Board Stories: On Teaching with Zoom
This blog post is part of a series of stories written by current board members as they reflect on their relationship to making and/or the sea in this unprecedented time.
Zoom - Panacea for Some, Mediocre Alternative for Others
by Warren Seelig
Double Ended, an 18' tall sculpture by Warren Seelig, commissioned by Novartis. Photo courtesy of Warren Seelig.
I teach several studio courses in the Craft and Material Studies program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In the middle of this semester, not many weeks ago, I returned to Maine for Spring break having no idea that I would not be returning to finish out the term. None of us at the college ever dreamed of not teaching in an actual studio environment, seeing and touching the real objects, surrounded by live students, communicating eye to eye and having conversation and critique in direct contact. Instead, faculty in colleges and universities throughout the country were thrust into the dilemma of having to invent a new way to teach the remaining two months of the semester, facing students through computer screens using one of several online communication platforms available.
Like many educators everywhere during the pandemic, I chose Zoom for my surrogate online classroom and hit the ground running. I was unfamiliar with this conferencing service and quickly discovered that it was emerging as the go-to method for gathering groups of students, friends and colleagues together for conversation, communication and critique. My journey through this rude awakening began the day after Spring break was over in the second week in March. Away from the lively and energized environment of the art school studio and with closed dorms, all of my students were now working either alone or with a partner or roommate, some in an apartment in the city of Philadelphia and some at home with parents and family around.
The two studio courses I teach rely on the use of materials easily found at home, in recycling bins or online and in hardware stores; they were materials still readily available during the pandemic. Also, no special equipment was necessary in order to accomplish the course requirements. Ultimately, the course was driven by the student’s ability to invent solutions. My challenge to students was to make something extraordinary out of the most ordinary materials. Of the two courses I was teaching, the first was a general elective, which attracts students from throughout our visual and performing arts population at the university. The second, titled Constructed Surface, was populated by mostly interdisciplinary art students and Material Studies and Craft majors from the College of Visual Arts.
Untitled, a sculpture made of twist ties by former student Mi-Kyoung Lee. Photo courtesy of Warren Seelig.
The fundamental problem with using Zoom as way of gathering with students to discuss their work is simply that what you see is not what you get! When attempting to see and comprehend sculptural work (or an object of any kind) on Zoom, you can’t smell it, you can’t feel it and you can’t understand its relationship to the space it occupies. Color is distorted, the texture is often unreadable and especially to the artists’ eye, the object that you see is a sad reproduction of its real life presence.
Some may ask, “So what did you expect?” This first attempt to use Zoom made me, as well my students, profoundly aware of what we too often take for granted. When we are in direct visual and physical contact with an object in the real world, it is experienced through all the senses; it is consumed bodily as well as through the eyes. Whether the material is paint, clay, thread, metal or wood, the artists and artisans who work with these substances regularly show a unique “empathy” for the material environment they inhabit. They feel as if the stuff with which they work has a vivid life within, a difficult thing to describe but surely something that is missing when we attempt to comprehend the physical world through a screen. This “dulling” of the senses is, of course, why there has been so much emphasis recently on parents encouraging their children (and on all of us adults) to balance time on screens with play experiences outdoors and away from the phone and computer. For decades now, studies have shown how our senses are profoundly altered when we experience the real and natural world at a distance, through digital means.
Stump Rug, a hooked rug made for a stump by former student Susie Brandt. Photo courtesy of Warren Seelig.
Another difficulty with Zoom my students and I encountered was the loss of in-depth and expressive group interaction, which happens naturally in a live studio environment but not when boxed into a field of talking heads. An art school critique is a wonderful and somewhat complicated event that occurs most often in an open studio and in the round. It is a place for observation, focus, and contemplation, where each member of the group is expected to communicate not only with words but also through body language; verbal expressions are often animated with hand gestures, glances and eye contact, and enriched by all of the subtle cues humans use naturally when they interact in person. Some of this comes through on the Zoom panel but for the most part, it is missing. Without the physical objects present, I sensed a real change in the nature of the critical discussion. The level of enthusiasm for seeing what is there was diminished along with the usual quality of the conversation in reacting to work.
Romance, hand shaped wax elements by former student Claudia Crisan. Photo courtesy of Warren Seelig.
My experience using Zoom is not meant to dismiss it as a useful tool in gathering minds and bodies together across country and around the world. When impossible to meet face to face, there is no better alternative. Zoom has been an effective and reliable means of coming together as the Apprenticesop Board. Everyone everywhere is using Zoom, and during the pandemic it is has proven to be a godsend. On the other hand, Zoom does a great job of unintentionally reinforcing the feelings that many of my students share of not wanting to spend their lives staring at a screen. Though tech-savvy themselves, they are committed to living a life in the arts, whether as painters, sculptors, woodworkers or weavers, where satisfaction is achieved through an intelligence that comes from thinking and working with their hands.
Warren Seelig lives with his wife, Sherrie Gibson in Hope, Maine and has his studio practice located in Rockland. He holds the rank of distinguished visiting professor in the Craft & Material Studies program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he teaches, curates and writes on various subjects related to material thinking. Seelig has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and in 2018 a Barr Foundation/ United States Artist Fellowship.