Throughout its more than 150-year history, SAIC’s entire community has established a strong tradition of support and giving. This spring, SAIC launched its first major fundraising campaign, Beautiful/Work: The Campaign for SAIC. With a goal of raising $50 million, the campaign will support student scholarships and endowed professorships and faculty awards.
In reflecting on my first semester as President of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), I am reminded of a quote published in the Chicago Tribune by our Inaugural President’s Distinguished Lecturer Claudia Rankine, who visited campus this fall. She says, “The unexpected beauty of art is you don’t know what it will do.”
Judy Ledgerwood’s (MFA 1984) work is anything but quiet. Her paintings of jewel-toned quatrefoils, circles, and seed-like shapes suggestive of feminine power pop against the stark white wall of the new studio she shares with her husband Tony Tasset (MFA 1985) in Sawyer, Michigan.
The summer study trip Zeitgeist: Dada in Germany celebrates the past and informs the present for SAIC students.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation with Jasmin Shokrian (BFA 1998), founder and creative director of her Los Angeles-based eponymous clothing brand, and her advice to current SAIC students and recent graduates.