Manlalakbay Exhibition by East Tennessee State University

MANLALAKBAY (VOYAGER): Filipina/o Diaspora and the Forging of the Hybrid Identity

Cover Image: Manlalakbay (Voyager) Collaborative Mural by Jojo Austria, Jeho Bitancor and Art Zamora Mural is donated to the American Museum of Philippine Art (AMPA). Manlalakbay (Voyager): Filipinx Diaspora and the Forging of the Hybrid Identity ÂŠ Slocumb Galleries and Participating artists, 2019 | All rights reserved. Images and artist statements courtesy of the artists, representatives, and Clark Gallery for Stephanie Syjuco. Gallery exhibition images taken by Slocumb Galleriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; curator, Artists and staff. | All images and work are copyright property of the artists. Catalogue design by Amanda Kilhenny and Karlota Contreras-Koterbay. ETSU is an AA/EEO employer. ETSU-CAS-0016-19 50

MANLALAKBAY (VOYAGER): Filipina/o Diaspora and the Forging of the Hybrid Identity

Curated by Karlota I. Contreras-Koterbay, AMPA ETSU Tipton Gallery, November 2017

Guests of Honor Honorable Patrick Chuasoto Charge dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Affaires, Embassy of the Philippines, Washington, District of Columbia, USA Commissioner David Tomita Mayor, City of Johnson City Architect Jeremy Ross Chief Operating Officer, East Tennessee State University

Tipton Gallery

http://www.kimarteche.com/

Kim Acebo Arteche, CA “This series of self-portrait installations is in dialogue with Carlos Villa’s Tat2 pieces that appropriated Maori facial tattoo traditions to explore his identity as a Filipino American in the 1970’s. Villa’s appropriation of Maori tatooing was a reflection on the inaccessibility to information on Philippine Art History and Indigenous Philippine Tattooing traditions. Considering how technology and the Internet has aided my search for self and placing myself within today’s ethnic and cultural landscape, I manipulate and construct images through digital processes that allow me to explore the complex burden in our relationships with images and identity. As a community-engaged interdisciplinary artist, equity-centered arts & culture worker, I help arts organizations develop artist- and youthdriven initiatives focusing on community engaged programming and culturally relevant education that facilitates artist growth.” Kimberley Acebo Arteche is an educator, cultural worker, and interdisciplinary artist working in photography, installation, social practice, and performance. Her work explores the hybrid cultures formed by technology, movements of immigrants in America, and the way movements through space and spaces has been affected by these two. She was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, and grew up in the DMV. Kim received her BFA in Visual Arts/Photography from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is pursuing her MFA at San Francisco State University. As a young Pinay growing up in the suburbs of DC, very far away from her family in Batangas, she realized that her relationship with her heritage has always been mediated by the internet. She is interested in globalism and the way that technology has brought us closer and further away from our diasporic roots. Through the lens of diaspora, Arteche’s work revolves around epistemology, acting as an interlocutor between traditional research, oral history, and internet searches. She works in photography, installation, and social practice. She is currently teaching with Pin@y Educational Partnerships at Philip and Sala Burton Academic High School and with Streetside Stories. Acebo Arteche has been awarded the Murphy Cadogan Contemporary Art Award by the San Francisco Foundation, was Kearny Street Workshop’s Featured Visual Artist in the 2015 APAture Festival, and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Growlery. She has shown at Stanford University, SOMArts Cultural Center and at the Wailoa Arts & Cultural Center in Hilo, Hawaii. Kimberley currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

https://www.filamartistdirectory.com/juliojose-austria/

Julio Jose Austria, NY “My works depict time, movement and place navigated by human beings who exist in various levels of mobility and solitude. My works came through years of observations, patience, passion, dedication, trials and errors. My practice is predominantly paintings and mixed media. I see something, feel something and that’s how the creative process begins. I took everything in this world as a process leading to a door to another door. ‘A Storm for Freedom’ depicts on how I compare migration into like a storm coming, one may forecast it, but you will never know what will be the results when it arrives. In ‘Parallel’, since I decided and took a risk move to New York City in 2010, subway has become my daily life. It became my source of inspiration from the mobility of people to the rats that dwell underground. This painting represents the infamous rat pizza which I parallel the daily life struggle of each individual immigrant living in the Big Apple.”

