By Amanda Hoover, Deputy News Editor
Whether students are earning a degree in sociology or engineering, a new summer-long program called Studio Art or Art Minor, History and Culture in Ireland offers a chance for them to express their artistic side and earn a minor in art.
Beginning this summer, students can earn 16 of the 20 credits required to complete an art minor during a study abroad program in Ireland. For 11 years, Mira Cantor, an art professor at Northeastern, has led a month-long eight-credit Dialogue of Civilizations to the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughn, Ireland. This year, though, she will expand the program into a full semester over the summer.
“Lots of students who come to Northeastern have a propensity toward the arts, but their parents refuse to let them major or minor in art because it’s not going to be a useful career and the co-op also is a critical part of coming here,” Cantor said. “The arts, nonetheless, are so relevant to any career that you go into, and I think students realize that even if they can’t major in it.”
In addition to completing 16 credits abroad, students must also take an additional class based on their interests either before or after completing the dialogue.
According to Cantor, this new art minor program makes it easier for students of any background to complete the minor and immerse themselves in a foreign culture.Through the program, students can experience creative freedom and are not restricted by rigid guidelines in order to earn the credits.
According to Cantor, earning the art credits abroad gives students new challenges and opportunities they do not have in a Boston.
“It’s also motivating students to react to their surrounding in a very dynamic way, whereas in school at Northeastern, you certainly can have issues that you want to express and things you want to deal with, but you’re not confronted with them head-on as you are in a new environment,” Cantor said. “It really inspires you to say something.”
As space at Northeastern has become an issue for art students and professors, Cantor began to long for the space provided by the Burren College of Art in Ireland. Aside from students in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), those taking art classes at Northeastern do not have their own permanent studios.
“I’ve lost my big studio that I used to teach a lot of my fine arts courses in and there’s absolutely no room for students to leave work up,” Cantor said. “There’s just no place for students to actually reflect on what they’re doing from day to day because they have to take their work home, package it up and they probably never look at it again until the next class. So the idea of having their own studio, which is what they have in Ireland, just makes a lot of sense for somebody very interested in the process of making art on a daily basis.”
For Emily Mui, a freshman industrial engineering major, devoting an entire summer to art is an opportunity she couldn’t have on Northeastern’s campus.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had that experience before where I could just focus on art and be inspired by being in a different country and a different culture,” Mui said.
Mui has always loved painting and drawing and took art classes in high school, but since coming to college, she’s had to prioritize engineering coursework over her hobbies.
“I feel like I don’t exactly have the space or the time,” Mui said. “I’m usually studying or with my friends, so I’ve never had that alone time that I usually do.”
While Mui doesn’t know how industrial engineering and art will mix in the career field, she believes that being creative and having a different perspective can help her in engineering. In Ireland, Mui will be able to devote all of her attention and energy to art for the first time in her life.
“It’s absolutely necessary to immerse yourself in a studio-like space and really get to feel what it’s like to work as an artist and, furthermore, in a context that you’re not familiar with,” Muüs Von Walter, who attended the Dialogue of Civilizations trip as both a student and a teaching assistant before graduating from Northeastern in 2014, said. “It was really nice to kind of be in that element in a different context – out of the city of Boston – to have that kind of freedom and that space and the walls to really branch out if I wanted to, to make a mess if I wanted to. It’s how you’re supposed to feel as an art student.”
This year, the program will run from June 30 to Aug. 3. While some students will participate in the four-week Dialogue of Civilizations portion, five students so far plan to stay for twice the time to complete their art minors and further experience the culture of Ireland.
“This is an opportunity to immerse yourself in someone else’s world and culture and understand differences between you and that other culture,” Cantor said. “Then you have a more informative perspective on what you are doing and your own place in the world.”
Photo by Brian Bae
