July 8 - 12

The Earth Of: Ruptures and Reckonings

Ginger Teppner & Andrew Helton

The Earth Of: Ruptures and Reckonings is a collective space of inquiry. Through writing and discourse we investigate how to manifest and inhabit the fractures that pervade our lives, allowing for the creative space to grow organically through digressions, tangents, musings, and synchronistic linkages

What does it mean when humanity crosses a threshold of such significance it manifests as a rupture, when the world is on the cusp? The brain wants to organize, filter, and separate out. Yet, beyond the confusion perpetrated by language that fails to adequately define, are spaces. We find meaning when we implicitly inhabit these spaces—gestures that guide the cracks to spread toward shattering. These moments of rupture burst forth from gesture into reckoning, exposing us to what is real and true and essential.

August 20 - 27

The Arts of Teaching and Learning

David Gersten, Elliot Washor & Steve Lawrence

Teaching and learning are arts, demanding the same care, craft and willingness to take risks inherent to all artistic endeavors. The educational experience is most effective when conceived with the same creative urgency as the works they generate. This principle applies to the structures of education itself: questions of curriculum and governance, disciplinary autonomy and exchange, schedule and credit distribution, all require the same attention to detail and intellectual vitality essential to the creation of any meaningful structure. 

People are transformed when we listen to them. The arts of teaching and learning are listening arts: listening to students’ curiosities, questions and concerns, and helping them develop their questions into their research and works. Education is not the transference of information, it is the art of creating atmospheres within which people can explore their questions. Sometimes these questions are full-throated loud urgencies and other times they are whispers, hints of a fragile curiosity, it is essential that all are heard. Creating an atmosphere of trust, where an individual’s interests are driving their experience is an essential element of education. We must strive to broaden the spectrum of experiences understood as education. As with many forms of structural invention, the consequences of thoughtful invention in the structures of education are ultimately unique spaces: spaces of participation, spaces of communication, spaces of reciprocity for people and their works to listen to each other, and ultimately create mutual transformation. 

We should not make a drawing to ‘show’ something but to ‘see’ something. This simple turn of phrase expresses a turn in direction, an inversion, rather than having a formed image or idea that we then project upon the world; drawing becomes a site of exploration, of search and inquiry. This site extends to our studio as a site, a place of receptivity and listening to the world. This receptivity allows our works to emerge within the atmosphere of our embodied situation, mingling our questions with the specific material imaginations of our making. This receptive exploration invites the world into our questions transforming our perceptions and consequently our world views. Understanding emerges in direct conversation with the situations within which we ask our questions, and these conversations are with people and with our entire environment. Our schools are literally sites from which we can imagine and create a new world. This embodiment of our exploration is something we can develop across all of education.

As with many forms of structural invention, the consequences of thoughtful invention in the structures of education are ultimately unique spaces: spaces of participation, spaces of communication, spaces of reciprocity for people and their works to listen to each other, and ultimately create mutual transformation.

Founding Director David Gersten and Associate Director Steve Lawrence will share stories, experiences, ideas and hopes from decades of Teaching and Learning.

July 1 - Aug 30

Food 1o1

The Entire Community

Food is craft, art and life, what could be more foundational than gathering together for a meal. Three evenings a week the entire community will gather for a collective meal. Each of these gatherings are an opportunity for creative invention of the culinary and community experience. Each meal can be completely invented by a small rotating group who gather the day before the meal, imagine and ‘cook up’ an experience for everyone. These meals are a time for everyone to mix and mingle on the campus, each experience can take whatever form the group creating it imagines. Food 1o1 explores our community meals as culinary, visual and performing arts experiences that are imagined and co-constructed embracing our humanity.