art teaching
In Spring 2024, I will be teaching Graphic Design I, Painting I, Advanced Studies in Ceramics, Arts Internship, Arts Administration Internship, Senior Art Seminar, and Arts Administration Senior Project at Morningside University.
Time flies, and we’re starting up another school year again! This Fall 2023 I will be teaching Design, Graphic Design I, Graphic Design Internship, and Advanced Studies in Graphic Design at Morningside University. I will also be taking Intro to Japanese!
Miriam Moore’s new Sioux City Garden Club logo design!
I love to partner with community organizations in art department coursework with beneficial, real-world projects. This semester, I agreed to host a design competition within our graphic design program for the Sioux City Garden Club! Their president, La Vone Sopher, reached out to me and we worked out a plan: students in Graphic Design I and II would submit logo designs, and the club would proffer a $50 first place (and use that logo) as well as a $25 second place prize.
Students in these two courses submitted 26 designs, and there were a lot of quality options for the garden club to choose from! The board winnowed it down to six, and had the club members vote to select their first and second place designs. Graphic design and history major Miriam Moore’s logo was the winner!
I like to take on these sorts of projects - even though it invariably adds to my workload - because students get to work with actual clients, the top designers receive compensation, and all students create portfolio pieces while the winner sees their work enter the community. It also raises both the winning artists’ and our art department’s visibility… particularly when we issue press releases about the successful conclusion of the partnership!
Here’s the Morningside University press release (complete with a quote from me), which was picked up by KWIT and a KTIV television interview.
Now that I’ve gotten the last workshop’s pieces published, I can tell you about the one I just finished! It took place on Saturday, April 22, 2023. Despite that late April date, the weather was decidedly more wintry - it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit with snow on the ground when we arrived, and I think it warmed up to around 40 by the time we left 8 hours later. Fortunately, the inside of the garage/storage room we glazed within got a bit warmer with the help of some space heaters, but I was still happy I wore my snow boots for extra warmth!
Possibly due to the weather, though, I had my best raku luck yet! I brought nine pieces, and all nine survived without even one crack - and my glaze results all fell on a scale of good to fantastic. I’ll share those with you shortly, but here are some photos from the workshop day itself first. In attendance from Morningside University was me, our ceramics instructor Paul Adamson, alumna Deb Allard and student Hannah Nichols.
Happy New Year! This spring 2023, I will be teaching ART 210 Graphic Design I, ART 225 Painting I, ART 470 Graphic Design Internship, and ART 490 Senior Art Seminar here at Morningside University.
I’m thrilled to share that I am a 2022 Sharon Walker Faculty Excellence Award honoree!
From Morningside University: “Thanks to the continued generosity and love for Morningside shared by Jim and Sharon Walker ‘70, three faculty members were honored with a Sharon Walker Faculty Excellence Award. The 2022 honorees are Dr. Kim Christopherson, educational technologist and a professor in the Sharon Walker School of Education; Dr. Tom Paulsen, a professor and department head for the Regina Roth Applied Ag and Food Studies program; and Shelby Prindaville, art department chair, director of the art galleries, and associate professor in the School of Visual & Performing Arts.
Established in 2003, recipients for the Sharon Walker Faculty Excellence Awards are selected from a field of applicants by a panel of three outside evaluators. Each receive a $10,000 honorarium and $2,000 to use for faculty development. Several themes guide the Sharon Walker Faculty Excellence Awards process:
The committee firmly believes that there must be a holistic approach to examining the criteria (teaching, scholarship, advising, and service) and no single item should be seen in opposition to another. Indeed, effective teaching is enhanced by quality advising, active scholarship, and dedicated service to the university.
These awards are meant to celebrate Morningside University’s extraordinary faculty by recognizing up to three exemplary recipients each year.
The committee takes its charge from the President and the donors very seriously and recognizes the difficulty of the selection process.”
The application requires a minimum of seven letter of recommendation writers, and I am really grateful for all of my letter writers’ time and support! I’m very happy both personally and because this is the first time anyone in the art department has received this honor, which feels like important representation.
Late last spring, I budgeted for and acquired two types of color-blindness-alleviating glasses for my design class in specific and the Morningside art department in general. Today was my introduction of our first color theory project in that class, so I brought the glasses out and said that if any students were having trouble either grasping the assignment or seeing colors change, they should try the glasses out to see if they could make a difference.
One of my students told me that he was not seeing the colors change in the project examples, but he was sure he wasn't color blind. I shared that there's a spectrum so it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing color blindness, and he could just test out if the glasses would help or not. He tried the deutan pair on and saw no difference. Next he tried on the protan pair and was surprised as he immediately registered color changes. I sent him outside just to check the world out and he came back after a few minutes and said he had no idea how much red was in our bricks or that there were maroon/brown moments mixed in the grass. Then he rocked the glasses for the rest of the class period while working on the color theory exercises.
