Turkey / Istanbul and the Glass Furnace
This course will be a dynamic exploration of Turkey and the role that it has played shaping the cultural, artistic, and historical climate in Eastern Europe. As a bridge between Europe and Asia, Istanbul is a unique city in many ways. Our goal is to explore the convergence of the contemporary art scene in Istanbul while reveling in the rich history and culture that Turkey has to offer.During our journey, we will spend our time both in Istanbul, and at an Artist Retreat located in the countryside 45 minutes north of the city, near the Black Sea. The school, "Cam Ocai" (in English referred to as The Glass Furnace) is Turkey’s first glass school and has state of the art studios for learning, applying, and experimenting with various hot and cold glass techniques.
At "The Glass Furnace", we will spend time in the hot glass studio collaborating with some of Turkeys most accomplished glass masters. Students will engage in the processes of Design as well as fabrication working side by side in the studio as a team. The program will be organized in such a way to accommodate both experienced glass students as well as those with no prior experience.
Our time in Istanbul will be spent visiting artists’ studios, museums, historical sites as well as immersing ourselves in the life that makes Istanbul one of the most vibrant cities on Earth. Other activities include a sunset boat trip to the bosphorus sea, amazing Turkish meals and music, visits to the grand spice Bazaar, The Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Istanbul MOMA, Turkish Baths, and much much more!
The Glass Furnace website: www.glassfurnace.org
Faculty
- James McLeod
- James McLeod lives in Boston, MA. He received his MFA in Studio Art from New York University in 2005, and BFA in Glass from the California College of the Arts in 2002. McLeod has also studied at the Pilchuck Glass School and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards including the Saxe award (2001) and the Corning Award (2002). In 2003 and 2004 McLeod was awarded Fellowships at the Creative Glass Center of America. He has taught at San Jose State University, the California College of the Arts, New York University, Cam Ocai "The Glass Furnace" Istanbul and is currently an Assistant Professor of Glass at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
- Kianga Ford
- Working with sound and environment as primary media, Kianga Ford’s narrative experiments query the psycho-physical dimensions of social identity formation. Her immersive, often story-based, installations engage the viewer in a participatory exploration of the limits between individual and collective, intimate and public, given and contingent, categorical and particular. In the increasingly considered field of sound art, she has worked collaboratively with a range of international composers from Toronto to Berlin. Her work has been shown in the US at venues including The Studio Museum in Harlem, The California African- American Museum, Art in General (NY), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the 2006 California Biennial. Recent residencies and exhibitions in Canada, France, Italy, Egypt, and Norway have enabled her to consider questions of contemporary social identity in a comparative international framework. Her explorations with narrative are informed by her studies in English and Theater at Georgetown University and post-graduate work in film at NYU. Ford received her MFA in 2003 from UCLA, where she studied with Mary Kelly in the Interdisciplinary Studio program. She is a doctoral candidate in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is completing a dissertation on articulations of race and identity in contemporary exhibition. She lectures frequently on her dual-inquiry into questions of contemporary identity in discourse and practice and has recently spoken at SFAI, MIT, NYU, Stanford, and USC. Ford is Assistant Professor in the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Boston.