During Winter 2019, multiple grant awardees including Professor of Art Kelly Connole, Associate Professor of Art History Ross Elfline, and Assistant Professor of Music Andrea Mazzariello conducted art collaborations that involved local artists as much as students on campus. While each of these projects widely varied in content and approach, they all had a common theme: to connect and inspire artists and to develop reciprocal connections between Carleton and our local art communities.
Professor Connole’s project is centered around the local clay community, drawing connections between students in her ceramics courses, to local clay artists and instructors in Northfield schools, to working with the National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), a conference that is coming to Minneapolis for the first time in 25 years. With over 7000 people expected, Carleton, and the various clay communities of Northfield, are working to create opportunities to share the deep knowledge embedded in our chosen medium as the Art and Art History department creates programming for students, residents and visitors. One connection made through this project was bringing Carleton alumni back to campus to share their experiences working in ceramics after graduation. The alumni artists featured were Dustin Yager ’06, John Vigeland ’09, and Dorae Hankin ’14. The culminating event will be Carleton’s contribution to NCECA at the end of March.
