One of the two main components of a student’s course of study in the MFA-VA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts is a semester-long studio project in which the student develops and/or challenges specific aspects of their art practice under the guidance of an Artist-Mentor.

The VCFA Artist-Mentor network is comprised of prominent contemporary artists who mentor students individually, during the semester. With over 1500 Artist-Mentors across the United States and Canada, VCFA students are ensured mentorship with a different Artist-Mentor each semester.

Ed. note: The following interview was conducted in December 2021 during Jessica’s 1st semester in the VA Program.

Is there a structure to your exchanges?

Jessica, how have the conversations with Ghazaleh affected your process and thinking regarding your work?

Can you describe a pivotal exchange or moment that helped shift something for you?

What prompted the shift?

J: A big part of the shift had to do with me trying to find my identity as an artist. I didn’t have that in place. I’m not saying I have that 100% currently, but I am in a better place at the moment. Eliminating that particular subject matter from my work allowed me to develop myself as an artist and truly understand what I was trying to say. It allowed me to bring what I am trying to say and what I am actually creating, together – to be more cohesive. That was definitely because of Ghazaleh’s intervention and her feedback. She recommended several books and other artists for me to check out during that time.

Which books?

How have you been challenged this semester?

J: Oh my goodness. How much time do you have? I have been challenged from the very beginning of this semester. I believe the purpose of going to a grad program is to be challenged. I was completely open and ready for the opportunity to allow feedback and to implement that feedback, and to allow change to happen. Before I came into the program, I wasn’t completely open and I didn’t really have a structured approach to my creating at all. It was very unstructured. I really needed a decision making process, to really make a plan and implement it.

The subject matter I’ve chosen is extremely difficult to study: identity in relation to the U.S. and Mexico border. When I started incorporating the Visual Culture Research into the project it added a whole other element that really made me look at my identity as a person. And the studio work was something that challenged my identity as an artist. I was being challenged about who I am both as an artist and person. To be an artist you have to be defiant; you can’t be wishy washy about what you want to say because the things you are saying are important.

What role did Ghazaleh play in challenging you? 

How has the VCFA Student – Artist-Mentor model informed the way you approach your process?

J: I wouldn’t have made this much progress this rapidly without this type of program. I think a huge benefit is having someone pay attention to what I’m doing, focusing on me. Because when you are in your thoughts it’s very difficult sometimes to get a grasp on how you want to go about approaching something. Having Ghazaleh understand where I was coming from helped me learn how to articulate those ideas, which I’m still learning. I know that throughout the program it’s going to be the same, a continuous learning process. I am grateful I had Ghazaleh as my Artist-Mentor because I do feel she was a really good fit for me for this semester.

What will you take into the next semester from working with Ghazaleh?

Did Ghazaleh help you to think more about how research can exist within your studio practice?

What advice would you give a new student who is thinking about selecting an Artist-Mentor?

Is it a challenge for you as an Artist-Mentor as well?

Judy Walgren is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, photo editor and executive producer. Presently, she works and teaches in the Michigan State University’s School of Journalism as the associate director and professor of practice for photojournalism and new media. She lives in Williamston, Michigan.

Previously, Walgren was the director of photography at the San Francisco Chronicle and photography instructor at DeAnza, Foothill and CCSF Community Colleges in the Bay Area, as well as an instructor in the public education program at SFAI. She has also worked on visual staffs at The Dallas Morning News, The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post.

Her research explores the semiotics found within visual archives and methods to disrupt bigotry by filling in gaps and expanding cultural narratives.

In the Summer of 2022, during her education abroad program in Kenya, Walgren will be working with Everyday Projects and the Everyday Africa photographers .

Can you talk about how the exhibition at MSU, We Are Worth Everything: Survivors as Themselves, came about and your role in the project?

This exhibition came about because of my experiences at VCFA while working on my MFA in Visual Art. Before attending VCFA, I was working as a photojournalist, photo editor and director of photography for large news organizations—operating under the assumption that community-engaged or social practice approaches to my work would go against the ethics of journalism. We were expected to feign objectivity and separation—both of which are impossible given the intimate nature of my work. Now I know, without a doubt, that objectivity is unattainable and that not offering for someone to provide feedback on their image, when at all possible, can also be viewed as unethical—especially because many of the communities I have been so fortunate to engage with are different than the ones I was born into.

