VISITING ARTIST AT NATIONAL TSING HUA UNIVERSITY
www.artdesign.nthu.edu.tw
www.facebook.com/NTHUDAD
www.instagram.com/nthu_jad
From 1 September to 30 November 2024, I will be employed as Visiting Artist at the Department of Arts and Design, College of Arts, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Hsinchu City, Taiwan. I was invited to submit an application, being recommended by Fine Art Professor Hong-Juin Shieh, under which guidance and supervision I am to conduct my activity.
NTHU is among the best 5 universities in Taiwan, with a firm international ranking. I am very grateful and honoured to be accepted. I am fully committed to making all my skills available for the students' benefit and harnessing this incredible opportunity to grow as an artist. My main task is to produce several works on-site, actually painting for my own in front of the students so that they can follow my process. Additionally, based on my multi-medium practical experience, I am to conduct 12 classes, on mural, painting and drawing, gathered under the title "The Multiple Aspects of Painting Workshop".
I plan to implement a cross-disciplinary experimental pedagogical module based on the concept of splitting the creative process into producing a work-of-art and recycling any by-products thus resulting.
In the educational method used on me during my formative years, art was an isolated language that one must learn, to gain the ability of self-expression. After going through the required years of practice that allowed me to attain the level of expertise I have in painting, I came to observe how this approach could be improved to adequately foster creativity and produce professionals able to contribute to the cultural environment. I see the collection of intricate rules formulated within the field of contemporary art as the best self-help book ever written, that could be used by anyone in everyday life, only by accessing existing and free channels of information. Creative language can achieve even more. It is a method of putting together options that apparently do not work for a problem at hand. The statement "every problem has a solution" interprets more accurately as "the complicated problems always have creative solutions".
Today's world puts so many resources at our disposal that acquiring proficiency in a certain field is no longer a mandatory requirement. Everybody can make a movie with a mobile phone, but the question remains: what kind of movie one should make and why? I believe that an answer can be found through a very particular type of practice in which conscious attention is directed towards defining the end product as a work-of-art, while, at the same time, equal interest is invested in identifying, collecting and recycling the by-products. Where there are by-products, there is a process, and practice that has a process, as not every practice has, means thinking. Huge leaps in abstract thinking can be achieved by practising an art form in this manner.
www.artdesign.nthu.edu.tw
www.facebook.com/NTHUDAD
www.instagram.com/nthu_jad
From 1 September to 30 November 2024, I will be employed as Visiting Artist at the Department of Arts and Design, College of Arts, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Hsinchu City, Taiwan. I was invited to submit an application, being recommended by Fine Art Professor Hong-Juin Shieh, under which guidance and supervision I am to conduct my activity.
NTHU is among the best 5 universities in Taiwan, with a firm international ranking. I am very grateful and honoured to be accepted. I am fully committed to making all my skills available for the students' benefit and harnessing this incredible opportunity to grow as an artist. My main task is to produce several works on-site, actually painting for my own in front of the students so that they can follow my process. Additionally, based on my multi-medium practical experience, I am to conduct 12 classes, on mural, painting and drawing, gathered under the title "The Multiple Aspects of Painting Workshop".
I plan to implement a cross-disciplinary experimental pedagogical module based on the concept of splitting the creative process into producing a work-of-art and recycling any by-products thus resulting.
In the educational method used on me during my formative years, art was an isolated language that one must learn, to gain the ability of self-expression. After going through the required years of practice that allowed me to attain the level of expertise I have in painting, I came to observe how this approach could be improved to adequately foster creativity and produce professionals able to contribute to the cultural environment. I see the collection of intricate rules formulated within the field of contemporary art as the best self-help book ever written, that could be used by anyone in everyday life, only by accessing existing and free channels of information. Creative language can achieve even more. It is a method of putting together options that apparently do not work for a problem at hand. The statement "every problem has a solution" interprets more accurately as "the complicated problems always have creative solutions".
