For over 12 years I have been making Dream installations that contain seeds from actual night dreams. As art, they are meant, not to illustrate my dreams, but instead, to give a glimpse into psychological states, narratives or activities. The installations originated as arrangements of images and objects from which I made photographs for display, and soon the installations became principle components in my exhibitions.
At one level, all Dream installations are self-portraits. They explore the human unconscious, a world ai access by musing about dream imagery or practicing meditation. I try to create a psychological space that presents characters and conflicts and describes a particular emotional energy. Light and shadow, the color of light and sound have become significant players in the installations...Katharine Kreisher
At one level, all Dream installations are self-portraits. They explore the human unconscious, a world ai access by musing about dream imagery or practicing meditation. I try to create a psychological space that presents characters and conflicts and describes a particular emotional energy. Light and shadow, the color of light and sound have become significant players in the installations...Katharine Kreisher
BUDGET (tentative distribution):
Supplies ($800)
Matting and framing ($900)
Printing - announcements and small brochure ($700)
Documentation ($800)
Assistants ($1000)
Transportation costs ($2000)
Total: ($6200)
I will also supplement by applying for up to $1500 in small project grants described on the New York Foundation for the Arts website. These may cover some of the exhibition costs and printing costs. I have received several SOS and Decentralization Grants in the past. I am also preparing a Smithsonian grant that will be more substantial, and I have met (and will meet again) with Maggie Arthurs to discuss other options for funding the book project and “traveling” the Dream Plane: War Stories exhibition to academic galleries and art museums and small town military museums.
I will submit appropriate portions of the Dream Plane project to Society for Photographic Education for a new FOCUS grant, I am very active with SPE for which I serve a Co-Chair for the Women’s Caucus.
For the Wandersee I will produce a detailed budget in consultation with gallery and museum professionals at Hartwick College and elsewhere.
POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FIELD AND TO MY DEVELOPMENT AS A TEACHER-SCHOLAR:
1. FIELD
Museum curators, as well as faculty in a wide range of educational institutions already know my work. I am invited to exhibit and speak because my work relates to feminist issues (self-image/growing up female), peace issues (psychological effects of war/avenues to peace), historical concerns (WWII /Cold War Era), and
interdisciplinary arts (photo/video/installation/writing), and my exhibits augment curricular offerings. I am an approachable role model for young feminist artists. I am represented in textbooks through my “Contemplating Peace” portfolio. Work from many stages of my career is in significant permanent collections.
My work clearly has a place in the contemporary arts “dialogue” from a feminist perspective.
2. DEVELOPMENT AS A TEACHER-SCHOLAR
Artists build reputations incrementally, and I am receiving more positive feedback, critical appraisal and focused advice and invitations from art critics, curators and directors. In Central NY these include Jeffrey Hoone at Lightwork in Syracuse and Mary Murray at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica. Rachel Seligman at the Tang Museum in Saratoga and Tammis Groft at the Albany Institute of History and Art as well as other Capital District art professionals support my work. I am developing a presence in New Mexico following my sabbatical art residency there and recent “Hekate” installation in a group fiber art exhibition. I have been invited to present a variation on“Hekate” for at the Las Cruces Museum of Art in fall 2016.
Students benefit from my experience in the art world; I apply all my experiences to my teaching and advising. I am able to teach about the profession, because I am fully involved as a productive, exhibiting artist.
My reputation as a teacher/scholar has reached a new level. I am now invited as an expert consultant of other photography programs (ex: dual program at U Central Florida/Orlando and Daytona Beach) and as a panelist/judge of contemporary art for prestigious associations such as NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts). I participate fully, but always balance all these commitments carefully to maintain my art-making momentum. I continue to focus on image production so that I may achieve the most mature development and presentation of my work.
MY PLAN FOR COMPLETING AND DISSEMINATING WORK (I plan to begin with an off-campus residency experience to develop the work and make an initial presentation perhaps in Syracuse or Utica. I will present the finished installation on-campus or possibly at CANO or another Oneonta location with many activities to support and share it, and finally I will, as they awkwardly say, “travel” the work. Based on a review of my latest “Hekate’ installation in New Mexico, the director of RoCo, Rochester Contemporary gallery has invited me to present an installation there.)
