Surviving the CAA Conference Day 1 cont.

After lunch, I headed to the 12:30-2pm session. I really wanted to go listen to the Artists' Residencies/Worldwide Opportunities talk by Elizabeth Conner. As I intend to be a TA next Spring, I felt that I should attend Contemporary Perspectives on Art Teaching and Learning. This session, unlike the one I attended that morning, had speakers with interesting presentations. For me the most memorable was Arts Based Research and Visual Culture Inquiry: Critical Connections by Stephen Carpenter from Texas A&M University. Although A&M focuses on engineering, he is doing an amazing job of engaging students with intriguing projects. Examples of his students’ work include professional fashion photos with models wearing nooses as accessories (particularly charged imagery considering the Jasper, Texas events) and avatars built by students in Second Life. You can visit his blog discussing the later project here.

I made it through an entire session and even had notes. Yeah! Feeling better about the conference I headed towards my next panel but was stopped in the main hall by my former co-workers from the Nasher, Jed and Stephen, later joined by Marin. After some catch-up they headed to the panel on the sculptor, Donald Judd, while I attended the session on Japonisme/Occidentalism. I especially liked The Construction of Continuity: Edmond de Goncourt’s Japonisme by Pamela Warner from the University of Rhode Island.

Edmond and Jules Goncourt in a box at the theatre lithograph by Paul Gavarni 1853

But once again, halfway through the third speaker, I left. Unlike earlier in the day, the speaker had an interesting topic but there was another panel I wanted to attend. By this time I was also becoming more comfortable with session hopping.

Next was Gestures of Resistance: Craft, Performance, and the Politics of Slowness. I’m not much into quilts, but Doing Time: Women, Hand-Spinning, and Quiltmaking in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1800-1880 by Patricia Keller, McNeil Center from the University of Pennsylvania was surprisingly informative.

The above Lancaster quilt can be found at Rocky Mountain Quilts.

I had told the Nasher staff earlier that I was trying to stay away from sculpture talks in order to explore other areas I knew nothing about; thus forcing me to broaden my knowledge. With some exceptions, I adhered to this plan during the conference.

During the last portion of Gestures of Resistance, I sat next to UNT professor Annette Lawrence. I asked her if she would be attending the UNT reunion later that evening, but she had a prior engament. She does amazing work. Please check out her online gallery here.

At the conclusion of the session, I went back to the student lounge to eat my dinner (I had brought enough for both lunch and dinner as I knew it would be a long day). Running into Zulma again, we compared notes on the days’ events.

I got directions from hotel staff and walked to the University of North Texas’ Dallas Campus on Houston Street. I was glad I attended as I had the opportunity to visit with a former sculpture classmate, Buster Graybill, now studying at UT Austin. He explained a piece with intertubes to me, but I had a hard time visualizing it until I saw the piece on Flickr .

I also got spoke with Ray Daniels, whom I took Drawing I from years ago. He still works for The Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont as their Curator of Exhibitions.

While chatting with staffers from the UNT Alumni Association, I met Darryl Baird, an instructor of photography at Michigan University’s Flint branch. I found this piece of work particularly haunting:Please check out more of his work here.

I got caught up in a discussion with Darryl and didn’t make time to visit with Vincent Falsetta before he left.

Overall, Day 1 was good- though tiring- as I didn’t get home until around 10pm.