Today's world puts so many resources at our disposal that acquiring proficiency in a certain field is no longer a mandatory requirement. Everybody can make a movie with a mobile phone, but the question remains: what kind of movie one should make and why? I believe that an answer can be found through a very particular type of practice in which conscious attention is directed towards defining the end product as a work-of-art, while, at the same time, equal interest is invested in identifying, collecting and recycling the by-products. Where there are by-products, there is a process, and practice that has a process, as not every practice has, means thinking. Huge leaps in abstract thinking can be achieved by practising an art form in this manner.
MEDIA COVERAGE
Florentina Toniță, INVITATUL DE LA ȘTIRI: Ana Maria MICU, Video/Editing: Florin Timofte, 28 August 2024, 18:00, stiri.botosani.ro
Laura Lucescu (with Ana Maria Micu as first guest), Vară pentru voi, 9 August 2024, 16:00, TVR Iaşi
Florentina Toniță, Ana Maria Micu, artista din Botoșani care le va preda studenților din Taiwan, 6 August 2024, stiri.botosani.ro
Florentina Toniță, INVITATUL DE LA ȘTIRI: Ana Maria MICU, Video/Editing: Florin Timofte, 28 August 2024, 18:00, stiri.botosani.ro
Laura Lucescu (with Ana Maria Micu as first guest), Vară pentru voi, 9 August 2024, 16:00, TVR Iaşi
Florentina Toniță, Ana Maria Micu, artista din Botoșani care le va preda studenților din Taiwan, 6 August 2024, stiri.botosani.ro
PROJECT SAMPLE I EXECUTED IN MY STUDIO TO ILLUSTRATE MY CONCEPT
This work came about from such a primary drive as wanting to do a series of drawings on paper and following the strategy of asking myself on each step: "what is the most important thing about this?"
The experimentation phases made it clear for me, yet again, that the happenings in my studio are more supportive of my views regarding art than any results I might be able to produce. Hence, one intermediary idea was to develop a method to record my practice. For several projects now I have been tackling the concept of documenting the artistic process in a way that could pass as a stand-alone form of art. The specific requirement that I am beginning to identify would be the inclusion of a reward, for the viewer's benefit, besides the handout of information alone.
Ink dispersion has such hypnotic qualities, suitable to entertain me during studio hours, and also to enthralled the viewer, while he gets a report on my solitary endeavors. Stop motion animation manages to preserve the full potential of these ephemeral and convoluted manifestations, by poetically separating precious instants that built up the present.
The photograph on the porcelain plate is the appropriate material, in this water-based environment, to push forward the concept of one image generating another. The large painting on paper is directly influenced by the small image on plate acting like a solid barrier and a visual focus. I am advancing the claim that the larger image develops differently because of the small image, as opposed to the situation in which I would freely paint on a white piece of paper.
This work came about from such a primary drive as wanting to do a series of drawings on paper and following the strategy of asking myself on each step: "what is the most important thing about this?"
The experimentation phases made it clear for me, yet again, that the happenings in my studio are more supportive of my views regarding art than any results I might be able to produce. Hence, one intermediary idea was to develop a method to record my practice. For several projects now I have been tackling the concept of documenting the artistic process in a way that could pass as a stand-alone form of art. The specific requirement that I am beginning to identify would be the inclusion of a reward, for the viewer's benefit, besides the handout of information alone.
Ink dispersion has such hypnotic qualities, suitable to entertain me during studio hours, and also to enthralled the viewer, while he gets a report on my solitary endeavors. Stop motion animation manages to preserve the full potential of these ephemeral and convoluted manifestations, by poetically separating precious instants that built up the present.
The photograph on the porcelain plate is the appropriate material, in this water-based environment, to push forward the concept of one image generating another. The large painting on paper is directly influenced by the small image on plate acting like a solid barrier and a visual focus. I am advancing the claim that the larger image develops differently because of the small image, as opposed to the situation in which I would freely paint on a white piece of paper.
Ana Maria Micu, Studio painting session around a photograph on a porcelain plate documented with a looped stop-motion animation, 2016
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Catalogue of open-source options resulted from the project that collaboratively can be developed further into new works
The original digital photograph used to make the ceramic plate.
Photograph documenting the outcome of the painting session.
The documentation of the improvised working station that had to be put together by repurposing an entryway piece of furniture designed to hang coats, to have something to anchor the tripod.
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