1. Summer into FALL 2016
- Continue internet research about the Airborne Troop Carriers and their missions.
- Travel to do additional research with librarians and curators in Washington DC and the Air Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. Make new photographs as appropriate.
- Complete proposals for additional funding from the Smithsonian, New York Foundation for the Arts and other sources of funding for aspects of the project including a publication.
- Continue to collect family history information from letters and photographs and by interviewing surviving relatives about their activities during the same time period.
2. JAN 2017
- Develop/produce the installation called Dream Plane: War Stories. If accepted, I will do important initial work during a residency at Lightwork in Syracuse where the squadron wallpaper can be printed. I can build the installation in a nearby exhibit space and complete its first showing.
3. SPRING 2017
- Exhibit Dream Plane: War Stories in Oneonta either at the college or a local venue so that students can participate, and I can present gallery talks for classes and the public. I am also investigating using a Main Street window or the Project Space at SUNY-O as options. Additionally I will be pleased to contribute a print to the Fine Arts Collection at Hartwick. Beyond the gallery talks, I will speak in the Faculty Lecture Series. Perhaps most significantly, student assistants who help to construct the installation will learn “on the job” about my methods and meanings.
4. SUMMER 2017 (and the FOLLOWING ACADEMIC YEAR 2017-18)
-Travel to Lisbon and to Normandy to make photographs, some based on the ones my father had made and collected in Europe between 1943 and 1945. June 2017 may best to participate in the annual commemorative D-Day events.
- Present Dream Plane in other venues beyond Oneonta. Both Tammis Groft, Director of the Albany Institute of History and Art and Rachel Seligman, curator at Skidmore’s Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs have agreed to act as outside evaluators for this project. I will ask them to advise me concerning other significant venues well beyond Hartwick College. Outside the art gallery/art museum system, I am considering venues such as historical societies, military museums and Quaker colleges where peace and conflict studies are a significant focus. I am communicating with staff members at a military museum (located in a complex with a veteran’s home and one of the small traveling Vietnam Memorials) in Truth or Consequences , NM, where I am part of the community. I have also met with the curator at a Quaker College in California. RoCo Rochester Contemporary gallery in Rochester NY has me on a waiting list for the installation room..
- Develop a publication, first a self-published Blurb (or other brand) artist book that can augment the exhibition experience, and disseminate image and text in book form. I would also like to take that Blurb book as a “model” to publishers of photography books whose representatives attend my professional Society for Photographic Education conferences.
- Enlarge the project and statement by developing a collaborative version of the Dream Plane: War Stories project with Cooperstown artist Christine Heller whose own father was one of the paratroopers dropped in Normandy. He is still alive and recently was sent to Normandy for a commemorative event. Much of Christine’s work is a poetic protest against war and violence. Christine and I have a long-standing professional relationship and are already communicating about this future collaboration.
MY HISTORY AT HARTWICK (teaching and course release history):
1. TEACHING:
Since 1982 when I first came to Hartwick I have been teaching Photo I, II, III/(IV) and related directed/independent studies and senior projects every year, often several times each year. In the past few years, I have been aggressively developing a digital fine arts photography aspect for the studio major. I oversee the Documentary Photography Minor for students in other majors, and I regularly deal with students pursuing ISP’s in Photojournalism and other photo-related areas. Over the years I have also taught many other courses including printmaking, special hybrid studio courses in January (i.e. photo-printmaking or photojournalism), an off-campus course to Anguilla BWI concerned with investigating a foreign culture using a camera, and a repeating photo-based FYS class that was originally LINKED to Composition. I am teaching my third Women in Photography class (second time as an FYS) and I am actively involved with the Women and Gender Studies Minor group of professors.
I ran the printmaking program (as well as photography) for my first 10 years at Hartwick, and later I served as department chair for 7 years. My classes remain popular and have generally been filled to capacity unless there are scheduling conflicts over which I have no influence. I regularly update in the field and teach new courses such as Women in Photography which carries a WGS designation, a Round House Press printmaking course in January 2015, and soon Intro to Digital Photography in spring 2016. I work on Honors projects and oversee ISP’s in Photojournalsim..Three students state that they are currently completing the documentary photography minor. I take students to Society for Photographic Education conferences and help them exhibit in a variety of venues beyond the college. They go on to graduate programs in photography and related fields, and I support them all along the way with critical advice and recommendations.
