FA ARTS
FA’s New Art Teacher, Ian Factor, Unveils His Vision for Visual Arts
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an Factor is the newest member of the Fine Arts Department and has big goals for the future of FA’s visual arts. With a newly renovated space, he is off to a great start and excited about how things are going so far! What is the most exciting aspect of joining Fryeburg Academy’s Fine Arts Department? “The opportunity to build a new visual arts program with new courses and a new focus, including coordinating and designing the newly renovated and equipped studio spaces, with such incredible support from the administration and wonderful colleagues. After teaching art and design for more than 20 years in higher education, opening and running my own non-profit art academies and working with students all over the world, coming “home” to the Northeast and Maine and becoming part of the special and unique community at FA is beyond exciting.” What are your hopes and vision for art at FA? “To continue what Steve Pullan (my predecessor) had built —a welcoming and open environment for anyone to feel comfortable expressing themselves through the visual arts, but at the same time bringing a high level of academic, technical, and conceptual training to the students who are looking for, and are interested in that mode of education. One of the main points of this is to fully prepare the students who are focused on pursuing the visual arts past high school. This includes post-secondary training, art school, atelier training, and eventually working as a full-time visual artist. I plan to have more opportunities for the art students both inside the Academy walls and outside, regionally, nationally, and internationally. It’s great how open and enthusiastic all of the art instructors are for collaboration and inter/cross-disciplinary programming for the students. This applies to so many of the instructors I’ve been speaking with in other departments as well. It really is such a healthy and important principle and practice that I see being explored and expressed here at FA.” How do you feel about your new space, and the impact will it have on the program? “The redesigned and renovated studios are still a work in progress, and I plan to have things (more or less) completed by the end of this fall semester. I spent some time in the older
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Ian Factor works with Kassidy Jordan ’27 in the new studio setting.
studios before the work was started, and it’s like night and day. The new studios are much brighter and more open. I have ordered all new furniture for the 2D studios where I teach Art I, Narrative Image Making/Illustration, the Portfolio Class, and run the Art Internship. We have a lot of new equipment, tools, and supplies that take the physical space and facilities of the art studios beyond many of the college and university art departments I’ve taught at. I plan to spend winter break setting up the sculpture and ceramics studio with a new kiln, a new ventilation system, and a lot of new equipment and furniture to make the making more fun, easier, and more efficient for the students. I have a group of seven incredible Art Interns whom I’ve been working with daily to set up and organize all of the spaces, and every
