Art and Design Students Visit Brussels

Students attend Frontières/Boundaries workshop hosted by ESA St.-Luc Bruxelles
KENNESAW, Ga.
(Aug 27, 2019) — In February of 2019, professor Chris Malone led nine School of Art and Design students to Belgium for a week-long, international
arts workshop on boundaries. The Frontières/Boundaries workshop hosted by ESA St.-Luc Bruxelles was aimed at students and professors in the third year of a bachelor’s degree in
digital arts, illustration, comics and graphic design.
Seven international schools participated, including Bologna’s Accademia di Belle
Arti; Warsaw’s Akademia Sztuk Pięknych; Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts and
Gengdan Academy of Design; Barcelona’s Escola Massana Centre d’Art i Disseny; and
Berlin’s Weißensee School of Art; along with Kennesaw State University.
The main challenge of this workshop was “to lead students outside the school
walls to acquire a culture of civic engagement and a transcultural mind” and to examine
boundaries through artistic practice, according to the exhibition catalog. The work
resulting from the workshop was exhibited at the Maison des Cultures de Saint-Gilles.
Student Katie Metzger said, “Participating in the ESA St. Luc ‘Boundaries’ workshop
was a positive, eye-opening experience about the universality of visual language and
narrative that exists. You don’t need to speak the same language as someone else to
connect with them. Art has that kind of power and it was put into practice in Belgium.”
Prof. Malone may have had a hand in that. He said, “I didn’t want my students
to only interact with others from their home country, so I separated them from other
KSU students. The most exciting part of the week for me was watching all of the students
quickly get past their language barriers by communicating through artwork and comics.
By only using visuals, students were able to share jokes, stories, encouragement and
even feelings of excitement or homesickness with each other.” Student Julee Davis
added, “Representing the School of Art and Design allowed me to build relationships
with so many other international art students, all by way of visual expression and
not necessarily through verbal language.”
The partnership with ESA St.-Luc Bruxelles came together after a bit of luck
and shared passions. Geo Sipp, director of the School of Art and Design, said, “A
chance visit to the Lambiek bookstore and gallery in Amsterdam introduced me to the
work of Brussels-based artist Dominique Goblet and I met with her in Brussels. There,
she introduced me to Thierry Van Hasselt, publisher of Frêmok, the Belgian comics
group that creates experimental and avant-garde albums. Each of them taught at ESA
St.-Luc Bruxelles, one of the finest design schools in Europe. I then met with the
director of the institution, Marc Streker, and proposed working together to facilitate
programming and opportunities for faculty and students from our respective institutions.
This meeting resulted in the development of an articulation agreement between ESA
St.-Luc Bruxelles and Kennesaw State University, and the Frontières/Boundaries workshop
opportunity for our students.”
The resulting agreement has had broader reach than just study abroad. Geo said,
“The unique comics curriculum at ESA St.-Luc Bruxelles led to the development of KSU’s
Illustration and Comics programming. In fact, KSU has the only concentration in comics
at a public university in the United States.”