Career Success Faculty Profiles

Kristen Baumlier
T.I.M.E. – Digital Arts

Dan Cuffaro
Industrial Design

Maggie Denk-Leigh
Printmaking

Mari Hulick
Communication Design

Saul Ostrow
Painting

Brent Kee Young
Glass

Tina Cassara
Fiber + Material Studies

Michael A. Gollini
Interior Design

Gretchen Goss
Enameling

Joyce Kessler
Liberal Arts

Chair: Integrated Media Environment
Department Head: T.I.M.E.–Digital Arts
Associate Professor: T.I.M.E.–Digital Arts
California College of Arts and Crafts, MFA

For Kristen Baumlier, life leads to art and art can motivate. It can change thoughts and perspectives. It can be a wakeup call and a call to action. As a teacher, Baumlier inspires students to collaborate in their own education and engage the transformative power of art. She encourages them to channel their beliefs “past complaining and toward asking questions and indicating solutions.”

In her own art, Baumlier uses interactivity and humor to engage audiences around the world. In 2005, she developed “Oh, Petroleum,” in which she transformed into the Petroleum Pop Princess to spark debate over materialism and oil consumerism. As an interdisciplinary artist, she uses moving images, sound and choreography in non-traditional ways to provide multiple access points to ideas. She combines analog and digital sources and work in forms that include video, sound, photography, performance and installation.

Catch her in her off-hours climbing rocks, scouting farmers markets for food to use in great vegetarian cooking recipes and passionately researching new projects. A new project takes her to Wisconsin to buy soybeans for an investigation of food systems and the genetic engineering of food.

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On art: Make art about something.

On teaching: I aim to teach students to think, question, communicate and create projects that enrich their education and conceptually strengthen an idea, thought or theory.

On her bookshelf: Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food by Pamela C. Ronald and R. W. Adamchak

Chair: Design Environment
Department Head: Industrial Design
Anne Fluckey Lindseth Professor of Industrial Design
The Cleveland Institute of Art, BFA

Dan Cuffaro loves good design. He loves it so much that when he’s not working in it professionally, he’s doing it for fun.

“I enjoy walking through old neighborhoods and downtown, soaking up the amazing architectural details and rich materials of traditional structures,” says Cuffaro. “But I also seek out new and innovative architecture whenever I travel. One of my side-projects is creating scale replicas of my favorite places in the world. This three-year effort thus far includes the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, AZ, Charles Street in Boston and a Nordpark transit station in Innsbruck, Austria.”

For Cuffaro, this project is about understanding relationships of spaces and materials, the importance of scale and the evolution in thinking over time. Cuffaro is co-founder of the District of Design, an economic development initiative in Cleveland. He is also winner of six IDSA/Business Week IDEA awards and holds 13 patents.

In the classroom, Cuffaro leads students toward building KNOWLEDGE, skills and a visual vocabulary so they can meet design challenges with both expertise and a sense of humanity. Central to his philosophy, he says, “is the ability to see the world from someone else’s point of view. This user-centered approach provides a continuous source of new problems, which can yield new ideas while helping the designer develop a sense of empathy and context.”

One of the most successful teaching experiences concerned a project that addressed the safety of U.S. servicemen. “The project lasted over a year and required students and faculty to work side-by-side,” Cuffaro says. “The opportunity to define the correct process, then to pair professionals with students on solving a real and serious problem, provided an amazing learning opportunity. The students who were involved matured so quickly and really understood the talent and experience of their faculty.”

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On professionalism: My intent is to produce good design, which I believe is exemplified by solutions that meet the intended need and are beautiful, function well and are well made.

On teaching: Core to my philosophy is the ability to see the world from someone else’s point of view.

On the well-set table: I love trying new restaurants, but my favorite spots to dine out are Pomodoro in Boston’s North End and Momocho in Cleveland’s Ohio City.

Department Head: Printmaking
Associate Professor: Printmaking
Clemson University, MFA Printmaking
Xavier University, BA Printmaking, Graphic Design and Business

Denk-Leigh teaches by teaching—and by doing.