Julio Jose Austria is a contemporary Filipino artist. His works mainly focused on urbanization and migration which provides a visual portrayal of his most profound life experiences and narration based upon his observations and absorption of the environment he is in. Austria’s present works demonstrate how form generates meaning, and how formalism – abstraction – social realism divides have indeed been rendered untenable of how color, texture and stroke become analogous to layered existence of the weary urbanite while still indulging the artist’s passionate proclivity to the paring down afforded by degrees of non - representation. Austria finished his bachelor’s degree in painting at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila Philippines. He is the recipient of the 2009 Asian Artist Full Fellowship Award at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson Vermont, Joan Mitchell Foundation grantee for the Ox-Bow School for the Arts in Saugatuck, Michigan in 2010, Ruth Katzman scholarship awardee by the Vytlacil campus of the Arts Student League New York. He was also chosen as one of the mentees in the Immigrant Artist Program by the New York Foundation of Arts in 2014. His work has been exhibited in Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Berlin, London and Vienna. He currently lives and works in New York City.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture/art/10/09/18/the-artist-known-as-jeho-bitancor

Jeho Bitancor, NJ â&#x20AC;&#x153;Quite a humorous take on the issue of Diaspora, my works for this show deal with the process of negotiating contradictions inherent in migratory experiences. In the case of Filipinos in the United States, I have depicted some nuances in facing their new situations and challenges. Their plight is as much a continuous struggle in overcoming obstacles as it is about resilience and the ability to adapt to constant changes which are of sociological, cultural and psychological nature.â&#x20AC;?

Jeho Bitancor is known in the Philippines for his paintings and performance art pieces that investigate the social landscape and the contradictions inherent within. His highly symbolic figurative works echo a quasi-surreal atmosphere that narrates on class disparity, workings of ideology as well as depictions of resistance and empowerment. A recipient of numerous awards including the 13 Artists Award of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Dangal ng Aurora award and the Freeman Foundation Asian Artists Fellowship in Vermont, USA; the artist has also exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, HongKong, Japan, Vietnam and the United States. His works are in the permanent collection of the Singapore Museum, the University of the Philippines Heritage Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, De LaSalle University Museum, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Cojuangco Museum, Balay-Segundo Museum, Museo de Baler and other private individuals. He had his art training at the University of the Philippines, the Art Students League of New York and New York University. He lives and works in New Jersey with his wife and son.

https://www.filamartistdirectory.com/jose-johann-bitancor/

Jose Johann Bitancor, CA/TN “As ‘culture of migration’ is almost synonymous with acculturation, we tend to lose sight of our real selves and at worse get lost altogether in a limbo of influences, new attitude and values. I believe it is as necessary to integrate as it is to preserve tradition, identity and self- respect.”

Jose Johann Bitancor is a California-based painter and graphic designer with a BFA from Far Eastern University in the Philippines. Prior to his migration to the United States, his creative work was devoted entirely to the applied arts, particularly exhibition design and collateral design. Bitancor also studied at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, where his inclination to work with hands and play with materials led to experiments in woodcarving and wire sculptures. His works now include textural abstractions based on experiences in his everyday life. (excerpt from https://rawartists.com/johannartworks) Before devoting himself full-time into painting, Jose Johann L. Bitancor has been a seasoned Visualizer/Graphic designer in the Philippines. As a designer, his practice ranged from exhibition designs to Advertising and Promotional materials for several communications and marketing firms. Upon his migration to the U.S. in 2003, he sought to further increase his knowledge and enrolled at the University of Memphis, in Memphis, Tennessee in 2004, during which he was also granted a scholarship at the Memphis College of Art in 2006. Very recently, his longtime passion for sculpture produced several works in wood. Coupled with relentless experimentation with materials, his works now include textural abstractions based on everyday life’s experiences. Bitancor has won several awards and distinctions in the Philippines and in the United States. He also exhibited his works in various galleries and museums in the Philippines and the United States such as U.P. Vargas Museum-Diliman, Bencab Museum-Baguio, Rochester Contemporary Art Center-New York, Bliss on Bliss Art Projects-New York, Seattle-Washington, Shoreline Art Festival-Washington, Germantown Performing Art Centre-Tennessee, and Guam among others.

