CAA News Today

STATEMENT

As a member of CAA since 1987 and attending the conference nearly every year, I feel I understand and grow the continuing mission of the organization. I am a visual artist and have always found the annual conference to be influential for not only my own practice, but my teaching. The mission to “cultivate the ongoing understanding of art as a fundamental form of human expression” is necessary today more than ever. As scholars, reinforcing how art addresses human dignity and empathy is our greatest challenge.

What used to be 5-year strategic plans in higher education have grown to 20- 40-year strategic plans. Things change, and they change fast. Students change and we have to educate ourselves to their new natures. The workplace changes, and we have to educate ourselves to understand a changing higher administration. The country is changing faster than we thought possible, and the world itself is not the same as it was even five years ago.  There are those that believe higher education has “peaked” and we are on the downward slide. Adam Harris in the Atlantic says, “we are living through the greatest time in history to be a learner, with the availability of so many high-quality free materials online. But at the same time, the institutions most affiliated with knowledge and learning are facing crisis.”  That includes budget cuts, declining enrollments, student debt, declining research dollars, loss of faculty lines, etc. etc. None of this is new to any of us. Some programs take a proactive approach and innovate their way out of these problems, going on-line and increasing continuing education, building a wider audience.  Will these approaches last? Are they the answer?

The basic issues that drives us, as art educators, have not changed. We value the arts and the humanity that comes with it. We feel they are more important now than they ever have been. The argument that you cannot get a job over-rides real data, which proves that there are more jobs out there for creative thinkers than ever before. The empathy we feel for our society turns out to be the major solution for our survival.

Yes, we can tackle some of the nuts and bolt issues, but our main goal is to tackle the perception that the arts don’t matter. This is where CAA comes in. We work not only in higher ed, but in communities in urban and rural areas, we partner, and we touch people. We don’t all come from the same place, yet we have everything in common.

Nearly 30 years in academia has shown me that hurtles can be surmounted, that compromise can take place, and we can retool education for the world our students live in. Working in both private and public universities has offered different kinds of experiences so the constraints we all feel are not new to me. It would be an honor to work alongside other scholars, artists, critics, and curators as a CAA board member.

Download Lynne Allen’s Resume

STATEMENT

I have been an active member of the College Art Association for more than twenty years and I truly respect and appreciate the forum the association provides for us to refine our collective wisdom through advocacy, engagement and vision.

As a member of the CAA Board of Directors I will endeavor to advance the inclusivity, breadth, and depth of our membership, and encourage greater reciprocity with our peer organizations. With such intent, I currently serve as a member of the Executive Committee and as the Chair of the Commission on Accreditation for the National Association of Art and Design (NASAD). Through this work, as well as past and present work with other organizations, I support active participation that I believe strengthens our prospects for a richly collaborative future. The creative economy, broader advocacy for the arts, greater student involvement, and emergent technologies as methods of building community are examples of areas that I believe are worthy of ongoing consideration for the future of the association – all of which must be on an increasingly global stage.

The heart of my own purpose, within the visual arts in higher education, is to always encourage professional success in concert with personal fulfillment. I believe that we must nurture creativity in both our students and our colleagues; engage in bold conversations about grand ideas; and compel purpose and establish identity through our shared endeavors.

As a member of the CAA Board of Directors I will offer you leadership derived from the breadth of my international experience in concert with an extensive academic background. As an artist, educator, and administrator functioning across complex organizations, I relish the opportunity to give back to our CAA community through my service to the board. I would appreciate your vote! Thank you.

Download Greg Watts’s Resume

STATEMENT

Hello, I’m Niku Kashef, a Los Angeles based artist, educator, and independent curator. I also maintain a commercial photography practice. I have both taught and exhibited work at the local and international levels and produced arts programming for more than a decade. I came to academia after a long time away working in various other areas in the arts, namely: Los Angeles theater; design and video production; technology; building professional resources for creatives in commercial and fine-art; co-developing one of the first online portfolio hosting resources for artists and working in the commercial arts.

