Black Mountain College: An Artistic and Educational Legacy
Visiting Faculty – In Order of Appearance
Katherine Chaddock is the author of Visions and Vanities: John Andrew Rice of
Black Mountain College and Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policies at the University of South Carolina. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Utah in Educational Administration/Higher Education. Chaddock's teaching has been recognized for its excellence; she is widely published, and she has presented 29 peer reviewed research papers in the past 10 years at annual meetings of the American Education Research Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and History of Education Society, and others.
Margret Kentgens-Craig is the author of The Bauhaus and America: First
Contacts 1919-1936. She was in charge of the Department of Collection and Archives at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in Germany for four years beginning in 1996 and a visiting scholar at Duke University from 2005-2009. There she participated in collaborative research on Black Mountain College. She is currently adjunct Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, College of Design, School of Architecture.
Fred Horowitz is the co-author (with Brenda Danilowitz) of Josef Albers: To Open Eyes / At the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale. He studied with Albers at Yale University and received his M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan. He has taught Art and Art History for many years, including most recently at Washtenaw Community College and University of Michigan where he taught the Albers-designed color course.
Paulus Berensohn has been offering workshops at the interface of craft, art, and
deep ecology for over 40 years. He is the author of Finding One’s Way with Clay, a Haystack monograph, and numerous articles. He describes himself as an ardent and serious amateur student of clay, poetry, fiber arts, book making, doodling, writing, dancing, the Alexander technique and Qi Gong. Despite his prodigious output of art work, he does not exhibit or sell what he makes, preferring, rather to sing up the earth in acts of art, acts of light and witness, of return and gratitude. Berensohn was a longtime companion to M.C. Richards.
Julia Connor was Sacramento (CA) Poet Laureate from 2005 to 2009 and was a
student of the original Poetics Program at New College of California where she studied with Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima and David Meltzer. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared widely in American literary journals. She is a past faculty member and Assistant Director of the MFA Writing Program of Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado. For five years she taught poetry workshops in the California Prison system, and from 1996 to 1999 was CAC Artist-in-Residence with The Women’s Wisdom Project, an art program for marginalized women. For the past sixteen years she has taught poetry intensives and master classes in Sacramento as well as in Massachusetts, Colorado, Oregon, and England. Julia is an accomplished ceramic artist with a professional Certificate from Chouinard Art School. Ms. Connor was a longtime friend and protégé of M.C. Richards. She often traveled with and assisted M.C. in her workshops and was designated as her literary executor. In this capacity, she has gathered Ms. Richards' extensive archives and placed them at the Getty Museum and Research Center in Los Angeles.
David McConville is a media artist and researcher specializing in the development of dome-based display technologies. He is on the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute (http://www.bfi.org) and co-founder of The Elumenati (http://www.elumenati.com), a full service design and engineering firm specializing in the development and deployment of immersive visualization environments and experiences. The Elumenati provides systems integration, realtime software design, immersive content research, custom fabrication, and optical engineering for clientele ranging from art festivals to space agencies. David is conducting independent research as a PhD candidate in the Planetary Collegium (http://www.planetary-collegium.net) through the University of Plymouth. His research focuses on the history and contemporary development of dome-based environments in the construction and shaping of worldviews.
Marnie Muller and Mark Hanf of Geometry of Nature (www.geometryofnature.com) produce installations, exhibits and experiential programs as well as interdisciplinary games and service learning opportunities geared towards young people and intergenerational audiences. They specialize in programs using the giant Dymaxion World Map designed by R. Buckminster Fuller and were key participants in developing the Earth Voyage project which integrates geography, geometry, and Earth systems sciences. This dynamic interdisciplinary project, sponsored by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, focused on envisioning and developing educational pilot programs geared to inviting young people onto the gymnasium-size Dymaxion World Map to explore global and regional issues including water resources and sustainable design. Presently, they are working closely with Fuller’s granddaughter, Alexandra, and other Fuller associates, to design and launch a dynamic educational initiative for young people, Aboard Spaceship Earth which focuses on exploring interconnectedness, creative problem-solving and collaborative sustainable design.
Joseph Bathanti was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He has B.A. and M.A.
degrees in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Bathanti came to North Carolina as a VISTA Volunteer in 1976 to work with prison inmates. Through this work he developed a deep friendship with BMC alumnus Fielding Dawson who was Chairman of the P.E.N Prison Writing Committee. Bathanti is Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and the author of four books of poetry including Communion Partners and This Metal which was nominated for The National Book Award. His latest novel, Coventry, winner of the 2006 Novello Literary Award was published by Novellow Festival Press. Most recently, his collection of short stories, The High Heart, winner of the 2007 Spokane Prize, was published by Eastern Washington University Press. His new collection of poems, Land of America, was published in early 2009 by Press 53. Bathanti has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. He is the recipient of two Literature Fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, The Samuel Talmage Ragan Award, a Fellowship from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, the Aniello Lauri Award for Creative Writing, the Sherwood Anderson Award and many others.
Sebastian Matthews is the author of the poetry collection We Generous (Red
Hen Press) and a memoir, In My Father’s Footsteps (W. W. Norton). He co-edited, with Stanley Plumly, Search Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews. Matthews teaches at Warren Wilson College and UNC-A’s Great Smokies Writing Program and serves on the faculty at Queens College Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing. His poetry and prose has appeared in, or will soon: 32 Poems, American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Georgia Review, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Poets & Writers, Seneca Review, The Sun, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Writer’s Chronicle and The Writer’s Almanac, among others. Matthews co-edits Rivendell, a place-based journal, and serves on the board of Q Ave Press.
Frank Brannon, Jr. received his M.F.A. in the Book Arts Program, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. He has worked on many publications, including The Paste Papers of Louise Lawrence Foster, Eye Think About Potatoes: They Make Me Quite Round, Cherokee Phoenix: Advent of a Newspaper, and The Egg Show, as well as two projects with poet Maurice Manning, Fables and Osage Orange and another, Voyage, with Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate. His work appears in many library collections, including those at Harvard, University of Michigan, Morehead State College and Stanford. He teaches book arts at Book Works in Asheville, NC, and has also taught at Penland School of Crafts. He has been featured in numerous individual exhibitions, including Of Books and Boats: Paperworks by Frank Brannon and The Cherokee Phoenix Newspaper of Northern Georgia, 1828-1834, for which he won a Studio Development Grant from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Consultant to Letterpress Studio Development Grant, 2009. Brannon has served as artist in residence for Interlude Editions at BookWorks in Asheville, North Carolina.