https://popdc.wordpress.com/

Philippines on the Potomac Project, DC Teresa G. Carandang-Tiongson and

Erwin R. Tiongson, Founders, POPDC (excerpt from the POPDC) “The Philippines on the Potomac (POPDC) project started in September 2012 when, on a whim, we sat down one evening and started listing all the places in the DC area that we thought had some significance to Philippine-American history and culture. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we knew enough places for a small walking tour and for what we hoped could someday be a Philippine-American street map of DC. Since then we have sifted through a wealth of hardcopy and digital archival materials, including memoirs, diaries, news archives, and vintage directories, among many other sources of information. Names of important historical and cultural figures—Filipino and American colonial officials, members of the Philippine Independence Missions in the 1920s and 1930s, Commonwealth officials, National Artists—guided our search but the materials we found also quickly led us to many other sources we knew little about, including those related to the social history of the first community of migrants in the DC area. Rita Cacas recently published an important book about the lives of these first migrants and their Filipino-American children, together with Juanita Tamayo Lott (Images of America: Filipinos in Washington, D.C., Arcadia Publishing: 2009). Rita has also generously shared with us many important leads. We have now identified over 150 places, many of them supported by vintage multi-media materials. Only a few blog entries have been produced to date but more will be posted soon. In December 2012, we collaborated with the Ateneo Alumni Association of Metropolitan Washington DC to produce a limited-run fold-out map designed by Rina Alfonso featuring 32 of the over-150 sites that we have discovered. Each blog entry consists of a brief description of a place and its significance, photographs, further information on its location and accessibility, a list of references and, in some entries, a section called ‘Digital artifacts’ featuring vintage audio and video clips and digital photographs of related, original artifacts. The descriptions are based entirely on written sources except in a few instances when descendants of historical figures and biographers shared new information from personal recollections, as indicated in selected entries.”

https://stephaniesyjuco.com/

Stephanie Syjuco, CA “The ‘Cargo Cults’ photographic series revisits historical ethnographic studio portraiture via fictional display: using mass-manufactured goods purchased from American shopping malls and restyled to highlight popular fantasies associated with ‘ethnic’ patterning and costume. Pulling from earlier projects reworking ‘dazzle camouflage’ – a WWI technique of painting battleships with graphic black and white patterns in order to confuse enemy aim -- the disruptive outlines shift the viewer’s attention from foreground to background in an attempt to ‘find’ the false subject. Black and white calibration charts encroach upon the pictures, and in some cases overlap and cover portions of the figure, as if insisting on their ability to ‘correct’ the situation. This series involves the exploration of ‘neutral’ color palettes and patterning in a loose relationship to the impossibility of neutrality in politics and social spheres. By augmenting the graphic imagery with stark black and white renderings of traditional ethnic patterns, the resulting 21st Century dazzle camouflage hints at a globalized vision that reflects the complexities of migrations and colonizations.” Stephanie Syjuco creates large-scale spectacles of collected cultural objects, cumulative archives, and temporary vending installations, often with an active public component that invites viewers to directly participate as producers or distributors. Using critical wit and collaborative co-creation, her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, in order to investigate issues of economies and empire. This has included starting a global collaborative project with crochet crafters to counterfeit high-end consumer goods, presenting parasitic art counterfeiting events, and developing alternative vending economies, and other speculative propositions. Upcoming exhibitions include ‘New Photography: Being’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (March 2018) and ‘Public Knowledge,’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2018). Born in the Philippines, Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship Award and a 2009 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, and included in exhibitions at MoMA/P.S.1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ZKM Center for Art and Technology, the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, The 12th Havana Bienal, The 2015 Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan), among others. A long-time educator, she has taught at Stanford University, The California College of the Arts, The San Francisco Art Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and is currently an Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the University of California at Berkeley. She lives and works in Oakland, California. Syjuco is represented by the Clark Gallery in San Francisco.

