Florida Tomorrow is a day...
when society celebrates creativity and the arts for their role in advancing the global community.
Immersed in Art
A person with a broken arm might rush to the emergency room. A child with a high fever might see a pediatrician. But impoverished children and adults often suffer with dental pain and illness for months or longer without seeing a dentist, and that’s something UF’s College of Dentistry wants to change.
Such a strategy might sound unrelated to both a student’s academic and artistic vision, but for Bonett it was eye-opening.
“I learned there were things I could do that I didn’t know I could do,” she says.
Since its creation in 1993, the Workshop for Art Research and Practice, or WARP, has introduced thousands of first-year art students to contemporary art through lectures and presentations, and immersed them in the process of producing and displaying their creative work.
A semester-long synthesis of studio art, art history, theory and basic technology, WARP is designed to empower students with necessary lifetime tools for interpreting, understanding and creating art. As it did in Bonett’s case, the course frequently pushes students out of their comfort zones to nurture the creative impulse.
“Students are expected to apply what they learn to their own ideas, experiment with materials, collaborate with each other, take risks and not fear failure,” says Bethany Taylor, one of the two course lecturers. “Our biggest goal is for them to have some kind of personal growth and to learn how their work fits into the context of the bigger art world.”
Much of WARP’s activities are based in the WARPhaus, a 6,000-square-foot warehouse located off campus near downtown Gainesville. Aside from providing space for lectures and student exhibitions, it hosts other artists’ work, concerts and film screenings in a community setting. The continual presence of collegiate and professional art serves as an inspiring reminder to WARP students.
“Everybody in that class was aware of the multiple uses of that building,” says Benji Haselhurt, who took WARP in spring 2006. “You can feel the energy coming off the walls, and you want to fill those shoes that have been there before you.”
Over the course of a semester, students debate artistic theory, work on projects in different mediums and undergo intense critiques from instructors and peers.
Despite enduring long hours in the studio and brutally honest critiques, Bonett says WARP helped build a strong conceptual base to springboard her into her graphic design studies.
“Not many 18- and 19-year-olds can walk into a fine arts college and immediately have a space to put on art shows,” she says. “WARP lets you do that and so much more.”
