Abby Sangiamo

About the Book

This book is a collection of all the artworks I made when I started teaching at MICA. Whenever I begin a series, I have a rough idea how the first piece will look, but none at all about the last years later down the road. When a series loses its will to accommodate new ideas, I give it up and move on. The frontal portrait series lasted through eight years and several hundred works until 1981, but a few years ago, inspired by tattoos as personal narrative, I breathed new life into some long-forgotten pieces from that series that struck me as needing and ready for dramatic change.

About the Author

I enjoy teaching skills-oriented courses, where the teacher brings clearly defined goals to the table and the options available to the students are severely limited, as well as open-ended independent courses, where students provide their own projects and it is the teacher’s job to help them seek their own way. Whatever the course, it’s the effective engineering of it that provides half the kicks for me. The other half comes from seeing the students’ results. The classroom has been as important to me as my studio.