inspiring book but maybe just a little to radical? Join us as we collectively explore this impactful new book written by Sydney Walker. The author draws from contemporary artists and classroom artmaking to demonstrate how paradoxical play works to evoke diverse thought and challenges students to move beyond traditional artmaking. Walker provides art educators with the theoretical underpinnings as well as a set of approaches that can be conceptualized as a form of play. She introduces six kinds of play and contemporary artists whose work exemplifies these kinds of play. In each chapter, she distinguishes the characteristics of play involved and shows how they look in the lives of students. This book will inspire art educators in all levels, as well as public and private school settings.
Sessions Cost: PAEA Members: Free | NAEA Members: $20 | Non-Members: $40
Act 48 Hours: Up to 12
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin
Schedule
Monday Nights | 7 PM – 8 PM | March 11 & 25 + April 15 & 29
Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.
The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
Sessions Cost: PAEA Members: Free | NAEA Members: $20 | Non-Members: $40
Act 48 Hours: Up to 12