Professional Practice - Nicole Charbonnet

Professional Practice is designed as arigorous, supportive space for artists to develop their work through sustained dialogue. During our weekly meeting, participants present work both finishedand in progress and engage in focused, constructive critique with the aim of sharing illuminating feedback, sharpening both interpretive and evaluative skills and developing a shared language that sharpens both making and thinking. Discussion will attend to formal, conceptual and contextual concerns, with an emphasis on how individual works operate within  broader artistic, cultural and historical frameworks.Through group crits, occasional visiting artists, art historians and gallerists from the art community, targeted personalized art history talks andexhibitions, participants will examine the formal, conceptual and personal throughlines that shape their work. 

This class was previously called Independent Study: “Art and Identity,” but our Wednesday night group has evolved into more of an art group than an art class. And since I taught the “Professionalism” class in the Tulane MFA program as an adjunct and have noticed many similarities with that graduate level class, “Art and Identity” seemed ready for a slight shift. Despite the new title, our aim remains to provide support to artists in identifying, articulating and developing a coherent artistic identity, within their evolving practice. The goal is to clarify intention without foregoing experimentation, and to position identity as an ongoing process of inquiry and refinement rather than a fixed endpoint. Critical feedback, the exchange of ideas, and exploration of  larger cultural contexts pave a tried and true path to clarifying your own artistic identity and expanding your ability to articulate it in all forums, both personal and professional.

This class is not limited to professional artists, however. It’s for anyone of any level who wants to hone their skills, engage in a dialogue about work and ideas and expand their connections within the art community, including opportunities to participate in exhibitions. Art is a site of negotiation and interplay between the three forces of self, history and current environment or instinct, influence and context.  Through conversation and critique, investigating the structures, however obscure or imperceptible they may be, that shape your work, is an invaluable step to making better art. 

Art groups have existed throughout time and artists’ relationships to other artists have been at the forefront of all the historical art movements . Thus possibilities abound regarding the emergence of new perspectives on contemporary art-making through creative exchange and collective creativity. 

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Prerequisites: Previous classes in drawing and painting are strongly suggested.

Supplies: Student should bring what supplies they want to work with.