I question how non-constituents can become further involved, and how we can more broadly reach and bring the standards set by CAA to contingent faculty, non-academic artists, and those balancing other arts careers like the commercial-arts/design professionals. I excited by the focus of CAA’s Strategic plan to extend the dialogue we have with each other once a year in more dynamic ways beyond the February conference to include regional meetings, outreach, networking opportunities and for our members to find new ways to share scholarship and advocacy work in underrepresented areas.

I am also interested in bringing diversity and representation to the Board from my roles as a part-time lecturer of art, a full-time interdisciplinary artist, a full-time single mother, a part-time commercial artist, a past Director for the National Women’s Caucus for Art, a two-time Past-President of the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art, an independent curator, and an Angelino. My practice in all these areas begins with non-hierarchical feminist values of equity and agency for diverse perspectives. I believe these varied experiences allow me to identify with many of our CAA members, and engage the larger community who balance their practice by wearing multiple-hats.

My interest to serving on the CAA Board stems from the desire to offer more resources for individuals like myself while fostering closer relationships with the non-academic art community, art historians, curators, and arts administrators. I was first introduced to CAA in 2007 during graduate school. While a member of CAA, I have served on two committees: Student and Emerging Professionals (SEPC) for three years and Services to Artists (SAC) for four years, the latter of which I have additionally served on as Chair for an additional three years. The SAC produces content for ARTspace and MediaLounge as well as the Distinguished Artist interviews and ARTexchange.

The participation in production of conference offerings, sharing time, space and ideas with like-minded peers, as well as a desire to be of service to young artists’ professional development was the powerful draw that brought me to join the SEPC. On that committee I helped create the mock interviews and what would later become the informal “discussions” now named the brown bag lunch.

During my time with SAC, I helped create a series of panels about artists in non-traditional career paths, parent-artist and family collaborations, and balancing family/personal life and practice; I have continued this series of artist-as-parent offerings yearly since it’s inception. I have also helped lead the development of a new dynamic conference offering “Open Source: Artist Resource Roundtables” bringing local and National organizations to a dynamic roundtable format.

If elected to the Board, I feel my background can support the concerns of the full spectrum of CAA’s membership as well as speak to ways we can consider how to expand our advocacy in underrepresented areas in our arts community.

Download Niku Kashef’s Resume

STATEMENT

I have dedicated my 20-year professional career to educate, to support, and to advance artists and cultural production in the visual arts at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), where I serve currently as Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs. A small, independent fine arts college founded in 1871, SFAI is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art. SFAI’s core philosophy is one of fostering creativity and critical thinking in an open, experimental, and interdisciplinary environment. This mission statement informs my approach to and work within the visual arts generally, and I believe CAA shares a similar ethos, one that should be advanced to ensure its organizational longevity and relevancy for its members. That, in brief, is my main motivation for joining the Board of Directors.

As reflected on my CV, I serve this professional and personal mission through many board positions with non-profit organizations –including the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, ME and Oakwood Arts/P35 in Richmond, VA. Both organizations, although distinct from one another in several ways, exist and were founded to advance creativity and artists’ roles in our society. Both are sustained by a shared belief in this value proposition, which places education at the fore. Higher education, specifically liberal and visual arts education, is increasingly under attack by a dangerous national rhetoric which aims to assault intellectualism, critical and creative thinking. Our roles – as arts administrators, scholars, and practitioners — therefore is exceedingly important against such a cultural context. Advocacy, which is a platform I believe CAA can steward in a more impactful manner, becomes even more urgent.

