Art and awareness

Correction: The name of graduate student Laurel Kurtz was misspelled in this article. The Vanguard regrets the error.

Portland State Fine and Performing Arts Professor Harrel Fletcher will lead a new program focusing on social practice art forms as part of Portland State’s Master of Fine Arts program beginning next fall.

Social practice is an interdisciplinary art genre involving a community and their reactions to art. Social practice art inspires debate or acts as a catalyst for social change. Types of social practice art vary, involving forms such as street performance, public art and social sculpture, a form of sculpture based in societal, political and environmental concerns.

Fletcher, who is also an artist, will be running the program, which is titled Art and Social Practice.

The focus of the program strays away from object-based art and the confines of a gallery or studio space, according to Fletcher.

“Rather than this romantic notion of an artist going to a studio and pouring out their heart onto a canvas, I am more interested in trying to find out how artists can engage in societies and have more of a role in societies,” he said.

Graduate student Laurel Hurtz is excited about her enrollment in the program, which will collaborate with the existing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program. Hurtz graduated from PSU in 2006 with a degree in sculpture but wants to take her art in a different direction.

“I am getting less and less interested in object-based art and more interested in having a direct affect on the world around me. I don’t really feel I can do that with object-based art,” Hurtz said.

Fletcher said the program was originally proposed when the dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts expressed a need to enroll more graduates in the MFA program. A limited amount of studio space made this difficult, however.

Fletcher said he suggested a social practice program because students in the program could use a shared space. This method would allow multiple students to work in less space, rather than each student having their own individual studio as they do in the traditional MFA program, he said.

After Fletcher initially proposed the idea it developed quite quickly, he said. The program was originally slated to run only during summer term, but quickly developed into a full year program through talks between Fletcher, Art Department Chair Bill Lepore and Fine and Performing Arts Dean Barbara Sestak.

“It’s gone through a pretty quick and drastic transformation,” Fletcher said.

The program was only officially confirmed about a month ago, said Fletcher, but had been in the works for several months.

Fletcher also said there was a lot of interest among students, and it wasn’t difficult to find students to fill the eight spaces available.

“I am really hopeful that it’s going to be a great program, and a really important one for the school,” he said.

The eight students enrolled in the program will share a large studio space and a smaller office space, Fletcher said. The students will be encouraged to collaborate. Focused time with the instructor and visiting artist lectures will be included in the program curriculum, as well as elective courses.

The program will be somewhat experimental in its first year since it is brand new, Fletcher said. Portland State will become the second college in the nation to have a social practice program, alongside the California College of the Arts, he said.

Through social practice, students will be able to create a new definition for art, said Fletcher.

“I am not so concerned about the concept of what that is,” he said.

Through this program Fletcher hopes to integrate art with the community, and open up the art world to a wider audience and range of participants.

“We can kind of claim people,” he said.