A MESSAGE FROM INTERIM
PRESIDENT KEN STICKLAND Contemporary art-making takes place, generation to generation, at the crossroads between tradition and the future. At Memphis College of Art, we seek to educate students who move casually between past and present with an eye toward the future. Here, students work with technologies designed for actual reality and technologies used to reflect a virtual reality. We believe in striking a balance between the hand and the machine. And we believe in striking a balance between technique and concept. At MCA, we prepare students for citizenship as much as we educate them for careers as artists and designers. We provide students with a breadth of technical, critical and philosophical experience to encourage introspection and a social conscience that opens into possibility. In addition to learning the hows—how to use equipment; how to control processes; how to experiment with materials; how to relate to historical context; how to explore personal sensibilities; how to define problems and find their own answers—our students learn the whys. They learn to see what is and to pose questions of what could be. As difficult as it can be to find our path to articulation, as art-makers we experience the excitement of looking; the simplicity, complexity and insight in seeing. And we experience the satisfaction of making: art and community. This is what we do at Memphis College of Art because we believe that art ennobles the human endeavor. This is what we do and what we seek to share with generations of students.
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