Art on the Edge is a first-year seminar course at McDaniel College. The course is an introduction to contemporary studio art. We started out the semester with some brainstorming exercises and some community-building.
Students collaborated on an identity quilt that presented who they "used to be" before arriving to college. This was a great way for students to get to know each other and bond through shared experiences.
Issues March 2019: Students were tasked with producing a work of art that could be used during a performative and participatory Issues March around McDaniel College's campus and surrounding community. Students produced work about current world issues that concern them including gentrification, human trafficking, global warming, universal healthcare, pollution, distracted driving, LGBTQ+ rights, mass incarceration, gun violence, police brutality, and sexual consent.
Identity Barn Quilt Project 2019: Students were introduced to the Carroll County Barn Quilt trail through a presentation and field trip. Students were then tasked with painting their own 2' x 2' barn quilts using imagery and elements to communicate their own identities and histories.
Waste & Want Project 2020: Students created two self-portraits in response to two artist documentaries: Exit Through the Gift Shop and Waste Land.
One Week Project 2020: Students tracked one week's worth of data about themselves and translated that information into visualizations using whatever media they had access to Students tracked sleep, activity, clothing, music, foods, and other aspects of their daily lives.
Issues Project 2020: students designed protest-style artworks to raise awareness about issues that are important to them.
Art + Giving Project 2020: students read a chapter from Lewis Hyde's The Gift and created an artwork that served as a gift for their classmates.
Identity projects 2018: students were tasked with creating an artwork about their identity without using human figures or traditional self-portraits. Students told their stories through objects and performance-based works.
10-Hour project 2018: AotE students embarked on a semester-long research project that included a research paper, presentation, and artwork. This project will forced students to establish and confront their own curiosities, the goal being that they will exit their comfort zones and be inspired by new experiences that may have a lasting effect even beyond the conclusion of this semester. Examples of projects include: a student learning about what it's like to be a Muslim in conservative Carroll County, MD; a student who learned about accessibility on McDaniel College's campus; and a student who volunteered to help sexual assault and rape victims through a local non-profit.
Students were tasked with collaborating on a performance or ephemeral art project. This was a quick project: students only had one week to put something together, and the project was more about the idea than the execution.
