Teaching:

I have been fortunate to study and in turn to teach a rigorous interdisciplinary practice of painting, drawing, digital media and new genres. Beginning with Italian Renaissance and Japanese drawing techniques, I was given the sense early on that realism, abstraction and minimalism exist along a spectrum and share a perceptual language. More recently, digital frameworks and performance tactics have further expanded my understanding of representation to include the conceptual and even biological implications of picturing another human being or life form. While in-depth study sheds light across various fields, interdisciplinarity and the necessary audacity - and modesty - of the amateur also illustrate how little it can take to experience or communicate meaning. Doing more, or doing something else, we often find that doing less can benefit what we still paradoxically call 'the work'.

The following class descriptions and sample student projects are from courses that I have taught, co-taught and assisted as Guest Lecturer and Teaching Fellow in Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) at Harvard University. For other examples of my independent and collaborative teaching at the intersection of contemporary and historical practices, see www.aestheticrelationalexercises.com.

TIME: Seeing The World As A Picture

Spring Semester 2018, Studio Foundation, Massachusetts College of Art & Design

Visiting Lecturer: Helen Singh-Miller 

Teaching Assistant: Maryam Yoon

Course Description:

Are drawing and painting uniquely concerned with perspectival seeing and point-of-view or a reflection of how we naturally see and make sense of the world? Is the act of seeing a matter of discrete pictures — a series of Muybridge photographs — or is vision inherently seamless? In this course, we will experiment with old and new forms of time-based media, exploring such questions about the nature of appearances and their relationship to human movement. The approaches leveraged in this class will be both traditional and experimental. Illustration, animation, writing, film, and awareness practice will help to illuminate the subtle if significant role that time plays in art and design. Independent projects as well as peer to peer learning will support, challenge, and inspire the development of our work.

TIME: The Art Of Living

Fall Semester 2017 & Spring Semester 2018, Studio Foundation, Massachusetts College of Art & Design

Visiting Lecturer: Helen Singh-Miller 

Teaching Assistant: Maryam Yoon

Course description:

We all have an idea or picture of TIME — the proverbial clock on the classroom wall — but the art of living also requires a sense of timing. A sense of when the alarm clock is going to ring, in case it doesn’t. A sense of when to finish your video so that your audience wishes it would never end. In this course, we will explore our unique and shared experiences of time in the context of daily life, design, and artmaking. Primary projects in time-based media will be supplemented by writing assignments and theoretical readings as we discern and hone the temporal dimension of our work. Awareness practice and meditation will further illuminate our relationship to time while peer to peer learning challenge and support us.

Thesis Seminar: Studio Arts

Academic Years 2011, 12, 13, 14 

Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Teaching Fellow: Helen Miller

Course Description:

The senior thesis is the capstone of the undergraduate student's work in VES. The majority of theses in VES are practice-based, in studio arts or moving-image. Toward the end of their junior year, students propose a thesis project, a substantial body of work that builds on work done in other classes. Each student develops the thesis project in discussion with a faculty advisor, the thesis teaching fellow and fellow thesis students through regular meetings and thesis visits over the course of the academic year. Three times during this period, the student meets with the adviser and two faculty readers for critique and assessment. Thesis advisors and the thesis teaching fellow support students in writing artist statements (and 500 word essays on one another's work, for 2013 and 2014). Thesis projects are exhibited at The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in May.

Drawing Labs

2010-14, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Teaching Fellow: Helen Miller

Class and Lab Description: 

As a teaching fellow in VES, I was incredibly lucky to have the support and freedom to teach drawing in conjunction with somatic practice and movement awareness. In weekly labs open to students from a variety of studio art classes taught by Professors Helen Mirra, Matt Saunders, Katarina Burin and Mungo Thompson, I experimented with enhancing traditional figure drawing lessons and Renaissance and Japanese Drawing techniques with contemporary somatic education, dance and new movement practices. Helen Mirra and I installed a large series of mats in the sculpture studio for the purpose, a designated area which she called the Physical Intelligence Lab; Matt encouraged students interested in painting the figure to join in; Mungo attended several sessions himself; and on multiple occasions Katarina invited me to teach what I was developing around figure drawing to her Drawing 2 students. The open-mindedness, curiosity and generosity of so many teachers, mentors and students provided a context I'll not soon forget.

