Continuing Education offers a national travel program to Montana and an international travel program to Venice. These programs can be taken for credit or non-credit.


Montana: The American West
July 29–August 11, 2013
2 credit program with a non-credit option

This two-week intensive course is an opportunity to travel to the American West, to experience the cultures and the land and to produce art. Taught by video and site artist Mary Ellen Strom and Native American performance artist and writer Bently Spang, the course will focus on art production that considers place and community as central to its meaning. You will be in residence for five days on the Northern Cheyenne Nation where students will reside in tipis and experience hands-on learning that focuses on natural horsemanship, ethno botany and native petroglyph sites. During the second part you will be in residence at the Montana Artist Refuge located in Basin, Montana in the rural Rocky Mountain West. At the Montana Artist Refuge you will learn about the region's culture and environmental history and have a second opportunity to produce work in this context.

FACULTY:

Mary Ellen Strom, video and site-specific practice
Site-work
We will study and produce time-based art production that considers place as central to its meaning. We will survey currents in site-work that challenge the humanist divisions of society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological. We will work out in the wild and produce individual and collaborative projects drawing on the disciplines of performance studies, sculpture, cultural geography and media studies. We will use our bodies and local materials as an expression of the region as well as digital media (photo, video and sound). 

Bently Spang, performance, sculpture video and writing
The Power of Place
As a group we will research the social construct of Peace Valley, a local thermal area where Indigenous cultures in the past created a social safe zone—agreeing to forego tribal conflicts to use the healing waters. We will explore the power of place, how it influences cultures to negotiate these safe zones. We will visit local Indigenous sights—petroglyphs, tipi rings, buffalo jumps—and interact with tribal elders both in person and via a live video feed to gain greater insights into the power of place. We will express our personal experience with specific place through several time-based projects that address our individual experience with time and place on this land.

PRICING	2-Credit Program	Non-Credit Program
Tuition Food + housing Studio, travel in MT Total Program (Airfare is not included)	$2,740   $600   $400   $3,740	$1,650   $600   $400 $2,650

For more information, contact dsamdperil@smfa.edu; 617-369-3643.


SMFA Venice Program, June 2013
June 15–July 6, 2013
2 credits with a non-credit option

This course is for those who want to make art in one of the world's most beautiful and mysterious cities. 2013 marks the 55th year of the Venice Biennale, an international exhibition venue unparalleled in its importance to the arts. Our program will encompass the cultural and visual richness of Venice while immersing students in the work of the prominent international artists exhibiting at the Biennale.

The program includes visits to the Biennale, lectures throughout Venice, museum entrance and additional field trips. The course will be divided between studio work and working in the field. An art/architecture historian will guide us through both historical and contemporary Venice and the Veneto. We will thematically address the physical and visual sense of Venice as a unique place, using the Biennale as a pivotal resource. Ideas can be explored through all or any media. We encourage an interdisciplinary and experimental approach. Collaboration is welcome.

FACULTY
Mags Harries
Sculpture, Site-Specific Installation and Mapping
Known for site-specific artwork ranging from permanent public projects to temporary events, Harries uses surprise and hu¬mor to energize places, communities and ob¬jects. She teaches courses in sculpture, installation and public art at SMFA and is a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery. For over 20 years she has worked with architect/artist Lajos Héder as Harries/Héder Collaborative. Together, they have created over 25 public artworks across the country. www.harriesheder.com

Julie Graham
Mixed Media, Painting + Photography
Julie Graham's art explores how we define our sense of place—how we move through and negotiate our relationship to place, and by extension, to each other. Graham's paintings, sculptures and photographs find formal beauty in unexpected places, and suggest the beauty of human potential to survive in ever-changing environmental, social and material conditions. Graham teaches painting at SMFA and exhibits her work nationally.

PRICING	2-Credit Program	Non-Credit
Tuition *Fees Housing + Studio Fee	$2,740 $850 $1,400	$1,650 $850 $1,400
Total	$4,990	$3,900

For more information, please contact dsamdperil@smfa.edu; 617-369-3643