Spring 2015 WICK article about my teaching:
www.velocityprintsolutions.com/HartwickTheWICKMagazineSpring2015/#10/z
2. RECENT SABBATICAL AND COURSE RELEASE HISTORY:
Over 30 years at Hartwick I have taken sabbaticals at the usual intervals (every seven years). During my spring 2011 half year sabbatical I presented a solo exhibit, Meeting My Selves which included a new Dream installation at Lycoming College in Williamsport PA. Then as an individual outside consultant, I reviewed the BS in Photography program at the University of Central Florida, followed by active participation in a Society for Photographic Education conference in Atlanta, and finally a 3-month artist residency ending with an exhibit of new photographs and a new Dream Desert installation at RioBravoFineArt in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I am now represented by Rio Bravo Fine Arts
During a January 2013 mini-sabbatical, I worked on very preliminary research and image-making for the Dream Plane project at Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz NY for which I used a newly discovered cache of family photographs and papers and military records as a focus. The plan described here is the result of that protected creative time.
Since 2008 I have presented 8 solo exhibitions of new photographs, each accompanied by one (and sometimes two) new ambitious installation projects. Mary Murray, Contemporary Curator at the Munson-Willliams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, found my level of production and display especially commendable, particularly as most were accomplished while teaching full-time rather than on sabbatical. I tenaciously finish projects.
SUPPORT MATERIALS:
As this is a visual project, I have included in the resume at the end of the proposal, several links to images. I also provided a powerpoint about my installations that includes at the end some Dream Plane: War Stories material. This powerpoint will better describe my art production as an installation artist.
To see my recent “Hekate” installation and read my statement, please follow this link to my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/katharine.kreisher/media_set?set=a.10204478903313626.1073741830.1263481193&type=1
DEPARTMENT SUPPORT and EXTERNAL REVIEWERS:
Departmental need in the photo area would be one adjunct to teach a beginning level photography course during a regular term, and perhaps a second adjunct in January. A January term course in photography is usually offered, and should probably be replaced, as on-campus studio courses are popular and valuable to the January Term experience. I have communicated with Chair Terry Slade who agrees. He has forwarded a positive statement to Dean Kellie Bean for the committee.
Tammis Groft H’74, Director of the Albany Institute of History and Art
and Rachel Seligman, Curator at the Tang Museum in Saratoga
will act as external reviewers this year. Both know my work well over time.
Thank you to all committee members for taking the time to assess the work of the faculty. –KK
Supplies ($800)
Matting and framing ($900)
Printing - announcements and small brochure ($700)
Documentation ($800)
Assistants ($1000)
Transportation costs ($2000)
Total: ($6200)
I will also supplement by applying for up to $1500 in small project grants described on the New York Foundation for the Arts website. These may cover some of the exhibition costs and printing costs. I have received several SOS and Decentralization Grants in the past. I am also preparing a Smithsonian grant that will be more substantial, and I have met (and will meet again) with Maggie Arthurs to discuss other options for funding the book project and “traveling” the Dream Plane: War Stories exhibition to academic galleries and art museums and small town military museums.
I will submit appropriate portions of the Dream Plane project to Society for Photographic Education for a new FOCUS grant, I am very active with SPE for which I serve a Co-Chair for the Women’s Caucus.
For the Wandersee I will produce a detailed budget in consultation with gallery and museum professionals at Hartwick College and elsewhere.
POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FIELD AND TO MY DEVELOPMENT AS A TEACHER-SCHOLAR:
1. FIELD
Museum curators, as well as faculty in a wide range of educational institutions already know my work. I am invited to exhibit and speak because my work relates to feminist issues (self-image/growing up female), peace issues (psychological effects of war/avenues to peace), historical concerns (WWII /Cold War Era), and
interdisciplinary arts (photo/video/installation/writing), and my exhibits augment curricular offerings. I am an approachable role model for young feminist artists. I am represented in textbooks through my “Contemplating Peace” portfolio. Work from many stages of my career is in significant permanent collections.
My work clearly has a place in the contemporary arts “dialogue” from a feminist perspective.
