Dr. William Maxwell Professor of Art School of Arts & Sciences The College of New Rochelle

"I have been with the Art Department since 1973. Our students have been relatively consistent in their interests and motivations to become excellent artists, excellent teachers, outstanding art professionals."

What do you teach at The College of New Rochelle?

As a Professor of Art in the School of Arts and Sciences, I teach numerous courses, both within the Art Department and the School.

I am also responsible for the Printmaking program and supervise the Printmaking Workshop in Mooney Center G-3 where I teach courses in Intaglio, Relief, Monoprint, Innovative Printmaking, etc.  I am presently designing a Digital Printmaking course for the future. Occasionally, I teach in the Honors program (Anatomy of a Metropolis) and in the SAS Core Curriculum (As the Artist Sees).

My primary responsibility is to Art Majors, and to fulfill this responsibility, I teach both Foundation Courses such as Foundations of Drawing, which are required, advanced required courses such as Art Seminar and Senior Project, and a variety of art electives that include Aqueous Media Painting and Collage and Assemblage.

I thoroughly enjoy the variety of course assignments and the ability over the years to introduce new courses to our curriculum. The arts change rapidly and it is important that our art curriculum reflect what is happening in the art world.  I am also responsible for some Independent Study students each semester working towards their required exhibition, and often, I supervise internships where students have the opportunity to work with art professionals in the field.  


What are the programs (and degrees) that a student can obtain at CNR?

We are one of the few art departments within a liberal arts environment that offer a full spectrum of specialty and degree programs for the art student to choose from. These include Studio Art, Art History, Art Education and Art Therapy within the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, the Bachelor of Arts degree, or the Bachelor of Science degree. The Studio Art program also allows our students to specialize in such areas as Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, etc.
 

How does the Art Department select students? What do the students have to submit to you?

The Art Department is very active in recruiting quality art students.  Personally, I have been to high schools, junior colleges and portfolio days throughout the area. Students who wish to be accepted by the Art Department must submit a portfolio of work that they have recently completed, usually in high school or independently.

Within that portfolio review we are looking for skill competency, use of imagination, creativity, and development of content. Transfer students also submit a portfolio usually of work they have completed in other colleges. Expectations are different for transfer students and their portfolios are judged accordingly.

The Art Department is always open to interested students-both within the college and outside our environment. I will, at anytime, make an appointment with a student who is interested in coming to the Art Department. I am also an Adjunct Professor of Art usually teaching one art course a semester in the Westchester Community College system. This affiliation has become a positive source of recruitment for some of our best students.  


Are students better skilled when they come into college today?

The Art Department has been rewarded often with some of the best students in the School of Arts and Sciences. I have been with the Art Department since 1973. Our students have been relatively consistent in their interests and motivations to become excellent artists, excellent teachers, outstanding art professionals. We look to the future in our ability to consistently attract students who are seriously interested in art. I remain optimistic in this art department’s ability to attract these students and provide them with a meaningful experience.  

Skill proficiency, although important, is not our primary criteria for incoming students. We are not an art school like Cooper Union. As an art department within a liberal arts environment our students must show quality in a number of areas, including scholarship.


The age old question: is an artist born or schooled?

This question could become a huge piece of writing in itself in order to give it an answer. As you say-it is “age old,” meaning we have never sufficiently answered it.  My experience over the many years I have participated in art instruction is that there is perhaps a genetic link to artistic skill and creativity in general. However, I do not approach my students with this as priority. I am much more interested in the nurture side of the question. I trust in anyone’s ability to become what they want to become; I believe in determination.

I have taught doctorate students, master’s students, undergraduates, high school students, younger students, wonderful groups of senior citizens who in their later years turn to art, professional artists interested in obtaining further skills such as printmaking, and amateur artists interested in art as a hobby.

I will attempt to teach anyone who shows serious interest in the visual arts in a way that provides them further meaning and purpose in their life. Now, as a gallery director in a diverse community open to the ever-challenging qualities of contemporary art, I feel I am forever the art teacher-not a bad feeling.
 

The slogan of your Peekskill Gallery is: “To foster creativity is to generate risk.” Expand on that with regard to teaching art here at The College of New Rochelle.

Maxwell Fine Arts is now in its third year as a contemporary fine arts gallery. At present, I can tell you that even though we are a “commercial” gallery, I have yet to make any personal profit from it. Maxwell Fine Arts is an outreach to further arts education and participation as well as a forum for emerging artists to present their work in a professional environment. I look forward to the day the gallery makes profit; in the meantime, I will take the risk.

“To foster creativity is to generate risk” is a motto not only for the gallery, but for all my participation in the arts. It’s simple: you can never predict results, and that realization should never stop you from taking a chance. I have continuously taken chances: with my art work, with my teaching, with my professional participation in the art world, with my life. To not do so is boring.

I encourage my students to take as big a risk as they think they can handle, both for the moment and in their life as an artist in general. When one sits down at a drawing table, one should feel at that moment that their potential to do anything is present.

I tell my students to approach the project with implied confidence-I can do it!  Ideas are precious, and giving meaning to the world through your art is a precious experience, but the passion that this arouses will not appear if the artist/student plays it safe.

I may not ever find that passion in the student artist no matter what I do, but I take the risk of teaching art passionately, with the realization that success in art is very limited but always possible. Of course, the other side of the coin is work.  One percent of the act of creativity appears in that passion to make, ninety-nine percent is labor.  

When one seriously chooses to take the risk to create, one chooses also an enormous amount of hard work, rejection and limited successes. They must be ready to take any consequences that surmount as a result of taking risk, and follow-through with determination. This is what I teach at The College of New Rochelle.

RELATED LINKS: Maxwell Fine Arts is run by the husband-and-wife team of William C. Maxwell and Dana DeVito. Their gallery is a converted 1850 carriage-house behind their 1859 Victorian home in the artist district of Peekskill, N.Y. www.maxwellfinearts.com