art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

case study: cooper union for the advancement of science and art 71
iii. case narrative
voices:
Mary Valverde, School of Visual Arts (sva) graduate and cap Administrative
Assistant; envisioned the cap Summer Sessions
Antoine Touze, Saturday Outreach Program (sop) student for two years;
Portfolio Prep Monitor; served as the Summer Sessions’ primary recruiter
Leslie Hewitt, sop student and Cooper Union graduate/former
sop teacher; Summer Sessions faculty
Anita Segarra, a non-artist jcal administrator
Robert Rindler, former Dean of the Cooper Union School of Art
Stephanie Hightower, Cooper Saturday Outreach Program Co-director
mary The most important part of art, of culture, is to share it, to make
it tangible. . . . [Whitfield Lovell] introduced me to knowledge and
opportunities. . . . If I hadn’t met him it would’ve been much harder
for me to make or teach art. . . . This became my goal when I got my
chance to teach.
antoine [In Haiti], art was everywhere, from intricately painted buses
and trucks to traditional Vaudan and Veve sequined banners . . .
[Wingate] was a terrible school, unbelievably violent . . . where I did
very well, deceptively well, because they had low standards. In fact,
they set you up to fail by inadequately preparing you for institutions
of higher learning . . . so I had to venture outside school.
leslie I loved to be around my grandmother. She took me with her in
stories. Through her I went to Georgia, understood what it meant
to live in Chicago or Harlem in the forties—to pass Malcolm X on
the street. . . . Her stories teach how to live . . . react to people . . .
protect yourself, how to enjoy life. . . . School taught me to isolate
myself, do amazing things but not to connect with family,
community, or the values that ground me, I wanted something
different for my students.
The staff of the cap Summer Sessions in nyc meticulously planned and
sequenced the summer experience into weekly segments with clearly
articulated goals. The first week was titled “meet them where they are,” a
reference both to the physical geography of the participating students’
immediate environment as well as their learned geography, that is, their
preconceived notions of art. The week-by-week program is set out in the
graphic at left: a detailed table of activities and concepts included in the
“Summer in nyc” handbook issued by the cap as a recruiting tool.