MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program
I've always been suspicious of biographical statements, summations, introductions. They seek to explain, define, essentialize us. Like Walt Whitman, I prefer to think that contradiction is a fixed dimension of being. I maintain, like him, that each of us are large, we contain multitudes. Introductions try too hard to present a single self, a self that can be mastered, consumed by others. Flannary O'Connor might have something to say about this, too. Introductions, explanations dissolve mystery. We're terribly embarrassed by mystery, by not knowing. Yet, each of us is a mystery: unknown, wholly unknowable -- to others and to ourselves. We live between the states of being and becoming, relying on each location for a respite from the other. For me, the thrill of life and practice is in revelation, the unfolding of mystery, not in knowing. My antipathy toward self- explanation might also seem to contradict my concern with autobiographical exploration. As an artist and social thinker, I am deeply concerned with personal representation and the way each of us has the potential to be the architect of our being. Identity, when intentionally engaged, provides fertile ground for creative work. Indeed, the creation of self may be our only authentic creative terrain.
Yet, introduction provides the possibility of common ground and the potential for shared knowing. They are a starting place. So, my reservations aside, here is a beginning:
I am an inter-disciplinary artist working in Providence, Rhode Island. My work is primarily concerned with narrative and the construction of identity within the context of contemporary social and political life. Through painting, writing, photography and digital performance, I explore the interstices and banalities of my identity in a search for connective, reparative and shared meaning.
As a teacher, I am committed to the dignity and intrinsic value of each of us as learners. I believe that we rarely know what we really know. More often, we don't value what we really know, instead relying on facts and figures we've amassed and on experts who tell us that they know more. The process through which we come to understand ourselves as theoreticians, makers of meaning, and actors-in-the- world is sacred to me. I am committed to working to understand how we "own" our knowledge and to articulating the ways that we best convey knowledge to others. I believe artists hold a special trust to develop their voices as makers of new meaning, translators of ideas, theoreticians, and seers.
My theoretical preoccupations include the American Transcendentalists and American history; queer theory and history; post-structural theory; phenomenology; public engagement of artists and documentary practice.
I love comic books.
Professionally, I am the interim director of the Office of Public Engagement at the Rhode Island School of Design. For seventeen years, I was affiliated with the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University -- acting as it's director and associate dean of the college for many years. In the fall of 2005, I left that position, that life, to pursue teaching and art making with new passion.
Over the past two decades, I have participated in a variety of public interest projects in Rhode Island, including work with an artist residency at the RI School for the Deaf and teaching in English instruction programs for immigrants and refugees. I have organized visual art workshops in community centers and, for two years, was a teaching fellow with Robert Coles at Harvard College. I have taught courses in urban problems at the Community College of Rhode Island and am adjunct professor at Rhode Island School of Design. I have also co-taught a seminar at Brown University on the history and social impact of higher education in the 20th century.
I am a founder of the Americorps program in Rhode Island. I have been involved with HIV/AIDS advocacy as a member of ACTUP/Rhode Island and as a board member of AIDS Project RI. I was a founder of New Urban Arts, a youth arts program in Providence; the chair of the Providence School Board Nominating Committee; and a founder of Community Music Works. I am currently the co-chair of the Rhode Island Foundation's advisory council for Equity Action, a permanent fund currently being created for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer initiatives in Rhode Island.
I am a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Illustration and of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College. My work can be seen at http://clarkelane.com.
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Peter Hocking, MFA