Andrea Dezsö, professor of art, holds an M.F.A. and a B.F.A. in visual communication from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary. Professor Dezsö has been on the faculty at Parsons School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, City College of New York, and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary; taught courses at Penland School of Craft, Paper & Book Intensive, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, The Museum of Arts and Design, and the American Museum of Visionary Art; and has lectured extensively. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Print, Blab, and Esopus.
Andrea Dezsö is a visual artist who works across a broad range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, artist's books, cut paper, embroidery, animation, and large-scale public art. Dezsö's work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Museum of Arts and Design, the N.Y. Armory Show and the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City, Museum Bellerieve in Switzerland, Art Basel Miami Beach, Rice Gallery in Houston, Fujikawa Kirie Art Museum in Japan, the Cheongjou Biennale in South Korea, Musee des Miniatures and Decors de Cinema in France, Frey Norris Gallery in San Francisco, and many others. Her work has been featured in ArtForum, ArtNews, The New York Times, Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, NPR, New York magazine, Print, Fiber Arts, Hand/Eye, and numerous books.
Community Garden, Dezsö's large-scale public mosaic commissioned by the New York City MTA Arts for Transit for the Lehman College subway station, was awarded Best American Public Art in 2007. Her second New York City subway station commission, a 48-panel site-specific stainless steel work, will be installed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Dezsö's public art projects include painted murals for the Hungarian Ministry of Culture, billboards for Publikum in Serbia, and posters for the New York City MTA and the New York Botanical Garden.
Dezsö has received fellowships and awards from Kohler Arts & Industry, the National Endowment for the Arts, Tamarind Institute, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Center for Book Arts, Kamiyama, Japan Artist in Residence, Six Points Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ucross Foundation's Lois Nellie Gill Award for Female Visual Artist of Exceptional Merit. Dezsö's award-winning illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, Time, Newsweek, and have been commissioned by Sony Music, Candlewick, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Sterling, Harlequin, and Target.
Dezsö's site-specific solo exhibition "Ridgefield Haunted" opened at the Aldrich Museum on Halloween, 2011. Andrea Dezsö is represented by Frey Norris Contemporary and Modern in San Francisco.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
- Illustration Projects: The Construction of Visual Narrative
In this labor-intensive class, we will explore the potential of illustration as visual narrative based on assignments and prompts, using a range of materials and artistic approaches. Students will create illustrations to accompany fiction and non-fiction works from fairytales to op-ed articles, from song lyrics to journal entries; purely visual pieces and works that integrate both words and images. We will examine narrative illustrations from a range of periods and cultures. Every student will keep a sketchbook or visual journal in which they will develop ideas and document their artistic process and experiments.
- Movable Artists Books Studio: Transformers & Shape Shifters
Learn to make books that pop up, transform, unfold, expand, books that become theaters, movable structures or interactive experiences: movable books. Treat form and content as an interdependent whole as you create your own movable artists books in this hands-on, labor-intensive class. Research into historic and contemporary examples of paper engineering and movable books will inform our inquiry. If you have an interest in art, books, visual storytelling, or paper engineering and love to make things with your hands, this is a class for you.
- Introduction to Painting on Paper, Board, Canvas, and Wall
Students will gain experience in the fundamentals of painting, including color, composition, materials and technical considerations. We will explore a range of painting surfaces, sizes, materials and artistic approaches. Assignments will include color mixing, landscape, self-portrait, figure painting, conceptual painting, narrative painting, and work inspired by street art and graffiti. Assigned readings, artist research, individual critique, group discussions, slide presentations and film screenings will round out the experience. Every student will be expected to keep a sketchbook.
- Division III Concentrators in Visual Art
A critique and discussion-based seminar for Division III Visual Art concentrators, this class will focus on the process and progress of art making. Students will be encouraged to think about their work in the larger context of their disciplines, society, place and history. Students will articulate their ars poetica orally through presentations and in writing. The practical side of building a sustainable art career will be discussed from finding inspiration and flow to the business of running an art studio, finding information, applying for grants, artist residences, securing resources, submitting work for competitions, and building a professional network. Readings will be assigned and a number of guest lecturers will be invited to the class.
- Drawing STUDIO 200: Experimental Drawing
Using a range of conventional and unconventional materials and artistic approaches students with a solid foundation in drawing will create experimental work with the aim of pushing boundaries and discovering new territory. Students will receive prompts to work in class and develop projects, will be expected to keep sketchbooks and work approximately 8 hours per week outside of class.
- Introduction to Painting on Paper, Board, Canvas, and ...
Students will gain experience in the fundamentals of painting, including color, composition, material and technical considerations in this hands-on, work-intensive studio class. We will explore a range of painting surfaces, sizes, materials and artistic approaches. Assignments will include color mixing, landscape, self-portrait, figure painting, conceptual painting, narrative painting and experimental work using unconventional painting materials. Students will paint individually and collaboratively. Assigned readings, artist research, individual critique, group discussions, slide presentations, film screenings and an independent final project proposed and executed by each student will round out the experience.
- Creating Personal Cosmology Through Art
Students will create a body of work in a range of materials and media including drawing, painting, collage and installation seeking their very own artistic vision. You will endeavor to build a personal cosmology through a series of visual art inquiries aimed to examine and express the highly subjective and ever-shifting world of lived experience in this hands-on, work-intensive studio class. Artists including Charlotte Salomon, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Laylah Ali, Margaret Kilgallen, Frida Kahlo and others will guide us on the journey of creating our own personal cosmologies. Assigned readings, artist research, individual critique, group discussions, slide presentations and an independent final project, proposed and executed by each student will round out the experience.