“I believe an educator teaches by example,” she says. “My own studio work ethic is two-fold. It demonstrates solutions to technical and project-driven questions and it reveals the educator as a model of a diligent artist and lifelong student.”

Denk-Leigh is a board president of Morgan Conservatory (a paper and book arts center) and received Best in Show Award at “COMMUNinkATE” The Spring 2010 Mid-America Print Council Juried Members Exhibition.

As a fine-art printmaker, Denk-Leigh’s calendar is packed with new projects, group and solo exhibitions and with jurying the works of others. Critical Condition, her artist book and lithograph series, stemmed from her interest in the growing debate over climate change. “It’s about what has come before and what comes next. Terminology associated with the northern polar ice cap has stimulated considerations to what has come before: Before in earth’s evolution, before in the life span of living species as the thaw reveals a time past and before my life in reflection to what comes next,” she says.

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On art: Building narratives through sequences, I challenge the notion of audience desensitization by media, often responding to a chain of sensationalized events.

On teaching: We come in contact with many people during our life. Relative to an entire lifetime, the amount of time I will share with a student is small. My devotion is mandatory.

Department Head: Communication Design
Associate Professor: Communication Design
Northwestern University, MFA
University of Michigan, BA
Art Institute of Chicago, Post Baccalaureate

As a true educator, Mari Hulick is never done learning.

The Head of Communication Design has lightened her load of earthly possessions to make it easier to travel and she keeps an eclectic stack of reading material at the ready for her off-hours.

“Every day, I walk, make something new in the studio (no matter how small), make something new in the kitchen (no matter how silly), listen to at least one new piece of music and read a little bit about something I didn’t know about yesterday.”

That helps explain why, when it comes to her work in the classroom, Hulick believes it’s her job to show students that school is not a stopover before ‘Real Life.’ “It is real life,” she says. “And the more we impart our passions about and our contradictions within our professions, the better prepared our students will be for their new (just as real) lives.”

In recent design work, she collaborated with Carl Pope on “The Wall Remixed,” a print campaign celebrating North Philadelphia neighborhoods. She is creating ongoing information design for educational tools on the American Civil War and she’s involved in a history campaign on the Flats.

“We live in a time when the design of all things, from the constructed world to the patterns of human thought and activity, revolves around information,” Hulick says. “The role of the Communication Designer is to reveal and assemble this information into physical, digital and spatial documents that make our world possible and functional.”

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On teaching: Teaching is not simply a part of my work and my life. It is central to both.

On design: Good design serves its purpose well. Great design inspires, angers, awes, enlivens, calms and transcends. It is the stuff of life.

On travel: I love to travel and to make up for the carbon footprint of the international flights every year, I live in Cleveland without a car.

Chair: Visual Arts + Technologies Environment
Associate Professor: Painting
University of Massachusetts, MFA
School of Visual Arts, NYC, MFA
School of Visual Arts, NYC, Four-Year Certificate

For more than 30 years, Saul Ostrow has committed himself as an artist, curator, thought leader and writer on the critical issues of art and culture. From studio to classroom to the pages of international art magazines, Ostrow digs deep into how art works. In engaging with students, Ostrow aims to guide them not just toward competence with craft, but also toward deep understanding of their work and the art of others.

Ostrow is also art editor for Bomb Magazine and editor of “Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Criticism” (Routledge Press).

“I want students to learn that the fundamental perspective of an artist is informed by: technical, intellectual, communication skills and intuition,” he says. “It is also necessary to offer them concrete examples of contemporary artists who worked within multiple frameworks so that they may understand the mechanisms of the art world, while studying the artists’ work for their aesthetic inventiveness and rigor.”

Ostrow lives and works in New York and Cleveland. He loves to cook and entertain, drinks good wine and cold vodka and enjoys the occasional cigar.

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On art: The political nature of art is its ability to experientially re-order our relation to the world and with this give us insight into our social existence as subjects rather than objects.

On teaching: The reward of teaching is the sharing of one’s knowledge, but also to enable a student to develop their critical abilities and views.

