Special guest at our Spring 2008 residency, Haruko Okano is an installation artist whose work has been exhibited from the local to the international level. Her current work attempts to integrate her artistic practice and daily spiritual beliefs with her love of the land. Her installations are viewer interactive and combine commercially produced...
I really appreciated the challenge and the push to examine more deeply the things I was just doing inherently, looking at influences, and what compels me in what I'm exploring today. I came into the program knowing what my area of study would be, but I didn't know what would be revealed in that process. The insistence of looking deeper is what I think about most when I reflect on the MFAIA program at Goddard.
Participation in the program gave me the confidence to do that. I wanted to write more; now I have more reasons to write. I had some great breakthroughs. I feel more grounded and assured about my writing. I feel more confident as someone stepping forward and offering to the community: "This is my work, this is my philosophy, this is my approach, this is my truth — I invite you, I welcome you to join in and share."
Pat Taylor (MFAIA-WA 2018) https://www.jazzantiqua.org/
My experience in the MFAIA program had a profound impact on my artistic path. I entered the program as an actor, director, and teaching artist; I finished with a new sense of identity as a maker of original interdisciplinary works, and with a clear articulation of my artistic identity and practice.
I've joined Ping Chong + Company in New York as Artistic Collaborator in Residence. I enjoy ongoing artistic/community relationships in Alaska, where I lived when I started the program. I've continued to create original performance works, and I'm pleased to have university teaching opportunities.
Ryan Conarro (MFAIA-WA 2015) https://www.ryanconarro.com/
After graduation I became a department chair changing the direction of a department I was charged to make over. Additionally, for two years I facilitated an art group every Sunday at a boarding school for young women affected by trauma and weekly at a men's treatment facility. I gained the confidence in myself to do meaningful work in the world. I claimed the identity of artist which gives me a certain amount of agency that I didn't have access to before. Artists are important people.
Ellen Greenblum (MFAIA-WA 2011)