http://wofflehouse.com/

Jenifer K. Wofford, CA “I make work about hybridity, history, gender and global culture: it’s the intercultural creative logic of a Filipina-American raised in Hong Kong, the UAE, Malaysia, and California, as well as that of a longtime educator in a diverse range of communities. This intercultural logic also requires interdisciplinary approaches: one project might be drawings and videos about Filipina nurses and immigration, another project, a boisterous performance with a rowdy female crew commandeering public space. Regardless of approach, the constants in my work are imagination, humor, a crisp visual approach and a healthy appreciation for the absurd. The legibility of illustration and the appeal of popular culture motifs are frequent strategies: I often seek out a shorthand vernacular to ease my audience into potentially difficult, complex conversations. Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively oddball situations. I do not consider myself an artist in isolation– studio solitude almost always expands into engagement with a broad range of voices often under-represented in the arts. My most satisfying projects all share this spirit of exchange, play, and cooperation: it makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.” Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose work plays with notions of hybridity, authenticity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, YBCA, San Jose Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong). Wofford’s awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the Center for Cultural Innovation, UCIRA, and the San Francisco Arts Commission. She has also been artist-in-residence at The Living Room, Philippines, Liguria Study Center, Italy and KinoKino, Norway. A well-known arts educator, Wofford is part-time faculty in Fine Arts and Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco, and Art Practice at UC Berkeley. She has also taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University. She holds degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA). Born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia and the California Bay Area, Wofford has also lived in Oakland, New Orleans and Prague. She lives and works in San Francisco.

http://wofflehouse.com/mob

Mail Order Brides (M.O.B.), CA “Prior to the closing of San Francisco’s original DeYoung Museum, curator Glen Helfand invited Bay Area artists to reflect on or ‘consider’ the nature of a museum for a final exhibition entitled ‘Museum Pieces.’ MOB considered the question ‘Why are museums so cold, so uninviting and formal?’ and endeavored to recreate the institution as a warmer, more hospitable living space. They surveyed visitors, and came up with highly appropriate decorating solutions for a section of the museum. Home is Where the **Art Is,’ is part of this. Manananggoogle’s mission is to organize the world and make it universally accessible and useful. With offices all around the globe, its headquarters remain in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visit the company website. Certain circles in Silicon Valley have not taken kindly to this powerful company’s formidable influence, and nervous whispers abound. Manananggoogle’s founders and chief executive officers are sometimes rumored to in fact be the legendary, mythical Philippine manananggal.”

For over 15 years, Reanne ‘Immaculata’ Estrada, Eliza ‘Neneng’ Barrios, and Jenifer ‘Baby’ Wofford have worked collaboratively as Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., a trio of Filipina-American artists engaged in an ongoing conversation with culture and gender. While other mail order brides are conventionally perceived as ideal obedient domestics, it has not escaped this trio’s attention that, acronymically speaking, ‘Mail Order Brides’ abbreviates down to a more sinister acronym that informs the darker subtext of their operations. Taking matters into their own well-manicured hands, the Brides deploy their innate charm, guile, and fine fashion sense to gently pry open the eyes of the closed-minded. Enforced enlightenment has arrived in the form of karaoke videos and museum makeovers, in photographic psychodramas and parade performances, in bridesmaid entrepreneurships and corporate dominations. M.O.B. ‘hits’ have included the de Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, Southern Exposure (San Francisco, CA), the San Jose Museum of Art, the Triton Museum of Art (San Jose, CA), Drive-By Cinema (San Diego, CA), McColl Center for Visual Art (Charlotte, NC), Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila, Philippines). Their video screenings include the S.F. International Asian American Film Festival, the S.F. International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the New York Mix Festival and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.

