by Claudia Wilburn
Greetings from Brenau University’s Center for the Arts & Design. My apologies for the delay in the CAD Newsletter this year. As you know we are living through historical times and have had to make many adjustments since March. Our focus was on the students and making sure everyone safely finished the semester from home.
Using some critical and creative thinking, we continued courses with online synchronous learning to finish out the spring semester remotely. This called for some curriculum adjustments and more than a few creative challenges for students in courses like ceramics, printmaking, and fashion show production. For fun, the printmaking students even learned how to make relief prints with potatoes. We postponed the annual Brenau Collaborative exhibitions, but plan for the 2020 seniors to exhibit with the 2021 graduates.
As of right now, we are three weeks into the fall 2020 semester and most of our classes are on ground or in a hybrid format. We have sharpened our improvisation skills and are ready to take our classes virtual again if necessary. There are a handful of students that are participating in studio classes via Zoom, and several international students waking up before dawn to attend class in the states synchronously.
There are plans underway for a virtual presentation by the Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn, New York, this fall, and we are lining up guest speakers for the bi-annual Animation Festival to be held online this spring. We are excited to see many new freshmen in fashion design and studio art this fall as well.
There are many unknowns down the road, and we plan to embrace new challenges as they come. Thank you for your support of the Arts at Brenau, and please check out the photo gallery below from the opening of Idiosyncratic Perspectives, an exhibition of creative works by the faculty and staff in the Center for the Arts & Design.
Claudia Wilburn
Director, Center for the Arts & Design
