Distractions this Spring are like a furry kangaroo in a SXSW crowd.

I’m behind in posts.  I have two excuses.  I’ve been moving in February and SXSW.

The 25th year of SXSW may have jumped the shark as SXSW is now a “Spring Break Destination”.

SXSW is over, even if I’m still recovering from working the festival.

I’ve got two courses this term. GS 602: The Art & Ideology of the 20th Century with Roxanne Farrar

She’s got a very solid bio:

Dr. Roxanne Farrar is an Associate Professor of Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies at Georgia College & State University, where she has been teaching since 1998. Art History courses that she teaches include “Public Art,” “Asian Art History” (Chinese and Indian), “Comparative Aesthetics,” and “Art Criticism.” IDST “core” courses that she teaches are “America’s Diverse Cultural Heritage” and “Fine & Applied Arts in Civilizations.”

Before joining the faculty of GC&SU, she taught diverse courses in Art History and in Interdisciplinary Humanities at a variety of colleges and universities in San Francisco, California and in the greater San Francisco Bay Area (1991-97). In the 1997/98 academic year, she taught Art History and Art Education, and served as Art Gallery Director at a private Liberal Arts college in Kansas. She also taught adult EFL (“English as a Foreign Language”) courses at a private language institute in Florence, Italy (1987).

Dr. Farrar received her doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Florida State University (1992), an Interdepartmental Certificate in Critical Theory (FSU, 1992), and an M.A. in Humanities (FSU, 1990). She completed her B.A. in Art History while studying at FSU’s “Florence Study Center” in Florence, Italy (1986).

In addition to the three years that she lived in Florence, Italy (1985-87), Dr. Farrar has traveled in China (one month of intensive “solo” traveling in Spring 2000) and in India (one month of intensive study on a Georgia University System “Faculty Development Seminar” in Summer 2001). In June 2003, she participated in a month-long National Faculty Development Seminar on “Incorporating Japanese Studies Into the Undergraduate Curriculum” at San Diego State University (California).

She is the author of a book on existentialist aesthetics, Sartrean Dialectics: A Method for Critical Discourse on Aesthetic Experience (Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, Value Inquiry Book Series, 2000). In this book, she develops Jean-Paul Sartre’s dialectical method of critical inquiry as a tool for aesthetic discourse. She also has written and published articles on a variety of topics including phenomenological teaching, postmodern aesthetic strategies & transgender issues, and television politics in 1950′s American art & popular culture. Her professional conference presentations include topics in African art, postmodern aesthetic strategies & transgender issues, and pedagogical strategies for teaching Indian Art History to undergraduate Studio Art majors.

Dr. Farrar has participated in the organization and/or catalogue writing for several art exhibitions including “Letterism: The Conjunction of Writing and Art” (GC&SU Blackbridge Hall Gallery, 2001), “Congo: The Art of Taller Portobelo” (GC&SU Blackbridge Hall Gallery, 2002), and “Shamanic Visions: Recent Works by David Seaman” (Swainsboro, Georgia, 2003).

Her current research focus is on Asian aesthetics and art history to expand GC&SU’s Asian Art History curriculum. She also is a dilettante artist who delights in “cultural piracy.”

The other course is PH 655: Digital Montage and istaugh by Shannon Ayres.

His bio posted at AAU is rather humble:

Shannon Ayres is a photographer and teacher based in the Washington, D.C. region. He works in the lyrical documentary tradition of Eugene Atget and Walker Evans.

His landscape work explores the dichotomy between the historical and contemporary meanings of place. He is currently working on two projects -a series of street photography at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and a longer multi-year series about vernacular culture and the Civil War.

Here at AAU, Shannon is the course author for PH612 The Nature of Photography, PH613: Color and Light, GS625 The History of Photography, PH655 Digital Montage and PH801 Graduate Thesis Seminar.

He also teaches classes and workshops at the Smithsonian.

This class was added after I dropped the special topics class.  This was a good decision.

This post is being written during Spring break so I’m about half way done with both of these classes.  I’ll post some midpoint thoughts on these classes this week.

Overall, I’m a bit distracted this semester.  Between moving in with my gal, setting up a new office, ongoing buildout of a new studio,  attempting to finish and then postponing my Midpoint Review and losing a part-time job (that pays for school) I’ve not been very motivated so far this term.