https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/273255/zirkular-art-art-zamora-solaire/

Art Zamora, NY â&#x20AC;&#x153;As an artist, I dedicate my life to my painting as my intense passion wherever I am, because art is my life and spiritual refinement. Then being a Filipino artist, my diaspora is to continually explore myself in the field of arts, because for me an artwork is the most effective and powerful way of expressing my message spiritually, socially and politically. And I believe that in this kind of medium, I can express my love, I can establish friendship, and I can reconnect with any human beings wherever I am, because an artwork is the most important instrument to develop cultural beliefs, to progress modern industry, to spread universal peace and embrace the global unity. Art must elevate morals, instruct the mind, and enlighten the spirit. I devote myself to painting; it is my passion. I have imposed it within myself like a religious belief. I am most interested in unusual forms to make into a dynamic style. I profoundly use zirkular shapes for my abstract arrangement of undulating forms, and use color as hues. These are forces that prod my imagination to explore boundless realms that only the mind can reach and touch. I believe visual is the most effective and has powerful effect to express our message, religiously, politically and spiritually. This kind of medium can establish forms of worshiping and consciously seeking reconnections with all human beings. This is the most important instrument to develop our cultural beliefs and unity.â&#x20AC;? Art Zamora started out painting on-the-spot with his cousin, the acclaimed Philippine artist Ibarra de la Rosa. He studied drawing, painting, and composition at the University of the Philippines and the PWU College of Music and Fine Arts. He is proficient in the use of a wide range of techniques in oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor, and mixed media. From 1986 to 1996, he traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East as artist and jewelry designer. He is keen at contemplating ancient Eastern and Western philosophies, as he balances traditional and contemporary concepts in his paintings. Zamoraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artistic expression, creativity and passion for the visual arts have resulted in numerous awards not only in painting but also in mixed media and other art assemblage. As one of the most dedicated artists of our days immersed in painting and mixed media, he turns out piece after piece with delightful abandon, a purity of expression that is as electric as him. His transition from being a realist and impressionist painter in 1986 was brought about by his exposure to diverse cultural influences from his years of travel and work experiences in Europe, Middle East, Canada and the US. He dabbled in experimentations towards Abstract ideas. Zamora deems that Art is an accurate transformation of his life whereby each brush stroke, contrast and hue depicts various challenges, defeats and victories he endured throughout his life. His keen imagination and observant character are key factors that influence his creativity, which allows him to be present in whatever world he chooses for his subject.

http://www.curiosityadventureandlove.com

‘Curiosity, Adventure and Love,’ NY/PH ‘Curiosity, Adventure and Love’ weaves together 3 threads — the life of a 104-year-old American who journeys to the Philippines alone in 1933 at age 18, the history of the country that she has witnessed and the insights and wisdom of a woman whose indomitable spirit has evoked inspiration for the thousands who have known her. Sitting alone in her 250-year-old Spanish colonial home, Jessie Lichauco’s poetic soul draws comfort from the ebb and flow of the river outside her window and protection from an ancient Banyan Tree while sharing stories with others of a life guided by fate, and where her innate sense of adventure, curiosity and compassion for others knows no boundaries. Jessie’s husband Marcial Lichauco, whom she met while he was working for the Philippine colonial government lobbying for independence in Washington DC, was among the country’s most prominent lawyers of that era and this allowed her a front row seat to witness the rebirth of a nation. In time, Jessie’s conviction to help her fellow man in every way possible led her to be granted Philippine citizenship for her profound contributions to the Filipino people. Bridging the past, the present and future, it’s an amazing journey of a century of humankind, of love and finding home, of the cruelty of war and deprivations of a hostile occupation, and the rebuilding of a nation while living a life that restores our faith in the power of our own humanity. Sunshine Lichauco de Leon has been a freelance journalist based in Manila, Philippines for the past eight years. She has written for international media including The Guardian, Forbes Asia, CNN. com, Los Angeles Times, Globalpost.com, NBCnews.com and USA Today. She has also reported for American and British public radio programs such as PRI/BBC’s ‘The World’, NPR’s ‘Newscasts’ and BBC’s Outlook, as well as worked as a local producer for foreign documentary teams on projects for BBC Radio, Australia’s SBS, Europe’s Arte Channel, and America’s Public Broadcasting System, and as a fixer for foreign TV news media, including CNN International and NBC News. Suzanne Richiardone is a filmmaker with more than a decade of international experience in documentary film and television. She has worked as a producer on award-winning series and critically acclaimed programs for PBS, A&E, ARTE, WEtv, Animal Planet, Discovery International, and the Biography Channel. Her recent projects include Maravilla, a feature length documentary about the middleweight boxing champion Sergio Martinez, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2014, as well as Campus Rape – A silent Epidemic, an investigative documentary on the rising tide of sexual violence on college campuses across America. She recently launched Tiny Giant Films, a new venture to produce narrative films with political and social impact.

Manlalakbay Collaborative Mural

Student Mentoring

Reception

East TN, SW VA Philippine-American Assoc.

In Memoriam of Dr. Reuben Ramas CaĂąete, AMPA

The Fl3tcher Exhibit: Social & Politically Engaged Art 2016 International Juried Exhibition Awardee: Rey Paz Contreras

http://fl3tch3rexhibit.com/catalog_no/2016/2016FE_CATALOG.pdf

Department of Art & Design and Slocumb Galleries in partnership with East TN - SW VA Filipino-American Organization, Honors College, Women’s Studies Program, JC Public Library, DoubleTree by Hilton, Jade Tree, American Museum of Philippine Art, ETSU Phil-Am Student Society, First TN Development District and TN Arts Commission’s Arts Build Communities (ABC) Grant present

Department of Art & Design

ETSU Tipton & Slocumb Galleries

The ETSU Department of Art & Design provides comprehensive training in the visual arts and art history. Students develop problem solving skills, a strong work ethic, and an ability to communicate verbally and visually through their time with us. Alumni from our program are thriving in various careers in the arts. The faculty includes internationally exhibited artists, published authors, and a Guggenheim fellow. Within the College of Arts & Sciences, it is affiliated with the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at ETSU.

The ETSU Tipton and Slocumb Galleries under the Department of Art & Design promote the understanding, production, and appreciation of visual arts in support of the academic experience and the cultural development of surrounding communities. Slocumb is named for Prof. Elizabeth Slocumb, an art teacher at ETSU (then, East TN Normal School in 1911) and first Chair of the Department of Art. The galleries’ mission is to develop creative excellence, foster interdisciplinary collaborations, promote inclusivity and encourage critical thinking by providing access and platform for innovative ideas and diverse exhibitions.

