Ania Gola-Kumor
Professional Organizations:
Member: Association of Polish Artist and Designers, since 1980; College Art Association, since 1996; Foundations in Art: Theory and Education, since 1996.
Areas of specialization:
Painting, drawing, color, 2D design, exhibition design, installation.
What is your favorite thing about teaching at RMCAD?
I like to work at RMCAD a lot. I like the energy and passion for art. I like to see my freshmen growing up and becoming independent artists.
“Every class comes down to this: my students and I, face to face, engaged in an ancient and exacting exchange called ‘education.’ Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” - Parker J. Palmer
What is your favorite class or project to teach and why?
“In The Garden” assignment. The inspiration for my first homework assignment is the book In The Garden, by Jennifer Bartlett. The book is a series of almost 200 works on paper devoted to a single theme: the garden of the villa she occupied in the South of France. This is an incredible study of one subject, with 200 different solutions, each one different and fresh. Some of them are representational, some not, some elaborate or fast sketches, all depicting the same pool, which in her hands turned into the source of inspiration for an enormous body of work. I assign a minimum of 24 drawings with common denominator, theme, object, subject or idea. They can be done with variety of drawing materials, dry or wet, on regular surface Bristol board or watercolor paper if you use wet media, or sketch pad for dry media. Every 4 weeks we have a review of those studies and in-progress critique. The goal is to generate a body of work with a variety of drawing tools and different approaches on one subject/object/idea. The objective is to realize how you can enrich your drawing abilities by trying different media and approaches.
This is my favorite project because it encourages creativity, experimentation and fun. I have great work coming from this assignment. It was published in 100 Creative Drawing Ideas, Anna Held Audette, Shambhala, Boston & London, 2005, p.144-145.
Knowing what you know now, what’s the one piece of advice you would give to your college-aged self?
My teaching philosophy is based on a strong belief that style is like handwriting - individual and different for everyone. It is important that students develop their “individual handwriting” during their time at RMCAD.
What prominent artist, scholar or designer in your field do you admire the most, and why?
It would have to be Jan Lis, professor, artist, scholar, mentor and friend. He was mentoring me through graduate school. We have stayed in touch. He helped me to became who I am.
What are your greatest influences?
Piotr Potworowski, Teresa Pagowska, Jacek Siennicki, Cy Twombly, Robert Motherwell.
Artist/Teaching Statement:
Artist Statement:
Creating is a very personal and complicated process for me, related to my heart, brain, intuition, experiences and memory. It reflects my state of mind. I am painting out of the need to give form to my emotions, express issues I am exploring and verify something I never quite realize until I am satisfied with the results of my work.
My painting process is about balance between spontaneity and control, intended and serendipitous. In creating a good picture honesty is very important to feel vulnerable and bold at the same time. For me a good picture combines spontaneity, control, restraint and honesty. I do not intend to create pretty pictures. Sometimes a picture is more valuable to me when it shows a struggle. I have a taste for defects or blemishes which, when skillfully accumulated, may acquire their special power.
My paintings often are not based on direct observation. I am not interested anymore in depicting recognizable images. Abstraction doesn't have to be a simplification or distortion; it can be a remote response to things and places seen or experienced.
I do not believe in so-called moments of inspiration. Painting is every-day-hard-work.
I like to work on several pictures at the same time. Unfinished work helps me to start new ones. It is a very stressful method because I would be surrounded by seven to twelve unresolved paintings. And then one almost finished helps me to finish three others and two days later, they are all done.
When I came to this country I started to paint landscapes. Driving to the Grand Canyon, having landscape opening in front of me for five days, was such a strong experience for me that I felt compelled to paint landscapes from an aerial point of view, as if I was flying in helicopter looking down. Many of my compositions still have this aerial view of the landscape, which is unintentional, because I don’t think about landscape when I do that. Colors and light I’ve experienced here made me change my colors too.
My art changes and evolves, but seen together in consecutive order the transitions would make perfect sense.
My best paintings are those I did not like at first. It happens to me too often that I leave my studio with the feeling I've accomplished something and it turns out the next morning that the painting was too easy and not as great as I thought. On the other hand, those I didn't like at first grow on me.
I will end with a quote by Cy Twombly: “In painting it is the forming image; the compulsive action of becoming; the direct and indirect pressures brought to the climax in the acute act of forming. (By forming I don't mean formalizing- or in the general sense the organizing of a ‘good painting.’ These problems are easily reached and solved and in many cases have produced beautiful and even important works of art.)”
Teaching Philosophy:
I believe that good teaching has to address whatever it takes to get across and connect with the student. It is important to be well informed on the subject taught and recent happenings in the arts. It is also important to be able to relate on a personal level, an ability that depends less on the methods used than on the degree to which I know and trust myself to be available to my students. I try to not have ‘solutions’ when they arrive at a problem, but instead to have an individual response to each challenge students face.
Before the beginning of each term I revisit my syllabi. I revise my assignments, and introduce new ones. Sometimes I start from scratch. I am always afraid to be the teacher who says the some thing over and over, semester after semester, until I don’t even remember what it was all about in the first place.
I design my assignments with a teaching goal in mind; I choose what I would like my students to learn. Each assignment has specific objectives and goals for outcomes. However, I leave a lot of leeway for how students will arrive at the objective. The more different from each other, the better! In a way I try to fulfill the requirements of the project and at the same time have wide range of the results of the same problem and accommodate different levels, abilities and experiences of students while avoiding compromising students’ individuality and self expression. I try to balance structure and intention with flexibility, openness, and ability to agree with unorthodox solutions. My teaching philosophy is based on a strong belief that style is handwriting, individual and different for everyone.
Forming my opinion on what teaching art should NOT be was a bad experience in my freshman year at College of Art and Industry in Moscow, during communism in Russia. It was intense. There was a lot if intimidation geared toward a “style,” with samples of projects up on the walls. Students were told, “The closer you get to that the better grade you will have.” The resulting student show at the end of the year had reduced student work that had been different at the beginning to one style, copied with no personality or individual mark making. This seriously scared me. I left Russia in a hurry to study at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, which was much more liberal, but still fairly formal. I knew to choose an art school where the student work did not resemble a “master teacher."
My role as an art instructor is to help my students see signs of their individual handwriting rather than giving them mine.
One of my favorite things I remember listening to on NPR was interview with several styles of teaching art and music. One of them was an interview with Isaac and Toby Perlman. Isaac said, “I never show them how to.” Toby said that he likes food, so he uses food metaphors. He would say, “You sound like yogurt; I would like you to sound like ice cream.” Isaac said, “I never show them how to play. When I was a student everybody around me wanted to sound like Ivan Galamian; and nobody heard about them.” They did not deliver individual style.
Important to me also is the content of projects. In the 21st century understanding the principles of good composition, balance, positive and negative are not enough. Artists should know who they are talking to and what are trying to say. I encourage diversity and a multicultural approach. I try to bring art from very different and seemingly unrelated places. I love to have foreign students in my class. I use for my Experimental Drawing class the textbook, Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing,” by Emma Dexter.
Honesty and ability to be vulnerable in critiques are important; I hold individual and group critiques, both in progress and at completion, where I stress mutual respect, humility, sharing personal experiences, and connections with others. My favorite critiques are when students are so engaged that they take over.
Anything else?
I was born in Warsaw, Poland. I came to the USA in 1982. I am half Italian, my father was born in France, my sister was born in Moscow, my daughters were born in Canada. I spent four years in Canada and nine in Communist Russia. Please visit my online portfolio.