VVP Statement

We’re all growing here. We’re young. There’s so much we don’t know. 

Whether we share it or not, the work serves its purpose. It’s gift. That makes it beautiful.

We make the work to tell the truth. Lower t-truth is perhaps the common story, sometimes it is what’s in peoples’ heads but they don’t, or can’t yet, say. 

We have trouble synthesizing the different theories we carry. That is interesting.

The work should address people to people instead of putting artists, or art, on pedestals. We can empathize with people we’ve never met in experiences we’ve never had. 

Art is not made to be graded. Whether justice is done or not, it is the same for art. What is the relationship between attention to craft, the needs of all people / our neighbors, and one’s devotion to or understanding of God? We are working this out. (See first principle, above.) We can make it complicated but it’s not complicated. 

We love the moon professionally. 

Acts of love are (un)necessary acts. While not immediately necessary (like water sleep shelter food), art is gratuitously necessary and thus necessarily gratuitous. 

Art is a language. You can communicate something through art. You can choose not to, too. The things that you say after you say them become valuable. (Cf. Emily Dickinson, 1212.)

The right direction might be the wrong path. 

The desire to not be alone: to make things means sharing life with others. Creating helps us not be, or not feel, alone. 

We are always uncertain if it is before or after Labor Day. 

[We don’t all of us agree with everything in this list.]

Extended Collaboration #2

For this collaboration, completed and submitted 4/1/21, students were asked to make in collaboration something with text and image in a form that privileges the picture plane. The theme they were asked to consider was presence. (Click on the images for a larger view.)

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Kimberly Baten, Brooke Raymond, Vanessa Morales:

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Bea McCormick, Jessica Carrera, Amy Bucher:

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Mikaela Kozelchik, Delaney Cambern, Catherine Fisher: 

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Ella Buell, Josh Flores, Matthew Roberts:

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Joshua Tateishi, Natalia Henderson, Nick Moore:

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Kelsey Doyle, Adrian Lozano:

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Miranda Moore, Ness Shubin, Loren Vierra:

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Kristen Kim, Kaiden Tolkamp, Zaemelys Ramos-Rodriguez:

Cross-Genre Conversation Piece #2

For this assignment, students were given an hour to make work inspired by, reacting to, or embodying the themes/ideas/formal considerations of the fiction of George Saunders and/or the paintings of Kerry James Marshall. Students were given only one hour to complete each of their projects. (This work was completed and submitted 3/27/21. Click the images for larger views.)

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Zaemelys Ramos-Rodriguez:

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Adrian Lozano:

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Delaney Cambern: 

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Ella Buell:

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Jessica Carrera:

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Catherine Fisher:

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Josh Flores:

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Brooke Raymond:

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Joshua Tateishi: 

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Kaiden Tolkamp:

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Kimberly Baten:

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Kristen Kim:

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Loren Vierra:

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Miranda Moore:

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Natalia Henderson:

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Bea McCormick:

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Ness Shubin:

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Matthew Roberts: 

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Kelsey Doyle:

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Amy Bucher:

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Nick Moore:

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Vanessa Morales:

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Mikaela Kozelchik:

Extended Collaboration #1

For this collaboration, completed and presented to the class 2/25/21, groups of artists and writers worked together to create work that combines text and image, with the text site privileged (e.g., book, zine, text message, label, menu, etc); uses text and visual material that is found or composed by the collaborators; examines or explores the nature of grief (personal, public, social, political, economic, spiritual). Below is what the students came up with. [Click on the images for larger views.]

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Kaiden Tolkamp, Loren Vierra, Kimberly Baten:

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Amy Bucher, Delaney Cambern, Ella Buell:

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Jessica Carrera, Catherine Fisher, Kelsey Doyle:

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Vanessa Morales, Nick Moore, Zaemelys Ramos:

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Mikaela Kozelchik, Adrian Lozano, Miranda Moore:

[This is the link the email references.]

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Joshua Tateishi, Matthew Roberts: 

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Kristen Kim, Vanessa Shubin, Brooke Raymond: