SVA Annual 2006

“IF THERE WERE A SINGLE WAY to make a good picture we would all make the same image,” says Carl Titolo, painter and instructor in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department. For Titolo, an SVA grad himself (G 1967 Illustration), the College has long served as a point of departure, both literally and figuratively. “I’ve been extremely fortunate,” he says, “to have been shaped, for more than 40 years, by a program that encourages each instructor to share with the students his or her personal experiences of creating work; specifically, the diverse processes and thoughts about what makes a good image.” While the route may be different for everyone, Titolo finds common ground in his view that making art is always a journey, whether you leave home or not.

In fact, over the years Titolo himself has actually spent a good deal of time on the road, traveling to Italy and capturing his visits on paper. But as he tells his students, borrowing from 19th-century Belgian master James Ensor, “Why take a vacation when I never have to leave my chair to take a splendid trip?” In recent years, Titolo has structured a core assignment around this conviction. “Tabletop Images” asks students to record their travels throughout life, picking up pieces from day-to-day activities and their imaginations and putting them back together again as a single image. The project focuses on process and also, more importantly, puts the spotlight on what’s unique about each artist’s experience and means of expressing it. Aspects of this assignment often find their way into students’ second-semester book-making projects, which in turn are shown in the department’s annual “Book Show” exhibition.

It’s this type of work, in which Titolo engages along with his students, that demonstrates again and again that “pure picture-making,” as Titolo calls it, is always a puzzle whose outcome depends on each individual’s head, hand, eye and imagination. “Let us be grateful,” he says, “that there is no road map for creativity.”

DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

• • •	“Under Construction: Works in Progress” exhibition at the Visual Arts Gallery, November and December 2005. Children’s Books: Breaking Into the Business, a March 2006 panel discussion at Barnes & Noble with Department Chair Marshall Arisman and members of the faculty. “Selected Works from MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Thesis Projects” at the Visual Arts Gallery, May 2006.