EVENT HORIZON
Faculty member Jennifer Schmidt curated and organized Event Horizon through her special topics printmaking class. This public art project took place in Davis & Union Squares, Somerville, MA. On Saturday, April 12 and Wednesday, April 16, 2008, Jennifer and her students took printed ephemera, performative actions, and individual interpretation to the streets, seeking to create sites for inquiry into the nature of current events and history. Event Horizon artists interpreted and re-presented topics, headlines, graphics, and text found in widely circulated newspapers, broadsides, and fliers to produce creative, critical, and poetic interplays in the form of printed posters and broadsides. The reader’s ability to translate and creatively respond to “popular” issues underscored a story or subject’s meaning, exposing “the style” of interpretation as a determinant element of how events or topics are individually understood and communicated to a larger public. This project was supported by Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, the Somerville Arts Council, The Puffin Foundation, and SMFA’s Institute for Art and Civic Engagement.

SMFA in NOLA
This past spring break, the School sponsored a team of eight students from the undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, and graduate programs to travel to New Orleans to participate in the rebuilding effort. Organized and directed by Christy Cornett, assistant director of Student Life, and Andrew Barco, Americorps*VISTA community engagement and partnership coordinator, the trip was designed to tap into students’ creative potential and values as artists while contributing to the cultural and physical rebirth of the city. The School collaborated with New Orleans Women Artists’ Collective (NOWAC), a Boston-based organization whose mission is to help women artists who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina return and rebuild. In resopnse to their experiences, students will show work in an SMFA exhibition, on view September 25 to October 6, 2008. The project was generously supported through a School travel grant and SBInc. 

City on a Hill Student After School Program
Student teachers from the SMFA led weekly art classes for young people at nearby City on a Hill Charter High School. Community youth also shadowed SMFA undergraduate students in a studio setting, learning about art as process, collaboration, and mentorship. This experience culminated in a show Them Kids, displayed in SMFA's BAG Gallery in May 2007.

Violence Transformed
SMFA Student Mary Harvey initiated the exhibition Violence Transformed, displayed in Doric Hall of the Massachusetts State House, Boston, April 23 to 27, 2007. Sponsors included Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA), the Artists Foundation, the Teen Curator Programs of Cloud Place, the Museum of the National Center for African-American Artists, and Wheelock and Boston University's women studies programs. The main event included performances by members of the SMFA community.

Empty Bowls
To promote hunger awareness and support the local non-profit Haley House, students, faculty, and community members made and painted ceramic bowls to be sold on April 5, 2007. Filled with simple soup accompanied by bread, these bowls became physical reminders of hunger in our community.

Studio program at Mission Hill
Student teachers from the SMFA led weekly art classes for young people at the nearby Mission Main Housing and Community Center and City on a Hill Charter High School. Community youth also shadowed SMFA undergraduate students in a studio setting, learning about art as process, collaboration, and mentorship.

Change This Picture: Exploration & Innovation in Art and Healthcare
This four-way partnership project was conceived as a pilot curricular offering at SMFA, funded by Johnson & Johnson, and with contributing funds from Tisch College. Partners included SMFA, Tisch College, Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM), and South Cove Community Health Center.

The Artist as Cultural Worker: Tactical, Littoral and Interventionist Practices
This year-long, project-based course was offered to SMFA and Tufts students interested in focusing their artistic practice in the interest of social justice. Taught by THINK AGAIN co-founder and instructor S.A. Bachman, the class addressed issues of interventions, community based art, as well as the changing reality of what constitutes and who controls the public domain.

Public Art/Public Action
In this studio course, SMFA students worked in partnership with area teenagers to design and build site-specific public art projects. Participants studied activist art and engaged in public art projects.

Youth-Art-in-Action
An intensive arts education and leadership development program, this award-winning program supported diverse urban youth from local communities. Each semester an SMFA student collaborated in all aspects of the program, developing the skills required to work in leadership development through art, community collaboration, and public art installation. Youth-Art-in-Action was a recipient of YouthReach funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a proud winner of the Presidential 2005 Coming Up Taller Award.