Currently, it is my desire to return serving a membership organization. As President Emerita of ArtTable, Inc., a non-profit membership organization dedicated to advancing women’s leadership in the visual arts, I’m familiar with the challenges inherent in stewarding organizational initiatives toward member responsiveness. I am excited by the prospect of serving a member-based organization dedicated to advancing scholarship of and advocacy for art and design. Toward that end, I believe unequivocally in Executive Director Hunter O’Hanian’s recent statement, “We must be a leader in the national conversation about the future of art history and studio arts education; indeed, we can work to strengthen all humanities departments in colleges and universities.” Organizations as august as CAA must be responsive to its membership base, cognizant of the ever-shifting landscape of higher education, while balancing the tensions of its founding mission and ethos with the pressure to remain relevant. I have a proven track record of stewarding initiatives in response to a diverse membership base, as my tenure with ArtTable demonstrates. Specifically, I led a strategic planning process that gave more autonomy to its members outside of the tri-state area (ArtTable’s offices are in midtown Manhattan), enhanced programming that addressed prescient issues facing women leaders in the visual arts, and expanded our mentoring initiatives to support emerging leaders in the field. I deduce from many conversations with members of CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts (which I chair currently) a shared desire to expand CAA programming along similar vectors. That is a task I am ready for, and I would welcome the opportunity to serve CAA members.

Download Jennifer Rissler’s Resume

STATEMENT

My primary goal if elected to the Board will be to advocate for growing the international presence and global engagement of CAA. As a practicing artist, seasoned educator, and project initiator based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for more than a decade, the unique asset I bring to the Board is my extensive experience as an active participant within international art worlds. This has included building connections between people and places—which have fostered cross-cultural explorations within an international context. This is evident in the many projects I have organized over twenty years of my professional practice as well as in my academic and administrative positions in the UAE. My most recent and monumental accomplishment as a facilitator of building international relationships for both individual artists and international institutions was as Artistic Director of the International Symposium on Electronic Art organized in Dubai (ISEA2014) on the theme of Location: Where Art, Science and Technology Come Together. Over ten days, more than 250 participants travelled to Dubai where exhibitions, installations and an academic conference were held at the major universities in the UAE as well as in more than thirty non-profit and institutional spaces. All the participating artists and institutions grew lasting international connections through that one event. Perhaps there are ways to similarly engage wider international participation in CAA’s conference and other activities. This certainly is a way I would like to foster an international network of peers comprising academics, artists, designers, architects, and industry specialists, along with important community stakeholders, who also could contribute to innovative strategizing with the CAA.

Another position I would promote on the Board is art as advocacy. I believe my experience as a practicing artist and my use of multidisciplinary approaches in art practices demonstrates my passionately held commitment to various media as well as to art that addresses pressing contemporary issues – including rising sea levels and their possible effect on the evolving ecosystems of islands which my own art practice engages. As a Board Member, I would explore ways for CAA to more proactively encourage and display art that incorporates advocacy at our annual conference, as well as online. This could become an annual event or competition which would again attract international attention and participation.

As Professor and Associate Dean at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises of Zayed University in Dubai, as well as being Canadian, I am in a unique position to represent international concerns and opportunities to the Board. Throughout more than a decade in the UAE, as an academic and administrator I have contributed to the dynamic development of the arts community here, including teaching successive cohorts of women, many who subsequently became leading Emirati artists, even representing the UAE at the Venice Biennale and in other international exhibitions. In the UAE I have engaged the opportunity to build, imagine and support a vision where artists and their art from different countries and cultures can build bridges of understanding between communities. Believing that cultural understanding should be an integral component in the teaching of art and design, I will support CAA programs that promote connections between artists and institutions internationally.  This also can contribute to growing CAA’s membership.

CAA has continued to develop and improve its organizational structure and its communications. In particular, in the last year CAA made a bold move with new branding while also promoting the diverse nature of its membership. I certainly will support these ongoing Board initiatives. I have been a member of CAA since 1999 and most recently have been a member of CAA’s International Committee. I envision CAA playing a larger role internationally to achieve its vision of supporting all visual arts professionals, including in the areas of design and architecture, while strengthening a diverse membership of art historians. I would also promote the growing online presence of CAA. Engaging with new technologies is essential for building an international profile. This engages emerging professionals, strengthens communication and publications throughout the year, and promotes those artists and designers who are CAA members.

Through team efforts across all aspects of CAA’s activities, I look forward to the possibility of promoting cultural and intellectual exchanges between our community of designers, architects, and art historians with international cohorts. It is a future CAA integrated internationally that I look forward to.

Download Janet Bellotto’s Resume