The facilities are comprehensive, with materials and spaces for Graphic Design, Fibers, Painting, Printmaking, Ceramics, Drawing, Jewelry & Metals, Sculpture, Analog and Digital Photography, and Extended Media. The Department of Art & Design is accredited by NASAD, The National Association of Schools of Art and Design, and is a member of CAA, the College Art Association; SECAC, Southeastern College Art Conference; ISC, the International Sculpture Center, and is a consortium member of SACI, Studio Art Centers International, based in Florence, Italy. Annual study abroad opportunities are available, like the ceramic workshop in Spannochia, Italy. Degrees offered: Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Studio Art Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) in Studio Art Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) in Graphic Design Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Art History Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Studio Art Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Studio Art, minor in Education Minors in Studio Art and Art History etsu.edu/cas/art

The year-long calendar features curated/juried Visiting Artists’ exhibitions and lecture series, MFA / BFA / BA student shows and diversity exhibitions. The Tipton Gallery organizes monthly art activities in coordination with Downtown JC First Fridays and festivals. The exhibition/art educational programming and community engagement activities promote formally/artistically diverse, cuturally/ socially relevant and thought provoking visual images that encourage critical discourse. The annual Positive/ Negative National Juried Art Exhibition features emerging and nationally renowned US contemporary artists who employ innovative media and techniques that contribute to the evolving definition of American art. Accomplished artists and renowned curators from prestigious institutions serve as Jurors, to provide regional communities exposure and access to contemporary art. Programming is supported by ETSU Department of Art & Design, the Honors College and the Office of the President, in partnership with academic units and funding support from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

Tennessee Arts Commission (TAC)

Arts Build Communities (ABC) Grant

The Tennessee Arts Commission was created in 1967 by the Tennessee General Assembly with the special mandate to stimulate and encourage the presentation of the visual, literary, music and performing arts and to encourage public interest in the cultural heritage of Tennessee. The mission of the Tennessee Arts Commission is to cultivate the arts for the benefit of all Tennesseans and their communities.

The ABC grant program from the Tennessee Arts Commission is designed to provide support for arts projects that broaden access to arts experiences, address communitty quality of life issues through the arts experiences, offer arts programs that are designed to help affect positive change in community issues, develop arts programming that strengthens social networks through community engagement, and undertake cultural arts initiatives that enhance a community’s identity and/or economic development. The ABC Grant for Washington County is through the First Tennessee Development District.

Through a variety of investments, the Commission encourages excellence in artistic expression through the state’s artists, arts organizations and arts activities. That commitment has expanded through the years to increase access and opportunities for all citizens to participate in the arts. The Tennessee Arts Commission builds better communities by: - Investing in Tennessee’s nonprofit arts industry to enhance cultural life Serving citizens, artists and arts and cultural organizations - Supporting arts education to increase student outcomes - Undertaking initiatives that address public needs through the arts Each year, the Commission helps fund the arts activities of more than 700 organizations and artists in Tennessee. Over the past five years, more than 6,450 grants totaling more than $30 million have been invested in communities across Tennessee. Of the $5.5 million granted by the Commission in FY2018, $5.4 million came from specialty license plate fees earmarked to benefit the arts. The Commission receives state appropriations and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Arts education is a major focus, both to support a complete and balanced education for Tennessee’s children and youth and to grow the arts audiences of the future. Arts education grants and programs enhance academic achievement and contribute to student growth and life-long learning.

American Museum of Philippine Art (AMPA) AMPA is an initiative to organize efforts to develop and construct an arts center devoted to the promotion, appreciation, and patronage of Philippine Art in the United States of America and around the world. By ‘Philippine Art,’ we lens the experiences, historical memory, and aesthetics of Filipinos from throughout the world, especially for those who have lived in the United States. ‘Art’ encompasses the visual arts, and other forms such as performance, culinary, literary cinema, design, fashion, literature, and traditional cultural practices. It is envisioned to be a museological institution that shall address the (in)visibility of the Filipinos’ cultural presence in the US. https://www.take5group.com/ampafi

ETSU Women’s Studies Program (WSP) The Women’s Studies Program educates students to critically engage issues of gender and sexual equity in the Appalachian South, nationally, and globally. Our graduates provide a pool of accomplished critical thinkers focused on civic engagement, social justice, and change, who can help to satisfy the continuing need to improve the lives, opportunities, and futures of women, LGBTQ individuals, and other marginalized groups. https://www.etsu.edu/cas/litlang/wsp/