You guys. I knew the glasses would help some students eventually, but on their debut they are already making a difference to a student for this project and more meaningfully for his general understanding of and experience with the world around him. I am so happy.
If you’re curious, the company I bought them from is EnChroma, and by coincidence it also happens to be International Color Blindness Awareness Month, so I’m both doing my part by raising awareness but also if you wanted some yourself, EnChroma is currently celebrating with 20% off.
Though we began having faculty meetings and events last week, classes start this Wednesday here at Morningside University. I will be teaching ART 103 Design, ART 210 Graphic Design I, ART 405 Advanced Studies in Graphic Design, and ART 470 Graphic Design Internship this semester!
Here are some day-of photos from the April 2022 raku workshop I attended at Dakota Potters Supply in Sioux Falls along with Morningside ceramics instructor Paul Adamson and students Lauren Hedlund and Debora Allard. The photo of finished works are some of the student pieces - I’ll post separately about my own!
It’s pretty neat to see former students continue achieving in art! A former student of mine, Paul Stouffer, who took one-on-one lessons from me while I was in graduate school at LSU is a finalist in the 2020 Pabst Blue Ribbon Art Can Contest.
Recently, I was invited by my mentor and former professor Kelli Kelley to guest lecture via Zoom in Louisiana State University’s ART 4889 Advanced Drawing Workshop! It was fun to get a chance to catch up with Kelli and to virtually meet LSU art upperclassmen and graduate students.
I am teaching ART 103 Design and ART 210 Graphic Design I in addition to overseeing ART 401 Advanced Studies: Design this semester, and today is the first day of classes here at Morningside College! Given the pandemic, I’ve been working hard all summer at adapting Design and Graphic Design I to accommodate a hybrid and/or remote learning model if necessary. I have really enjoyed using the software VidGrid to record video lectures for asynchronous content delivery!
I can’t believe it’s already the end of the semester; my Design and Drawing classes are almost wrapped up, and finals are next week - then we’re on to winter break!
I’ll be teaching Figure Drawing and Painting for Spring 2020, as well as co-teaching Senior Seminar and overseeing a number of internships.
Haha, my art students are doing such cool things that we can’t help but dominate the news cycle here in Leavenworth - this time, senior student Gwen Logan is in the Leavenworth Times for her art restoration side business and potential career interest, which grew from a homework assignment I gave to her last fall in Painting I!
Citizens Savings & Loan has partnered with the University of Saint Mary to offer a university-branded debit card that raises money for student scholarships - and they put out a contest call a few months ago for designs. The winner was to receive a $500 scholarship and have their design printed as the inaugural card… and sophomore art major Adeline Pagan Sanchez won with the submission to the right!
Addy took the initiative to compete and worked very hard on this contest. She created and submitted a variety of designs since she wasn’t sure what aesthetic - cartoonish, sporty, refined - the selection team was looking for. Her classy, modern take on the USM spire and surrounding architecture hit the mark. Here’s a picture of us presenting her with the award, via an oversized ceremonial check!
I’m proud of her and look forward to more of her successes. For further details, check out USM’s press release, which was published in the Leavenworth Times too!
It's that time of year - this morning USM held its annual matriculation ceremony, and tomorrow classes start! I will be teaching Sculpture, Painting I, Typography, and Art Career Internship. I'm looking forward to meeting new students and hearing how returning students have spent their summers!
We had a great Spring Student Art Exhibition, which was accompanied by the annual judging for Miller Art Awards. Our guest judge this year was alumna and graphic designer Lea Whitson! Here are some photos of the show, but there were so many more pieces than what you'll see in this slideshow.
This Saturday was also our graduation, and it is always wonderful to see my students walk across that stage but just a little bit sad knowing that I won't see them return again in fall. I hope they go on to do great things but also stay in touch!
It's that time again! Spring 2018 at USM will start on Monday, January 15th, and with it, my courses: Introduction to Printmaking, Computer Graphics, Advanced Honors Seminar in Interdisciplinary Art, and Art Career Internship, Advanced Studios, and Senior Exhibit (the latter three counting together as one course load).
I look forward to seeing new and returning students and all the new artwork they'll produce!
The Leavenworth Times wrote a front-page article on one of our class projects - digital colorization - in AR 383 Graphic Design! You can read it here.
The Spring 2017 semester is almost upon us! At the University of Saint Mary, we commemorate Martin Luther King Day instead of taking it as a holiday, so Monday was slated to be out first day of classes... but the weather has other plans, and to avoid the predicted ice storm and attempt to help unravel the resultant travel complications our students are already facing, we have canceled classes on Monday and will instead begin Spring 2017 classes on Tuesday.
This semester, I am teaching an overload (five classes instead of my typical four): Basic Design, Drawing II, Typography, Honors Seminar: Interdisciplinary Art, and Art Career Internship/Advanced Studios/Senior Exhibit. The overload is due to taking on the Honors Seminar; I'm very excited about it as I got to create the class entirely with our honor student population and my own academic interests in mind.
