Presenting a video interview with interdisciplinary artist and organizer Elizabet Elliott (MFAIA ’13), recent graduate of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College.
ABOUT ELIZABET ELLIOTT
Artist/ Curator/ Writer/ Freelance Consultant & Community Organizer
I am an interdisciplinary artist with experience in both building and implementing programs across a range of art/community contexts. I have worked on both educational initiatives, as well as arts programming in every media.
I am a southern artist, in both location and methodology. I am a story teller, a magician, a philosopher, a fool and a liar.
All of my work deals with place in some regard. Place can be geographical, relational, economic, political, or personal. The history of the South is imbued with stories of vigilante justice, oppression, and transgression. We define ourselves by a story of profound blindness and acts of desperation. Here, we are haunted by a violent and tumultuous past that sits in equal measure to a need to re-member, a need to feel rooted in a family, a history, and an understanding of self. Here, story-telling has both a cathartic and corrosive power.
ABOUT GODDARD COLLEGE’S MFA in INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS
The Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts (MFAIA) engages artists from a variety of practices, including visual arts, dance, music, theater, performance art, social practice, design, digital media, and the literary arts, to study in a rigorous interdisciplinary context. Students not only have the opportunity to work across artistic disciplines both individually and in collaboration with peers, but the MFAIA also encourages broader interdisciplinary inquiry, enabling dialogue among art and science, social science, humanities, and other systems of knowledge.
One of the only graduate programs in the world committed to art as a transformational practice, the MFAIA is designed to support artists with diverse life experiences and goals ranging from the social, political, to the aesthetic, spiritual or autobiographical. Our learning community supports the development of a robust lifelong art practice. We envision artmaking as a form of critical thinking, that integrates research and interdisciplinary problem-solving and engages ethically in public contexts.
Students can enroll in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts in two locations: Plainfield, Vermont, Goddard’s historic main campus, or Port Townsend, Washington, a vibrant arts community on the Pacific Coast. During the application process, you choose one of the two residency site options for the duration of your studies. Each program site is home to a lively community of interdisciplinary artists and allows you to engage with a unique physical landscape in a retreat-like setting.
