Walking (making art out there)
3.000 Credits
Angela Battle
INTENDED AUDIENCE
Open to majors and non-majors of all class levels. Requires instructor permission to enroll.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
A summer interim session landscape painting and drawing course. After becoming familiar with the tradition of landscape art from the 18th through the 21st. centuries, we will travel to the Badlands of South Dakota for an eight-day camping adventure to capture the landscape and sky using a variety of painting and drawing materials. Upon our return we will further develop selected works by synthesizing both visual and journal recordings and present a group exhibition to the university community. Open to majors and non-majors. No previous art making experience necessary just a willingness to learn.
Week 1
Get to know the art materials specific to walking and art making.
Prepare surfaces and materials for outdoor painting and drawing.
Prepare and begin writing journal – for required daily entries throughout the course related to the readings – you will be expected to thoroughly analyze the topics and authors and to use these written analyses in our group seminar discussions of the same. The journal will also include your thoughts and experiences regarding our trip, the landscape and your personal translations into visual art. You will be expected to accompany your visual translations with written descriptive ones.
Slide presentation and seminar discussion of readings related to the American landscape painters of the 18 and 19th centuries – Caspar David Frederich, Frederich Church, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and others.
Slide presentation of contemporary artists Russell Croty, Alexis Rockman, Ugo Rondinone and others who are relative to ‘making art out there’.
Do some preliminary local landscape art making.
Prepare for trip: organize camping equipment, food shop, pack, etc.
Week 2
Set out for the Badlands of South Dakota.
Set up camp.
Walk.
Make art, critically analyze, discuss, revise, make more.
Daily written entries in Walking journal to include analysis of readings and descriptions of landscapes related to artworks.
Have discussions of assigned readings around the campfire.
Week 3
Return from the Badlands.
Create a further developed painting derived from Badlands works and selected journal entries.
Polish up journal for my evaluation.
Evaluate and polish selected art works and journal entries for an exhibition in the Weeks Gallery.
Form remaining works into portfolio for my evaluation.
A working bibliography:
Walking. Henry David Thoreau. To be discussed in the Badlands.
The Land of Little Rain. Mary Austin. To be discussed in the Badlands.
The Sublime in the Old World and the New. Andrew Wilton in American Sublime – Landscape painting in the United States 1820-1880. To be discussed before departure.
Hundreds and Thousands The Journals of an Artist. Emily Carr. To be discussed before departure. Intended as an example of journalistic nature writing.
Desert Solitude. Edward Abbey. A selection to be discussed at the Badlands.
Course learning objectives:
- To become familiar with 18 – 21st. century landscape artists with an understanding of the changing relationship to landscape that such art implies.
- To become familiar with the working methods of these artists and how art making on site was translated into larger more developed works back in the artist’s studio.
- To critically evaluate and analyze writings related to these artists and by authors who use journaling and essays to illuminate unique perspectives on landscape.
- To become familiar with artistic technical approaches to landscape art and to employ these techniques in the field.
- To create a working journal of nature writing in the form of analyses and personal reflection.
- To create a unique portfolio of drawings and paintings.
- To experience the presentation of one’s works in the form of a public exhibition.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Associate Professor Angela Battle teaches all levels of painting in the Department of Art and Design. She holds the terminal degree of Master of Fine Arts in Painting form the University of New Mexico and with a bachelor’s degree in biology, her professional interests in the intersections of art, nature and science are reflected not only in her own beeswax paintings but in the teaching of such courses as Microcosm/Macrocosm (a art and natural history course).