2. DEVELOPMENT AS A TEACHER-SCHOLAR
Artists build reputations incrementally, and I am receiving more positive feedback, critical appraisal and focused advice and invitations from art critics, curators and directors. In Central NY these include Jeffrey Hoone at Lightwork in Syracuse and Mary Murray at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica. Rachel Seligman at the Tang Museum in Saratoga and Tammis Groft at the Albany Institute of History and Art as well as other Capital District art professionals support my work. I am developing a presence in New Mexico following my sabbatical art residency there and recent “Hekate” installation in a group fiber art exhibition. I have been invited to present a variation on“Hekate” for at the Las Cruces Museum of Art in fall 2016.
Students benefit from my experience in the art world; I apply all my experiences to my teaching and advising. I am able to teach about the profession, because I am fully involved as a productive, exhibiting artist.
My reputation as a teacher/scholar has reached a new level. I am now invited as an expert consultant of other photography programs (ex: dual program at U Central Florida/Orlando and Daytona Beach) and as a panelist/judge of contemporary art for prestigious associations such as NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts). I participate fully, but always balance all these commitments carefully to maintain my art-making momentum. I continue to focus on image production so that I may achieve the most mature development and presentation of my work.
MY PLAN FOR COMPLETING AND DISSEMINATING WORK (I plan to begin with an off-campus residency experience to develop the work and make an initial presentation perhaps in Syracuse or Utica. I will present the finished installation on-campus or possibly at CANO or another Oneonta location with many activities to support and share it, and finally I will, as they awkwardly say, “travel” the work. Based on a review of my latest “Hekate’ installation in New Mexico, the director of RoCo, Rochester Contemporary gallery has invited me to present an installation there.)
1. Summer into FALL 2016
- Continue internet research about the Airborne Troop Carriers and their missions.
- Travel to do additional research with librarians and curators in Washington DC and the Air Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. Make new photographs as appropriate.
- Complete proposals for additional funding from the Smithsonian, New York Foundation for the Arts and other sources of funding for aspects of the project including a publication.
- Continue to collect family history information from letters and photographs and by interviewing surviving relatives about their activities during the same time period.
2. JAN 2017
- Develop/produce the installation called Dream Plane: War Stories. If accepted, I will do important initial work during a residency at Lightwork in Syracuse where the squadron wallpaper can be printed. I can build the installation in a nearby exhibit space and complete its first showing.
3. SPRING 2017
- Exhibit Dream Plane: War Stories in Oneonta either at the college or a local venue so that students can participate, and I can present gallery talks for classes and the public. I am also investigating using a Main Street window or the Project Space at SUNY-O as options. Additionally I will be pleased to contribute a print to the Fine Arts Collection at Hartwick. Beyond the gallery talks, I will speak in the Faculty Lecture Series. Perhaps most significantly, student assistants who help to construct the installation will learn “on the job” about my methods and meanings.
4. SUMMER 2017 (and the FOLLOWING ACADEMIC YEAR 2017-18)
-Travel to Lisbon and to Normandy to make photographs, some based on the ones my father had made and collected in Europe between 1943 and 1945. June 2017 may best to participate in the annual commemorative D-Day events.
- Present Dream Plane in other venues beyond Oneonta. Both Tammis Groft, Director of the Albany Institute of History and Art and Rachel Seligman, curator at Skidmore’s Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs have agreed to act as outside evaluators for this project. I will ask them to advise me concerning other significant venues well beyond Hartwick College. Outside the art gallery/art museum system, I am considering venues such as historical societies, military museums and Quaker colleges where peace and conflict studies are a significant focus. I am communicating with staff members at a military museum (located in a complex with a veteran’s home and one of the small traveling Vietnam Memorials) in Truth or Consequences , NM, where I am part of the community. I have also met with the curator at a Quaker College in California. RoCo Rochester Contemporary gallery in Rochester NY has me on a waiting list for the installation room..
- Develop a publication, first a self-published Blurb (or other brand) artist book that can augment the exhibition experience, and disseminate image and text in book form. I would also like to take that Blurb book as a “model” to publishers of photography books whose representatives attend my professional Society for Photographic Education conferences.
