Carol Adelman Teaching

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Overview

I have had the opportunity to introduce students to studio fundamentals as well as to bring them to the culmination of their training on the graduate level.

Within an intellectual approach to studio that connects students to course content on the highest possible conceptual level, I remain pragmatic with respect to materials in order to reinforce a sensual, physical relationship to process and to keep the class grounded. I teach to the top of students' potential and then a step beyond while taking care to keep the work connected to the simplest properties of materials. Students must always see that there is yet another level to which they can aspire in their work and that there is a tradition and a history from which they have sprung.

Whether it is a fundamentals class or graduate school, all levels of sophistication within a given subject area are presented and available to all students at all times, making the individual students themselves the determinants of how far, how deep, and how sophisticated their understanding and the application of their learning will become. Ideally, my criticism may be accessed on any level.

While students always have access to information, there will be times that some students may not immediately grow beyond a superficial understanding of the content in question. It has been my view that this will deepen with time and that the definition of a good education is one that continues to unfold over a lifetime and may not be completely known within the confines of one class, one year, or even one degree program.

Philosophy

My teaching establishes a personal relationship with materials first and foremost. All making is tied to individual ideation and the development of a core artistic process in lessons even as students acquire simple skills. The embedded subtext of individual discovery and conceptual inquiry runs through the entirety of my curriculum from fundamentals on to the graduate level.

I acknowledge little fundamental difference between abstraction and representation, although the observational model is an important aspect of my instruction–particularly on the introductory level. Abstractions become the fundamental building blocks that may assemble themselves into images or in and of themselves become a resolution to a more complex graphic problem. We deconstruct the elements of visual language in isolation to rigorously mine and define their fullest potential before reassembling them and building towards a personal statement. My role as a critic is to push the students, to introduce new ideological models, methodologies, and references as we hone their work towards a specific, individual and well-informed commentary.

Carol Mallett Adelman
March 2011