On his bookshelf: Good cookbooks, science fiction and murder mysteries.

Department Head: Glass
Professor: Glass
Alfred College—SUNY, College of Ceramics, MFA
San Jose State University, BA Ceramic Art/Glass concentration

Innovation and tradition find their way into the work of Brent Kee Young, whose contemporary glass has been recognized around the world.

Young has traveled throughout the United States and Asia to lead workshops on contemporary glass. Young was head of Glass at Aichi University of Education in Japan in 1990. He established the studio and curriculum for the first Glass program in a National University in Japan.

For his recent Matrix series, Young posed the creative question: Can form be defined using only light and line? The works themselves, in which forms are created from webs of clear glass, were informed by geometric studies. “The mathematical study of volumes of solid revolution has helped immensely,” Young says. “The works are usually comprised of a number of geometric forms rotated into a solid, set off by another form that usually ends up being part of a rectilinear compositional base.”

Young’s affection for folk art can be found in the simplicity of form. “I love the unpretentious, honest feeling of the maker’s hand revealed within the object,” he says. “The least pretentious, least decorated forms seem to resonate with me the most.”

Young wants his students to achieve excellence on two levels. “One is to dedicate energy, time and resources to the learning of the media, working with a fascinating material, with all of its history, art, craft, physics, difficulties, laying groundwork within each student to somehow understand the ‘how’s’ of working in glass,” he says. But the “why’s” are at least as important “to understand themselves and expand on the limitations that they have to this point grown with.”

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On art: Maintaining this dialogue between the artists, the work and the viewer is the essence of what art is.

On teaching: The buzz phrase now is lifelong learning. In the ’70s, I called it learning to learn. The importance is not the object but what you learn in the process of realizing it, emphasizing the learning process.

On six strings: Young recently picked up the Martin 0021 guitar he learned to play during the folk-music era before abandoning it for 35 years while he dedicated himself to glass and ceramics.

Department Head: Fiber + Material Studies
Professor: Fiber + Material Studies
Cranbrook Academy of Art, MFA
Barnard College, BA, Urban Studies

After earning her undergraduate degree, Tina Cassara spent time in Viques in the Juan region of Peru, where she studied with Francisca Mayer from Black Mountain College and taught natural dyes derived from indigenous plants to the local weavers in an effort to revive the industry. While living in New York City, Cassara was co-editor of Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine before attending Cranbrook Academy of Art where she received a MFA from the Fiber Department.

Cassara has conducted extensive research into women’s labor in the American textile industry, issues of European migration and relocation and more recently, the assigned value of labor in historically women-dominated textile industries in the South.

In the late 1990s, Cassara began exploring the history of textile production, one of the first areas of manufacturing to industrialize and one of the most resistant to unions. A strong advocate for organized labor, Cassara began conducting one-on-one interviews in LaGrange, Georgia and nearby mill towns, with retired textile mill workers, factory owners, surviving union organizers and members of various textile heritage societies.

In 2008–09, Cassara was awarded a sabbatical to further her research in the network of textile heritage societies. She traveled to Cooleemee, NC, to work with organizers of the Textile Heritage Initiative and members of the Troop County Historical Society and perform additional research at the Center for Public History at the University of West Georgia. Cassara’s research continues in Scranton, Pa., where she is examining documents related to the extensive growth of the mining and silk textile industries. She is currently working on a community-based, social practices exhibition at the Cochran Art Center in LaGrange, Georgia, scheduled for 2011.

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On teaching: I am an artist and I speak to the students as artists.

Department Head: Interior Design
Associate Professor: Interior Design
The Cleveland Institute of Art, BFA, Industrial Design; minor, Interior and Graphic Design

In business and in teaching, Michael Gollini knows the value of the wide horizon. A veteran designer schooled in both product and interiors, Gollini has learned multiple disciplines and worked in a variety of arenas, providing conceptual imagery for retailers, restaurants, museums and exhibits.

In addition to his work at CIA, Gollini is president of Michael Gollini Design Group, Inc. and member of the design review board of the Cleveland Botanical Garden. His clients have included Walt Disney World, IHOP, Sears, Wolfgang Puck and BMW.

