The Gathering Season
A Message from the Dean
It is fall at the Stamps School on the North Campus of the University of Michigan.
In the last year, as I traveled around the community and the country to meet with so many of you, I heard how much our school and the university mean to you. As I begin my second year as a resident of Ann Arbor and as Dean, I understand why so many of you return to gather each fall to the Stamps School to attend Homecoming festivities, the Stamps Speaker Series, or the latest exhibit at the Stamps Gallery. Autumn could be called the Gathering Season.
In an era of pervasive technology, the ancient act of gathering remains one of the most generative ways to build and sustain a community. A stark reminder of this fundamental truth was the first day of classes. The historic “day without the Internet” at the University of Michigan threatened to upend the start of the Fall semester. But at Stamps, the day became about focusing on creating. At an art and design school, learning and creating can continue without the internet and its systems. We can easily turn to brushes, pottery wheels, pencils, and many other time-tested tools. During the first few days of the semester, I repeatedly heard that the lack of internet connectivity enriched the studio and classroom experience. Gone were the typical distractions of a phone or computer, and instead, there was a sense that people were genuinely present, focused on the moment.
As the university began to restore internet and system connectivity, I was reminded of the power Stamps has; to bridge and sustain the ancient arts alongside and with reciprocity to the most technologically advanced forms of inquiry and communication. Within the university lexicon, Stamps students, faculty, and staff can explore ancient forms of making and move along the continuum to the most advanced technological methods of artificial intelligence and augmented reality/virtual reality. At Stamps, we can ride the continuum of human material experience from ceramics to A.I., solving our world’s most pressing problems with design-oriented interventions, amplify and sustain the personal and/or spiritual necessity to express our ideas materially, and step-by-step build/re-build/re-imagine/create ourselves and our world altogether.
Gathering got us through that uncomfortable start and provided an unexpected gift: the affirmation and importance of human connection. During my first year at Stamps, we needed to gather more. This year, we are actively gathering more often and with great purpose. We started the year with faculty orientation, a luncheon for all employees, and our annual Welcome Bash for students. And that was just the beginning of our Gathering Season.
More Opportunities to Exhibit Student & Faculty Work
Our team has explored ways to provide more exhibition opportunities at the Stamps School. We are beginning to activate every available wall space, display cases, and other areas of our building to share students’ creative works and even investing in staff support to help students share their creative praxis with others. This act celebrates the very purpose of the Stamps School of Art & Design.
An artistic and design-oriented community can be transformational, dynamic, and generative when our/your work brings people together, facilitates conversation, initiates dialogue and debate, and inspires new artistic energy. As with all communities, this community only exists with collective action to build and sustain them.
The Stamps Gallery is invaluable to our community. In the coming year and years, Gallery Director Srimoyee Mitra is and will be working to expand exhibition and programming opportunities to those within the Stamps community. This includes more exhibitions that center the work of the Stamps faculty, students, and staff. The gallery is a unique and special space, as it facilitates gathering that is mediated by outcomes of our work as artists and designers. At the gallery, our work mediates conversation, inspires one to reflect upon their own praxis, and inspires one to go back to the studio and resume work.
This fall, we launched a faculty exhibition, Untold Stories: Part I, that features the work of faculty members Jim Cogswell, Heidi Kumao, Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, and Emilia Yang. I was honored to have my work included in the exhibit along with my colleagues. The exhibition is free and open to the public through December 9, 2023.
Gatherings with Purpose
I am so proud of our Stamps community for coming together to establish the new Sustainable Materials and Color Garden at Stamps. This is not only a practical, functional way to grow plants to create artistic resources, but it has also become the new favorite gathering space at the Art & Architecture Building. At the grand opening a few weeks ago, nearly 100 people came out on a warm September evening to celebrate the grassroots effort to make the garden a reality. Since then, almost every day, a class or group of students are sitting in the garden, having great conversations. The garden inspires us as we explore ways to expand our physical footprint on the campus. Any new space must include areas conducive to the productive exchange of ideas amidst the beauty of nature, with plenty of areas to exhibit the creative works of our community.
Our Next Steps
In the coming months, the Stamps School will be in the midst of an ongoing transition. We welcomed our five new faculty members this fall, and we will be hiring additional faculty to meet our school’s educational needs. Two of these new faculty members have been appointed associate deans to mobilize renewed leadership that can support everyone’s success within our community. We will collectively work to assess how we can continue deepening and enriching the studio experience at Stamps, sustaining our radical interdisciplinarity while building depth-of-method. We will also work together to assess how we can expand exhibition opportunities for our students, faculty, and staff and build pathways for our work to have a more profound impact within the communities we engage within. All of this requires gathering, being in community with one another, and sustaining our relationships in a healthy way, all of which happens within our school and will only continue to grow in the coming year and years.
There is much to do, but I am always grateful for our Stamps community’s support and hard work. There is no place I would rather be than on North Campus in the fall at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.