A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

On This Page

Maria Gaspar

Associate Professor

Contact

Bio

Maria Gaspar (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and an associate professor in Contemporary Practices at SAIC. Her work negotiates the politics of location through installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Gaspar has received the Guggenheim Award for Creative Arts, the Latinx Artist Fellowship, the United States Artists Fellowship, the Frieze Impact Prize, the Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award in Art and Activism from the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Chamberlain Award for Social Practice from the Headlands Center for the Arts. Gaspar’s projects have been supported by the Art for Justice Fund, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, the Creative Capital Award, the Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, and the Art Matters Foundation. Gaspar has lectured and exhibited extensively at venues including MoMA PS1 and El Museo Del Barrio in New York, NY; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA; the African American Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Education: BFA, 2002, Pratt Institute, New York; MFA, 2009, University of Illinois at Chicago. Exhibitions: MoMA PS1, New York, NY; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY. Social Practice: Radioactive, 96 Acres Project, City As Site, Chicago; Sounds For Liberation, New Haven; Project Row Houses, Houston. Bibliography: Artforum; Artslant; Hyperallergic; Chicago Tribune; Gate Newspaper; Chicago Reporter. Awards: Guggenheim Award in the Creative Arts, Frieze Impact Prize, United States Artists Fellowship, Imagining Justice Artist Grant, Art Matters Award; Robert Rauschenberg Artist As Activist Fellowship; Creative Capital Award; Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant; National Endowment for the Arts; Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award, National Museum of Mexican Art.

Works on Vimeo

Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall, 2018, site-specific installation

Haunting Raises Specters (By A.G.), 2015 digitally printed dye substrate, aluminum curtain track system, beaded chain, grommets

Sounds for Liberation, 2017, site-specific installation (commissioned by Artspace)

On The Border Of What Is Formless And Monstrous (excerpt), 2016, five-channel sound and video installation

Brown Brilliance Darkness Matter, 2016, Woven collage on digitally printed sub fabric, white stoneware, cone 6, oxidation, brown overglaze on Acapulco furniture

I believe in the magic of the hands. And in the wisdom of the eyes. I believe in rain and tears. And in the blood of inifinity. (A. Shakur), 2018, muslin, plywood, sound transducers, amps, cables

 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers.

In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership.

Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

Class Number

1292

Credits

3

Description

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers.

In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership.

Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

Class Number

1228

Credits

3

Description

In this course we will focus on the development of artistic research skills for students already engaged in a practice. Students take this required course in order to experience and develop a variety of research methodologies, both conventional and alternative, which include utilizing collections and archives in the School and the extended community.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.

Faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary, idea based assignments are designed to help students recognize work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Through this course work students will be able to identify the most productive research methods and making strategies to bolster their emerging studio practice. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

Class Number

1368

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

2323

Credits

3