CAA News Today

STATEMENT

I greatly value the College Art Association’s steadfast advocacy for visual arts professionals. I am eager to contribute to its work as an essential resource for a diverse body of practitioners to intellectually engage in the field.

As a working artist, academic, and member since 2010, I regularly interact with CAA content and programming in a variety of ways and am excited about the organization’s strategic plan to diversify communication channels and connect with under-represented visual arts professionals and communities.

An area of particular interest to me is welcoming community college faculty and students to participate as an important aspect of a vibrant future for CAA. As an Associate Professor at CUNY-LaGuardia Community College in Queens, NY, I meet non-traditional students as they enter a transitional space of learning, as the first step into a study field that leads to various modes of continued education and engagement with the arts.  Being an artist and professor who started her own educational path at a community college, I recognize the powerful impact that envisioning a professional future in the arts has on students.  At LaGuardia, I have worked to develop curricula that expands learning beyond the studio, through experiential learning opportunities and exposure to learning outside of the classroom.

As enrollment in community colleges has grown significantly, these faculty are a vital constituency as they design programs and mentor students in pursuing continued education and careers in the arts. I believe that CAA-affiliated regional events around core issues could provide opportunities to interact with colleagues from senior colleges, graduate programs and institutions to strengthen best practices. I would also advocate for more mentoring opportunities for people at different points in their careers.

As a working artist, I exhibit regularly and widely, and have received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, MacDowell Colony, New Jersey State Council on The Arts, amongst others.  Another area of interest is growing the platforms for CAA members to share resources and research, through both events and digitally, with those outside of academia, including unaffiliated artists. Expanding CAA’s support for artists through micro-conferences, exhibition support and an active online community are potential ways to connect beyond the annual conference, fortify networks between ongoing research and practice, and to invigorate and inspire future members.

I am dedicated to expanding the diversity of voices in the creation, teaching and analysis of visual art. If elected, I would take on the role of CAA board member with an active, serious commitment to serve all members as well as further the organization’s mission and vision.

Download Dahlia Elsayed’s Resume

STATEMENT

I am a practicing, trans-disciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn and Mexico City. My work is intended to connect various cultures through the platform of contemporary art by engaging creative practices that promote dignity, shared values, diversity, and collaboration through reciprocal exchange of knowledge. I have initiated projects with the Yanomami of the Venezuela Amazon to document their oral history (ongoing); continue developing collaborative projects with traditional stilt dancing groups from Trinidad and Tobago, Brooklyn and Oaxaca and master artisans from Mexico that combine dance, music, costuming, procession and protest; as well as directed a 10-year effort to repatriate the remains of Julia Pastrana (1834-1860) Mexican Opera Singer whose body was kept at the Schreiner Collection in Oslo and was successfully repatriated to Mexico for her burial in 2013.

My work seeks to further the expectations of socially-engaged art by moving across disciplines by involving collaborators across various fields such as archivists, scientists, activists, rock stars, burlesque performers, street dancers, traditional artisans, traditional stilt dancers, theater companies, storytellers, writers, international institutions and government officials.

I have worked for over 30 years as an artist, educator and researcher.  As a CAA Board Member I offer a perspective that is uniquely informed by my bi-cultural background and my extensive collaborative artistic experiences in Mexico, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway and the United States. All of which I believe have prepared me to serve and further CAA´s international leadership and its mission to promote visual arts and their understanding through advocacy, intellectual engagement and a commitment to the diversity of practices and practitioners.

Download Laura Anderson Barbata’s Resume

STATEMENT

The College Art Association strategically invests in its future with Professional Development Fellowships. I received a College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship when I was a graduate student and immigrant in the United States with permanent resident status. This award provided critical resources that contributed to my securing a tenure-track position at a research institution. Twenty-years later, I am a naturalized and tenured African-American design scholar with distinction. This achievement is one that I do not take for granted. I give back to the College Art Association through service.

The College Art Association’s mission includes culturally diversifying its membership and intellectual capital. I have experience dealing with the challenges associated with this critical task: as a Black youth from a low-income community who fell in love with art; as a minority, junior professor with a Master of Fine Arts pursuing tenure at a research institution; and now as a scholar and administrator confronted by ‘wicked’ barriers to inclusion that include the perennial, melee between socio-economic factors and institutional bureaucracy.

One way that the College Art Association confronts barriers to inclusion is by collaborating with its Affiliated Societies to pave a path through a massive, digital, network of texts and images from different cultures. With this approach, the critical and creative undergirding of the organization’s intellectual capital has the potential to diversify slowly but steadily. I aim to propel diversification efforts forward with strategies that broaden the organization’s intellectual reservoir with new knowledge about culture gleaned from interdisciplinary, positivist, and empirical methods.

A second way that the College Art Association confronts barriers to inclusion is by using technology to transcend socio-economic challenges with professional-development webinars. A decade ago, I competitively secured funding from the AIGA to deliver a virtual design conference titled Global Interaction in Design Education that disseminated new knowledge generated by graphic design scholars from around the world including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. The question I have now is: Can we secure funding to develop a robust technological infrastructure within the College Art Association that supports the scholarly dissemination of creative work and research findings?

A third way that the College Art Association confronts barriers to inclusion is by cultivating the involvement of designers—an intellectually underrepresented community in the organization’s membership. I can recall early in my academic career gravitating away from the annual College Art Association conferences due to a perceived exiguous representation of designers. Today, I am a member of the College Art Association’s Inaugural Committee on Design where I help to develop design content for its annual conference and publications and integrate design language and issues into the organizations’ internal and external communication processes.

I am eager to continue service to the College Art Association through leadership on its Board of Directors. If elected, I plan to further cultivate and sustain cultural and intellectual diversity within the organization’s membership and operating activities to increase individual and institutional memberships and conference participation.

Download Audrey G. Bennett’s Resume