Academics . Sculpture + Expanded Media . Faculty

Sculpture + Expanded Media Faculty

Program of Study

Sarah Paul

Title Associate Professor | Chair of Sculpture + Expanded Media
Department Sculpture + Expanded Media
Phone 216.421.7945

Degree MFA, Visual Studies, University of New York at Buffalo; BS, Mathematics, University of New York at Albany

Born on the edge of the Berkshire Mountains in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Sarah Paul is now an artist based in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her BS in Mathematics from the University at Albany, and MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo, before swimming west along the southern coast of Lake Erie. After stopping to rest, mesmerized by the flaming smokestacks, she wandered inland and fell in love and lust with the smokestacks, the city, and the lake. Sarah is making work that embraces and celebrates this lush rusty belt. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions and performances include the Front Yard at Burchfield Penney Art Center, SPACES Gallery, Sculpture Center Cleveland, MOCA Cleveland, Albright-Knox Gallery, UB Art Gallery, and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art; her video work has been screened around the U.S. and abroad. In 2013, Sarah was generously supported by a Creative Workforce Fellowship granted from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture in Cleveland, Ohio. Sarah is presently an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of Sculpture + Expanded Media at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Christina Cassara

Title Professor
Department Sculpture + Expanded Media
Phone 216.421.7381

Degree MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art; BA, Barnard College, Columbia University

Tina Cassara received a BA in urban studies, emphasis in sociology from Barnard College, Columbia University. Following graduation, she moved to Viques, in the Juan region of Peru, and studied with Francisca Mayer from Black Mountain College, teaching natural dyes derived from indigenous plants to local weavers. Her travels continued through the Collao Altiplano region of Bolivia. While living in New York City, Cassara was co-editor of Sing Out! magazine before attending Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she received an MFA from the fiber department. Cassara has since 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. A strong advocate for organized labor, she began conducting interviews in LaGrange, GA, and nearby mill towns, speaking with retired textile workers, factory owners, surviving union organizers, and members of textile heritage societies. In 2008–09, Cassara was awarded a sabbatical to further her research in the network of textile heritage societies, including travel to Cooleemee, NC, working with organizers of the Textile Heritage Initiative and members of the Troop County Historical Society. Cassara's research also continues in Scranton, PA, where she is examining documents and photographs related to the growth of the mining and silk textile industries

Christian Wulffen

Title Professor
Department Sculpture + Expanded Media
Phone 216.421.7931

Degree Freie Kunstschule (Independent Art School) Nurtingen (Germany)
Academy of Fine Arts at the Staatlicen Akademie der Bildenden Kunste (State Academy of the Fine Arts), Stuttgart (Germany) MFA

Christian Wulffen has been an Associate Professor since 2003.

He has a solo exhibition on display at Galerie Reinhold Maas in Germany from February 15-April 5.

Artist Statement:

I am concerned with how artists achieve knowledge and how they structure knowledge. This intersects with my concern as a teacher and artist, to encourage participants to reflect on the processes that an artist goes through--for example, an intuitive creative thinking process, intentional purposeful engagement, and adherence to a model or system.

These thought processes can be contextualized further by situating them within larger theories of knowledge production, as outlined by W. J. T. Mitchell: “semiotics, structuralism, deconstruction, system theory, speech at theory, ordinary language philosophy and now image science or critical iconology”.

To convey this notion of action as a mode of knowledge production, I use specific symbols for my work, one of these: boards that are pre-manufactured with three vertical slots and one horizontal slot (plywood).

From the viewer’s perspective, the board has the option to hold various information. From my perspective, I see this as a concept to display information to exercise the different links in its display from one board to another. My environment is a grid—one of the hallmarks of modernist abstraction and capable, as a visual symbol, of signifying a whole system of art production and thought. This idea is depends on the perspective of the viewer and how that viewer is situated in a distributed network of production and reception of the information about this subject.

Crucially for me, the painting, the paper, and the board (as in my recent production), simulate the portability of information. I am interested in its mobility as a sign in which sender and recipient receive the same information but decode it differently depending on their respective environments.

Bob Drake

Title Adjunct Faculty
Department Sculpture + Expanded Media
Phone 216.421.7000

Contact

Zak Smoker

Title Technical Specialist
Department Sculpture + Expanded Media
Phone 216.421.7335

Contact

Zak Smoker graduated from with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2011, and earned an MFA in Sculpture from Washington University, St. Louis in 2013.

Zak exhibits his work locally and nationally. He works as a technical specialist in the Sculpture + Expanded Media department at CIA.