My time studying at VCFA gave me the language, history, and theories on which I could base my approaches to my work, such as my desire to work in collaboration with people and communities. Now that I am working in a journalism school, I am really excited to marry my journalism and artistic practices—retaining the notions of journalism ethics such as to do no harm, not creating or “faking” situations or events then portraying them as reality, capturing events as they unfold, not asking people to repeat actions and so on, while drawing on the ethical approaches that were introduced to me while working on my MFA such as collaboration, informed consent, personal interrogation of privilege and power, and the like. So, when I was hired at MSU in the Summer of 2018, I knew that I wanted to work with the Survivors who stood up to the monster that sexually abused them and try using these new approaches.

I started researching visual media coverage of the Survivors online and was confronted by two distinct sets of images: images of traumatized women speaking in a courtroom to the judge and their abuser and images from the ESPN ESPY awards ceremony where many Survivors dressed in formal evening wear stood together on a stage. They had been invited to receive awards for their courage. I wondered what would be the images that fell in-between being visually represented as a traumatized person and on the other hand as a stunningly beautiful, gorgeously dressed beauty? Human beings are so much more complex, and our identities are intersectional, not fixed. There was also this notion of gender that kept emerging, the engenderment of trauma. How could I augment the formidable digital, visual archive of Survivors of sexual violence starting with this specific group? How could I support these courageous beings to portray themselves?

I was put in touch with one of the Survivors who runs the private Survivor Facebook page and she posted about my idea and an invitation for anyone who wanted to participate with my contact information. I subsequently worked with nearly forty people to create portraits together and then thirty images were chosen for the exhibition; We Are Worth Everything: Survivors as Themselves. I share copyright with each of the people I collaborated with because they were as much a part of creating the images as I was and they deserve autonomy over their images. They can circulate their images independent of my approval, however, I must ask them for permission to exhibit and/or publish the images. I put the onus on myself, which is an ongoing and very powerful exercise for me.

What were some of the collaborative features of the project? 

I worked with each Survivor to decide where their photos would be shot, how they wanted to present themselves and then how those things fit into the notion of what they wanted to say through the image. Some wanted to work in our tiny studio, another wanted to work in a garden, and a few chose to work in their childhood bedrooms. Once we decided on the location and the theme, we would shoot a few images, look at them and then shoot some more. Afterwards, together we would choose one or two images that could be displayed and published.

I’m now working with anyone who has survived sexual violence who wants to collaborate. I really think this notion of identity and sexual violence are very intertwined and it also connects with the work that I’ve just done over the course of my career. If there is ever anybody who wants to work on this project with me, I will do it until I cannot hold the camera anymore. When those I collaborate with see their images, they’re always moved in some way, and that moves me deeply, every time.

Where does collaboration fit into your practice as an artist and an educator?

That’s a great question. Collaboration fits into every aspect of my life, really, and it was my time at VCFA that unlocked that realization for me. I have always been attracted to projects that involve some aspect of social justice which require collaborative approaches. Artist and educator xtine burrough, who is also a VCFA program graduate (VA 01) and a full professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, invited me to collaborate with her on a book that we just wrapped up: Art As Social Practice: Technologies For Change. We’ve brought twenty-seven different artists together who use various forms of technology, along with community-engaged work, for an anthology to be published by Routledge Press in 2022. After xtine saw my work at a visual communications conference where I presented the first ten portraits from the Survivor collaboration series, she asked if I would join her on the book project. Of course I said “Yes,” and am eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to work closely with someone who I deeply respect and who inspires me. We co-edited the book, as well as contributed chapters about our socially engaged approaches to our work. xtine is a genius.

As far as education, the pedagogical approach I take with my students is collaborative, peer-oriented and peer-driven. I’m providing a framework that eradicates the notion of “Professor as genius” and positions the students as co-instructors. I am trying very hard, especially right now during this on-going pandemic, to empower them and to show them that they have agency in the world, in their lives, and with their decision-making processes. I feel like our students are going make great strides in our evolution as human beings because of their acute empathy and their experiences with the COVID outbreak and the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements. I am so thankful they are here.

Do you think artists are necessary to resistance movements?

Early on, before I started at VCFA, I went to lunch with a well-known photojournalism educator, and he told me that if I got an MFA I was going to ruin my career and contaminate my journalistic integrity. He said that I could get a master’s in anything but art. That conversation convinced me that I needed to get that MFA. Visual artists—we are the resistance. We create the work that articulates the need for change and/or illuminates the change that is here. Our work instigates or provokes change; it suggests, shouts, screams about what needs to change.

