Critorama 2009

Crit-O-Rama is a big critical open house hosted by the Department of Art and Design each spring. Faculty and students invite artists from around the country to come to town and meet for a day of art feedback with art students from GVSU and area colleges and universities. Students display their artwork for a week at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, where the events are held. On the day of Crit O Rama, they solicit feedback from any of the visiting artists or faculty they want to meet with. In addition to that day of critiques, the visiting artists also spend an additional day or two with us, and give public lectures on their artwork. Some teach workshops, give demonstrations, or team teach studio courses with faculty at GVSU and the other participating schools. All Crit O Rama events are held at the UICA, at 41 Sheldon Blvd. SE in downtown Grand Rapids. This year's event will include students and faculty from the art departments of Aquinas College, Calvin College, GRCC, Kalamazoo College, The Kendall College of Art and Design, and Western Michigan University.

Crit O Rama provides students with the opportunity for a broader range of professional feedback on their work. It gives students, faculty, and the larger artistic community a chance to form creative connections. Students often comment on how much they value meeting and working with students form other art departments through Crit O Rama. And having renewed or new contact with other practicing artists and artist friends is professionally revitalizing to faculty as well. (One of the Crit O Rama 'rules' is that all visiting artists are housed by faculty in their homes, rather than put up in hotels. This helps turn Crit O Rama week into an ongoing intensive week of art dialogue, both in and out of work, for the faculty as well as the students.)

This year's Crit O Rama events are scheduled for March 23-27. The main event is Thursday, March 26, from 12:00-5:00 pm. The public is welcome to this event, and to the visiting artist lectures, which will be held Tuesday evening, March 24; all day Wednesday, March 25, from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm, (with a different artist every hour) and from 10:00-12:00 Thursday am, March 29. A more detailed schedule of events will be forthcoming in the next week or two:

CRIT O RAMA SCHEDULE

MONDAY, March 23
12:00-5:00
Students can bring their work to the UICA to install/hang it for Crit O Rama. They can bring as much work as they want. Space will be on a first come, first served basis! Volunteer students will be on hand to help them with hanging and installation.

TUESDAY, March 24
10:00-5:00
Students bring their art work to UICA, continued.
6:00-9:00 pm Curatorial project of submitted student art work by Anna Campbell's GVSU curatorial class and WMU art history students, in Race St. Gallery
7:00-8:30 pm
Area Art Faculty mini-lectures
Art faculty will give short, 10 minute introductions to their work. Area faculty include:
Bill Hosterman, GVSU, printmaking
Filippo Tagliati, GRCC, photo
Diane Zeeuw, Kendall, painting
Renee Zettle-Sterling, GVSU, metalsmithing
Kurt Kaiser, Aquinas, sculpture
Anna Greidanus, Calvin College

WEDNESDAY, March 25
Visiting Artist Lectures at UICA, all day
10:00 Christine Carr, photo and video artist (christinecarr.com)
11:00 Endi Poskovic, Printmaker
1:00 Tim Berg, non-traditional ceramic artist (timothyjohnberg.com)
2:00 Lora Fosberg, printmaker, Chicago (lorafosberg.com)
3:00 Gabriel Akagawa, Sculptor, Installation artist, Chicago (gabriel-akagawa@wikispaces.com)

5:30-7:30 Panel Discussion hosted by Dwelling Place:
Title: Pricing your Artwork: Galleries and Artists
Description: Join us for a panel discussion with local artists, curators and
gallery owners. We’ll talk about pricing artwork and cover topics such as:
where to start, what to consider, local markets and understanding gallery
commissions.

THURSDAY
10:00 Loren Schwerd, Visiting Artist talk
12:00-5:00 THE BIG EVENT!
Critical Free For All with all visiting artists, area faculty, and students. A great vegetarian meal will be provided in the later afternoon. Strange awards at the end of the day.

FRIDAY
10:00-2:00
Work pick up! Students must pick up their art work by 2:00 pm at UICA.