- Enlarge the project and statement by developing a collaborative version of the Dream Plane: War Stories project with Cooperstown artist Christine Heller whose own father was one of the paratroopers dropped in Normandy. He is still alive and recently was sent to Normandy for a commemorative event. Much of Christine’s work is a poetic protest against war and violence. Christine and I have a long-standing professional relationship and are already communicating about this future collaboration.
MY HISTORY AT HARTWICK (teaching and course release history):
1. TEACHING:
Since 1982 when I first came to Hartwick I have been teaching Photo I, II, III/(IV) and related directed/independent studies and senior projects every year, often several times each year. In the past few years, I have been aggressively developing a digital fine arts photography aspect for the studio major. I oversee the Documentary Photography Minor for students in other majors, and I regularly deal with students pursuing ISP’s in Photojournalism and other photo-related areas. Over the years I have also taught many other courses including printmaking, special hybrid studio courses in January (i.e. photo-printmaking or photojournalism), an off-campus course to Anguilla BWI concerned with investigating a foreign culture using a camera, and a repeating photo-based FYS class that was originally LINKED to Composition. I am teaching my third Women in Photography class (second time as an FYS) and I am actively involved with the Women and Gender Studies Minor group of professors.
I ran the printmaking program (as well as photography) for my first 10 years at Hartwick, and later I served as department chair for 7 years. My classes remain popular and have generally been filled to capacity unless there are scheduling conflicts over which I have no influence. I regularly update in the field and teach new courses such as Women in Photography which carries a WGS designation, a Round House Press printmaking course in January 2015, and soon Intro to Digital Photography in spring 2016. I work on Honors projects and oversee ISP’s in Photojournalsim..Three students state that they are currently completing the documentary photography minor. I take students to Society for Photographic Education conferences and help them exhibit in a variety of venues beyond the college. They go on to graduate programs in photography and related fields, and I support them all along the way with critical advice and recommendations.
Spring 2015 WICK article about my teaching:
www.velocityprintsolutions.com/HartwickTheWICKMagazineSpring2015/#10/z
2. RECENT SABBATICAL AND COURSE RELEASE HISTORY:
Over 30 years at Hartwick I have taken sabbaticals at the usual intervals (every seven years). During my spring 2011 half year sabbatical I presented a solo exhibit, Meeting My Selves which included a new Dream installation at Lycoming College in Williamsport PA. Then as an individual outside consultant, I reviewed the BS in Photography program at the University of Central Florida, followed by active participation in a Society for Photographic Education conference in Atlanta, and finally a 3-month artist residency ending with an exhibit of new photographs and a new Dream Desert installation at RioBravoFineArt in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I am now represented by Rio Bravo Fine Arts
During a January 2013 mini-sabbatical, I worked on very preliminary research and image-making for the Dream Plane project at Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz NY for which I used a newly discovered cache of family photographs and papers and military records as a focus. The plan described here is the result of that protected creative time.
Since 2008 I have presented 8 solo exhibitions of new photographs, each accompanied by one (and sometimes two) new ambitious installation projects. Mary Murray, Contemporary Curator at the Munson-Willliams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, found my level of production and display especially commendable, particularly as most were accomplished while teaching full-time rather than on sabbatical. I tenaciously finish projects.
SUPPORT MATERIALS:
As this is a visual project, I have included in the resume at the end of the proposal, several links to images. I also provided a powerpoint about my installations that includes at the end some Dream Plane: War Stories material. This powerpoint will better describe my art production as an installation artist.
To see my recent “Hekate” installation and read my statement, please follow this link to my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/katharine.kreisher/media_set?set=a.10204478903313626.1073741830.1263481193&type=1
DEPARTMENT SUPPORT and EXTERNAL REVIEWERS:
Departmental need in the photo area would be one adjunct to teach a beginning level photography course during a regular term, and perhaps a second adjunct in January. A January term course in photography is usually offered, and should probably be replaced, as on-campus studio courses are popular and valuable to the January Term experience. I have communicated with Chair Terry Slade who agrees. He has forwarded a positive statement to Dean Kellie Bean for the committee.
Tammis Groft H’74, Director of the Albany Institute of History and Art
and Rachel Seligman, Curator at the Tang Museum in Saratoga
will act as external reviewers this year. Both know my work well over time.
Thank you to all committee members for taking the time to assess the work of the faculty. –KK