He and his family live in a house he designed, expanded and renovated “with the help of my father and a family full of trades people.” It’s filled with furniture he designed and built in his home shop. Gollini plays guitar, goes to concerts with his kids and has a passion for movies as both lowbrow entertainment and a wildly influential art form.

Likewise, he hopes his students bring varied experiences to their studies and careers. “We must encourage students to carry on with their studies in art and literature,” he says. “These influences will build depth and broaden the spectrum of their work in their major. An eclectic education will build a student’s character and personality.”

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On teaching: I try to encourage my students to think beyond the obvious while designing or doing research. If the project is to design a coffee shop, they need to go further into the DNA of the customer and their design proposals.

On technology: Working with a Wacom Cintiq and my traditional drawing-board skills, I can produce images that bridge traditional and contemporary while giving me editing flexibility that I didn’t have 10 years ago.

On his media shelves: I have a ridiculous comic and graphic novel collection going back to the mid ’70s. This art form is what motivated me to attend art school.

Chair: Craft + Material Culture Environment
Department Head: Enameling
Professor: Enameling
Kent State University, MFA and BFA, Enameling

Gretchen Goss balances the time devoted to teaching and her studio with as much time as she can engaging with nature through gardening, picking and canning fruits and vegetables, running trails and swimming in lakes whenever possible.

So it’s little surprise that when she gets into her studio to create enamel art, nature shows up in spades. Farms, gardens, plant forms and the tranquility of water are recurring themes in Goss’ work. And for more than 30 years, Goss has been committed to exploring the medium of enamel with students and artists.

“It is liberating to work in a medium so unique and rarely seen in mainstream art and contemporary craft practice,” Goss says.

Goss enjoys travel and often travels based on teaching engagements. “I’ve had the opportunity to teach in England and on both coasts of the U.S. and between. I try to see and absorb as much of the local environment as possible with each new teaching experience.” Goss is also a frequent exhibitor at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show.

With students, Goss aims to relay knowledge by example and exposure to established skills and traditions. But it’s important, too, that students feel encouraged to innovate. Her hope is that even as they’re learning techniques and concepts, they’re exploring a variety of career paths and homing in on who they want to be as artists.

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On her art: An ongoing intrigue with the natural world and our interpersonal relationships within it are the inspiration for my work.

On teaching: It is my goal that this environment of learning, discovery, practice and assessment will nurture the development of each individual student as an independent artist.

On being green: She attempts to leave as minimal a footprint as possible on the environment, “and there’s always room for improvement.”

Chair: Liberal Arts Environment
Associate Professor: Liberal Arts
Case Western Reserve University, PhD, American Literature
Cleveland State University, MA
Cleveland State University, BA, English Literature

Joyce Kessler is a believer in the Socratic method of teaching, giving students a chance to learn through debate and discussion. She believes that teaching is companionate; and her role is to walk with the student to the place of learning.

An expert on the work of 20th century American novelist Willa Cather, Kessler has written and lectured on Cather’s transgendered characters, on her narrative strategies regarding the representation of race and on Cather’s use of the visual arts in her fiction. Her article, “‘The Cruelty of Physical Things’: Picture Writing and Violence in Willa Cather’s ‘The Profile,’” will be published in Cather Studies, volume 9, in 2011.

Beyond her work as Liberal Arts Environment Chair, she served as Interim Dean of Faculty from 2005–2007 and in 1996 collaborated with the Office of Academic Services to create the Center for Writing and Learning Support, which helps students with academic writing and study skills.

Off-hours she spends time reading and writing, walking her Labrador, Cyro, and playing basketball with her dachshund, Roxanne, and plying her daily yoga practice.

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On learning: Students are expected to learn not just from me, but from each other, as well, and to contribute what they know to the general fund of knowledge as the course proceeds.

On preparing to learn: To foster their keenest concentration, Kessler makes her students begin every class with a few Yoga poses.

On the alternate universe: Kessler is pretty sure she was a skateboard hero in another life.