Visiting Artist Lecture at MICA

Last week I went to Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore to give a visiting artist lecture and help do crits in Laurie Snyder's Photobook class. The visit was hosted by the Photography Department along with the Book Art Concentration which is in Printmaking. Interestingly, there are three different book classes taught at MICA, one in Photo, one in Printmaking and one in General Fine Arts which is called GFA.

Laurie, who is retiring at the end of this year after teaching at MICA for 20 years, and she and Gail Deery, one of the primary professors in Printmaking and for many years the Chair, took me on an extensive tour of most of the MICA campus. The size was impressive and completely changed since the last time that I visited in 1980 or 1981. It has gone from about 600 students to over 2200 and now own a great deal of the buildings in that part of downtown, including the beautiful old 19th century train station which is now the Sculpture Department. The photo area is in the original beautiful white marble 1828 building. MICA started in 1821 an is the oldest arts school in the United States.

After giving my lecture the next morning, I saw more of the MICA buildings, had a great lunch in the student cafeterias and was really impressed with the facilities and students. This impression was confirmed by the students I met and the work from Laurie's book class which I sat in on in the afternoon.

During my lecture about my work, I mentioned that I was working on a couple of new books about predator drones along the SW border. Nate Larson, who teaches photography there is also doing a lot of work with drones and showed me some great video that he had shot with his Parrot drone copter.

Many thanks to Laurie Snyder for having me come, and to all the others there who made my stay there very pleasant including Gail Deery, Regina DeLouise (Purchase College grad), Nate Larson, and Jay Gould. I will also have very fond memories of a fantastic dinner at a place called Birroteca.