Faculty

The Chautauqua School of Art residency program is composed of an esteemed group of faculty. All faculty teach in the most current, contemporary pedagogies, working closely with our School of Art participants, Chautauquans and members of the public.

Lead Faculty

Our Lead Faculty conduct weekly sessions and one-on-one conversations. Their pedagogy comes directly from their practices as outlined below.

Alpesh Kantilal Patel

Alpesh Kantilal Patel is a contemporary art historian, critic, and curator based at Florida International University, Miami, where he directed the MFA program in Visual Arts from 2012-2017. “Storytelling and Worldmaking.” Artworks can be part of innumerable contexts: everything from contemporary painting to the history of flamingos. Adapting the popular PechaKucha format of storytelling, participants will give pithy presentations (10 slides, 20 seconds each) driven by image as a mode of research (rather than reflections of what you already know). These will then be discussed as a group with an eye toward clarifying that artworks do not exist in a vacuum but are always already part of multiple, vibrant contexts. The workshop will empower students to consider what artworks and broader ideas they are in dialogue with. At the same time, this workshop will underscore that artworks do not reflect the world but instantiate new ones.

Kalup Linzy

Kalup Linzy is an interdisciplinary artist and curator. He has taught at Harvard University, New York University, School of Visual Arts, New York, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Linzy thematically explores sexuality, gender stereotypes, cultural identities, and his childhood upbringing through soap opera-based video and performance works. His videos are characteristically hyperbolic and gritty, often low-tech in quality with plots calling on socialization and community. Linzy pushes gender boundaries by adorning himself and his subjects in drag, manipulating the voice, and inserting a familiar cultural vernacular into his dialogues. Exploring and discussing narrative, Linzy plans to workshop scenes and recreate moments from his iconic videos with students.

Wendy Red Star

Wendy Red Star is an artist who works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society, informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. As an artist and educator, Red Star will offer mentorship and guidance to students to expand their knowledge of Native American art with a focus on research and intergenerational collaboration.

Hasan Elahi

Hasan Elahi is an artist, Professor and Director of the School of Art at George Mason University and a board member of Creative Capital. Hasan will be working with students/participants at Chautauqua on developing new formal and informal academic curricula that respond to a changing creative economy while focusing on a balanced academic and artistic life.

Jean Shin

Jean Shin is an artist whose large-scale installations speak to identity and community. She is on the faculty at Pratt Institute and a board member of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Jean will engage students in multi-faceted projects in the public realm, including site-specific installations and socially engaged works.

Raheleh Filsoofi

Raheleh Filsoofi is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work incorporates ancient and contemporary media such as ceramics, poetry, ambient sound, and video and addresses issues regarding borders, immigration, and inter-cultural communications. She gives participants the opportunity to explore the dynamics of the ceramic process and the expressive quality of the clay medium, while at the same time emphasizing art as a means of social engagement. Through a series of scaffolded individual and collaborative projects, participants develop skills in the artistic conceptualization and a creative process that is never final. Current projects focus on local natural resources as the physical and symbolic essence of place and the values of community and stewardship. Through the projects, we sensitize ourselves to an awareness of Nature and its relation to the human condition. Projects in making are expanded through a curatorial project and conference discussions on the contributions of ceramics to socially engaged art.

Hrag Vartanian

Hrag Vartanian is Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of Hyperallergic, critic, curator, artist and photographer. Hrag will be critic-in-residence, developing CVA’s first writing program for artists and critics that will look at arts writing and how it is evolving in the 21st century. Students/participants will be working together with Hrag on project-based workshops.

Faculty & Staff

In addition to our Lead Faculty, a core part of Chautauqua Visual Arts is our Faculty & Staff who are nationally recognized and practicing artists who are faculty and administrators. Our Faculty and Staff have exceptional skills and teach technical classes that are open to everyone, including the participants of our residency program.

The members of our Faculty and Staff include the CVA Team who are also all practicing artists. They not only manage our program, but also facilitate acquisitions, curate and organize exhibitions, conduct tours, hold conversations with artists, mentor participants and provide further education about the visual arts to everyone.