I think about Wangechi Mutu’s work, Cauleen Smith’s work, Glenn Ligon’s work, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work, Viet Le’s work, Mike Cloud’s work. Mike Cloud was a visiting artist for one of the residencies and his artist talk blew my mind apart. He had physically taken apart one of Annie Leibovitz‘s books and then put it back together and hung it on a wall. Before VCFA, I had always been very controlled in my thought processes and aware of the journalistic norms that governed my existence. Suddenly, my brain exploded. Viet Le’s guidance did the same thing. His feedback and mentorship shattered multiple ways of knowing for me—some of which I am still grappling with. Faculty members had me read books that deepened my understanding and awareness in ways that I had never really explored. One book, Edward Said’s Out of Place: A Memoir, had a profound impact on me, as did Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure.

Because of the incredible artist-mentors and faculty at VCFA, I was finally able to understand why the straightforward photojournalistic pathways, processes and mythologies never really made sense to me. I was able to embrace the feeling of not perfectly fitting in anywhere. And it’s a huge relief to be ok with that reality and to work from that place.

How have your experiences as a student at VCFA shaped your current practice?

As I have noted, the VCFA experience was life changing for me. I remember being at my Grad review with artists Cauleen Smith and Viet Le – and crying the whole way through it. There was so much that I wanted to say, but I was literally overwhelmed by the rush of emotions led by profound gratitude for their guidance and support. For my final project I visualized years of chaos, rage, and grief and what was there in front of me were the realities that had haunted me for decades—and still do, today.

During the MFA exhibition, people attending from the public sought me out to say that they appreciated what I was saying with the work, which was huge for me to hear. There were no captions, no story that was published with the images displayed. The photos were either from my domestic archive, were appropriated, or were borrowed from friends who were photojournalists. None were made from my own camera.

My MFA experience has also deeply affected my pedagogical approaches, especially around the ethics of photojournalism. With my students, I explain that as photojournalists, we can’t recreate events or actions, we can’t make people do things unless we are making portraits and then the process needs to be collaborative and thoughtful. I ask them to think about ethical representation and engagement and what that looks like for both them and for the people they are photographing. I take time to discuss what the emotional impact that their work might have on themselves and on those who view it. None of these subjects were highlighted when I was in school studying to be a photojournalist.

In the first class, every time, we talk about the mythology of objectivity. We discuss implicit bias and how to uncover and identify these biases in ourselves. And I never say that because you come from one culture then you can’t hang out and work with another culture, but I do stress the need to collaborate, to listen, to work together to find our collective truths. We talk about how the act of understanding, even interrogating your privilege, affects the power dynamic present in all interactions. Having the knowledge, the language and the forum to pass these ideas forward to upcoming visual storytellers is truly a gift, and one that I will never take for granted.

One of the two main components of a student’s course of study in the MFA-VA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts is a semester-long studio project in which the student develops and/or challenges specific aspects of their art practice under the guidance of an Artist-Mentor.

The VCFA Artist-Mentor network is comprised of prominent contemporary artists who mentor students individually, during the semester. With over 1500 Artist-Mentors across the United States and Canada, VCFA students are ensured mentorship with a different Artist-Mentor each semester.

Ed. note: The following interview was conducted in April 2021 during Nico’s 3rd semester in the VA Program – he is currently in his 4th semester. Faith Wilding was Nicholas Lima’s 3rd semester artist-mentor. She is part of the founding faculty of the Visual Art Program at VCFA.

Is there a structure to your exchanges?

Nico, how have the conversations with Faith affected your thinking and process regarding your work?

Could you describe a pivotal moment or exchange that helped shift something for you?

Nico, how are you finding and defining your company?

N:  I’m looking at a lot more sculptors these days. I’ve always just focused on painting and drawing and printmaking. And I’m finding that a lot of the kind of weird, interesting work that makes me think is by artists that are working with found objects.

Faith mentioned one artist, Mark Dion, who makes these giant installations where he works in a spot that’s been disturbed, and he does an excavation. And part of the exhibition is all the materials that he finds and sorts and organizes so it’s like a cabinet of wonders. I wrote a paper about how he constructed this 30’ climate controlled greenhouse around this giant dying spruce tree that became an ecosystem because of all these mosses and plants and bugs that were already growing on the tree. It made me think of our whole agricultural system and having to put in all these chemicals, money, and materials from around the world, rather than trying to build something with the materials that are already present where you are. We make these overly complicated systems.

(Com)PostConsumer Garden TV, Nicholas Lima, 2021

How have you been challenged this semester?

What do you think you’ll take into the next semester from your work with Faith?

What advice would you give a new student thinking about selecting an artist-mentor?

How has the VCFA student/artist-mentor model informed the way you approach your process?