On June 14th, I graduated with a M.F.A. in the Arts and Consciousness Program at JFK. It was an amazing weekend of celebration and ritual. Don flew up from a L.A. on Friday I was overwhelmed with emotion and connection to my fellow students at JFK's small gathering at the Berkeley Campus. On Saturday was the formal graduation and I was awarded the student of the year in the Holistic Studies Program at JFK. 
This is the speech the Dean gave to me-it was such an honor.
To Lisa Rasmussen:
Lisa,
Five years ago, you entered the Department of Arts & Consciousness as a student in the Transformative Arts program. As your creative process unfolded, your paintings grew ever more compelling. By the end of three years, you transferred to the MFA program to more deeply engage your artwork. During this period, you continued to develop a program in transformative arts for clients at the Lincoln Child Center in Oakland.
Your program bridged the gap between art as a transformative tool and art as a form of cultural expression. Your Lincoln Child Care Center students exhibited their work in a Sausalito Gallery and were the focus of an annual benefit for the Center. Because of your dedicated and creative work with the students at Lincoln Child Center, they have experienced the invaluable joy of self-expression and the all-important process of being seen in their fuller humanity. You have been a profound, transformative influence in their lives.
As an artist, your work has gone far beyond the limits of traditional painting. Your final MFA Exhibition entitled Caol Ait (Thin Spaces) reveals the full scope and power of your artwork, moving beyond the genre of painting into installation and environmental art, as well as movement, ritual and sculpture. In your teaching and in your artwork you celebrate the realization that art lives at the edges of life and spirit. You explore and then dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer, self and other and in so doing represent the highest ideals of Holistic Studies. You are an outstanding individual, and we are proud to nominate you as Student of the Year. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success.
Peter M. Rojcewicz, PHD
Dean, School of Holistic Studies
No comments:
Post a Comment