Clare Finin & Michael Ho - Current Research in Graduate School

Clare Finin - MFA Candidate in Metals

There is a lot of emphasis put on the studio side of things in an MFA program.
Life in the MFA program has a lot of responsibilities and can be very stressful and busy. There are meetings, homework, teaching, emailing, etc. She doesn't have time to hang out with her friends or have time for leisure. However, this is her passion and she wants to be doing this.
Clare likes to research the relationship between objects and emotions from the past. When we hold a certain item, we are able to once again feel old emotions. This helps shift the object's meaning to something much more personal.
Clare loves to research, critique, create, and read. All of these things help her think of new ideas and push herself further in her work.

Michael Ho - MA Candidate in Art Education

He began to be passionate about art in his later years of high school. He got a scholarship to a summer art school, and after that he knew he wanted to pursue art. After going to community college and not doing so well, he decided to get a Bachelors of Fine Arts in painting in Houston.
Michael began teaching elementary art and he became interested in education. As an educator, he learned more about himself as an artist.
However, Michael wanted to learn more and so he decided to go to graduate school. He wanted to be able to be an artist, a teacher, and a researcher. He needed to credentials in order to move up in the art world and have more opportunities.
Michael does what is known as art-based research. He became interested in why people needed to call themselves an artist/teacher/researcher - was it necessary?
If he was doing what everyone else was doing, why did he not feel like he was accomplishing all of this?
His research dealt with identity and so he used psychology to help him understand it better. For example, he referred to Erickson who discusses different ages and the related psychosocial crisis.
Still, he wondered why people needed to be hung up on the word "artist". He decided it was more important to have actions than to become obsessed with whether or not he was an actual artist.
"We should be concerned with the action rather than the title."