Post-Studio Studio

Fall Semester 2010, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Mungo Thompson

Teaching Assistant: Helen Miller

How to Light the Pilot in a Gas Stove & How to Slick Back Hair, Youtube Videos, Anna Murphy, Sophomore

Course Description:

In today’s globalized, international art world, nomadic, laptop-based methods of producing and exhibiting art have rendered the traditional studio increasingly marginal to many art practices. How do artists function in, and address, this expanded field for both the production and reception of art? A production-based course that will take place in and around the studio. We will make objects and ephemera, private and public. Media will shift by project but some drawing and scheming will be constant. Goals of the class are fluency with generating ideas, comfort with a number of different types of visual media and approaches to artmaking, and a greater awareness about the contexts we produce art in, and for. Course work will include project assignments and critiques, slide lectures and film/video screenings, and readings and discussion. A visual notebook will also be required. The course will consist of 7 assignments each spaced a few weeks apart: AFTER BALDESSARI, AFTER BUREN, AFTER BARRY, AFTER GONZALEZ-TORRES, AFTER PRICE, AFTER BALDESSARI, AFTER YOURSELF.

Directed Research

Fall Semester 2010, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Mungo Thompson

Teaching Assistant: Helen Miller

Course Description:

A group critique class with emphasis on presenting works in 3 stages: Promotion, Exhibition, Documentation. We will critique the work of two students per class. You will be required to show your work three times, twice during the normal run of the term and once during reading period when we will review everyone’s work in a lightning round that will take one or two long classes. The viewing and discussion of work will be accompanied by promotional and documentation endeavors. A poster, designed by you, promoting your “exhibition,” will be due one week prior to your critique. It will be hung on the wall in the entry of the 5th floor studio at the beginning of class on the week preceding your critique, and it will stay there for one week, generating wonder and anticipation. These posters can be printed or made by hand: painted, drawn, collaged, etc. At the end of the semester, TA Helen Miller has suggested that each student write about another student's final show or presentation for a collective catalog. We will edit and otherwise support you in writing 500-word reviews.

Surface Tensions

Spring Semester 2011, 2013, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Matt Saunders

TA: Helen Miller

Course Description: 

"Surface" considered as formal quality and useful tool. Whether taken to mean literal materials, the chain of ideas cohering a body of work, or painting's Teflon-like durability as cultural tradition, we'll pursue strategies to engage surface: seriality, alternative supports, facture/blur; mechanical tools, casualness and formality. Of particular interest are the challenges posed by seamlessness both in photographic sources and in conversations surrounding abstraction. Emphasis on painting, but other disciplines are welcome.

Conceptual Figure

Fall Semester 2012, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Matt Saunders

TA: Helen Miller

Course Description: 

Model, Person, Subject, Self, Cipher, Being, Effigy, Corpse, Anatomy, Portrait, Body. This painting course will delve into many ways of approaching the human figure. Working first from life, we will also consider the body in media, the body in history, the body in ideas. Note: Open to beginners, while also appropriate for more advanced students.

Postcards from Volcanoes

Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Matt Saunders

TA: Helen Miller

Course Description:

This is an intermediate painting class grounded in individual projects and group critique. Not limited to conventional forms, we will think broadly about the edge between inchoate material and inscribed meaning. Studio work will be coupled with abundant reading and discussion.

Printed Matters

Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Matt Saunders

TA: Helen Miller

Course Description: 

Painting's productive association with the technologies of reproduction. We will think both pre- and post-20th century, considering the analogue (intaglio printing, especially etching and aquatint; also block, book and commercial printing) and digital as worthy collaborators. Workshops in technique will support independent projects in any media.

Drawing 2: Drawing Expanded

Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), Harvard University

Professor: Katarina Burin

TF: Helen Miller

Course Description:

An intermediate studio course to build upon basic skills while exploring various methods and modes of drawing. Emphasis will be placed on individual projects and developing a body of work. This course considers drawing as both an immediate and mediated form, with distanced and nuanced potential. Exploring drawing as an expanded field, as process and installation, students can use various transfer techniques and incorporate found imagery, combining traditional skills and contemporary practice.