Welcome back students and colleagues! I hope that your summer has been productive and restful!

As many of you know, Art Ed Chair, Professor Lois Hetland, is on sabbatical this semester, and I have been asked to serve as acting-Chair for the Fall 2013 semester.

One week ago, I returned from a three-week research trip to Alaska, funded by a MassArt Foundation Faculty Fellowship. My own art practice primarily occurs in the public space, and the intended focus of my trip was on Tlingit and Haida totem poles – a first-nation public art tradition. After three weeks traveling – mostly by boat – along the coast and islands of southeast Alaska, one of the primary things I discovered was my ignorance.

This is an exciting place to be!

Generally, being ignorant is not considered a positive part of self-image. But being cognizant of one’s ignorance is an entirely different thing. In knowing our ignorance, we observe the vacuum in our own knowledge and/or experience. Seeing that void then can provide a path to fill it, displacing the ignorance.

This is called learning – and self-directed learning at that.

For myself, I hope that I will always have a life-long love affair with learning. This means I will need to be comfortable persistently being in that vulnerable place called ignorance.

This semester, let’s be open, honest, and reflective about what we don’t know, and together we can find ways to fill the vacuum, displace our ignorance, and learn – for ourselves, our current students, and our future students.

Again, welcome back! I am honored and excited to be working in the Art Education Department this semester, and look forward to meeting as many of you as I can in the next few months. See you soon!

Sincerely,

matthew

Matthew Hincman