Faculty Spotlight / Michael Banning '04 | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

We are excited to present our interview with painter, current MCAD MFA Visiting Artist, and MCAD MFA alum Michael Banning '04.

"Michael Banning’s paintings and drawings of contemporary American urban, industrial, and domestic landscapes have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Chicago, Denver, New York, and Minneapolis, where he has been represented by the Groveland Gallery since 1998."

Read about Michael’s time in the MFA program, his career, current position as the MFA Visiting Artist, and his upcoming personal projects.

Enjoy!

Tell us about your position as the MFA Visiting Artist?

The first semester I taught one of the Graduate Critique Seminars and I also teach the Advanced Drawing and Painting class in the undergraduate program. In addition to this, I do a lot of administrative tasks related to the program, such as setting up professional practice events, curriculum development, review and planning of policies, etc. A lot of this work is done with the Graduate Faculty Committee and the GA Team of students. Additionally, I’ve been involved with a number of recruiting events and this has been an unexpected but enjoyable part of the position.

What do you enjoy most about your position?

I love working with students in the program and witnessing the development of their work as they move through the program. Working with the new Director, Ellen Mueller is great also!

Where did you grow up? How have your experiences growing up influenced your career path?

I grew up in Colorado and Missouri. It’s hard to say exactly how these experiences influenced my career path but I would say that growing up in two places with very different kinds of built and natural environments was probably a part of the genesis for my interest in spatial relationships.

Did you grow up knowing that you wanted to pursue a creative career?

In some ways, yes. I was always involved in drawing as a child and later moved on to music. My first major in college was architecture but I switched to visual art after taking the prerequisite drawing classes and enjoying them more than the architecture and physics classes I had to take. It makes sense because my mother is an artist and my father is a professor who studies the ecology of the built environment.

What is something you learned as an MCAD MFA that surprised you?

I would say that I gained confidence in speaking about my work and the work of others. This did surprise me because, before being a part of the program as an MFA student, this was very difficult for me. I think it was the community of students and faculty that really brought this out of me.

Who was your mentor? Describe how they have influenced your practice.

Michael Kareken was my mentor (see MN Originals video). I learned a lot of fundamental skills about representation and drawing and painting that I had never gained during my undergraduate studies. I would say also that I learned the importance of a sense of honesty in talking and thinking about the work and, because Mike has an incredible work ethic, I was pushed to make a lot of work and this was really helpful.

What inspires you lately? Books, movies, music, art, podcasts...anything unexpected?

I’m really interested in the idea of practice-led research and am working at employing methodologies of research in my work. More specifically, for me, it’s been helpful to think about a body of work as being a response to a research question and then to approach this as one would a thesis. I’m also interested in philosophy and critical theory and have been re-reading many books from my time as an MCAD student. Some exhibitions I’ve seen recently that have been inspiring: Hilma Af Klint at the Guggenheim, Saras Lucas at the New Museum, and Vinyl, Terror, and Horror at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen.

What are your goals as the MCAD MFA visiting artist?

I think I’m focused on trying to help students have a great experience in the program. Right now, the avenue for this is the critique class. Having taught for a number of years now, I am still finding the best ways to structure critiques. It’s different for graduate students too: the critiques are longer, the work is more complex, there is a higher degree of interdisciplinarity in the group, and the stakes are higher. I really strive to have a supportive critique environment.

How do you hope to help develop the MFA program? Are there any initiatives or new projects you are working on?

Along with Ellen, we are working on defining more specific objectives and structures for the critique seminar classes. Of course, the classes are about having work critiqued and gaining exposure to and perspectives of the visiting artists, but I feel there should be more content covered relative to both interpretation and critique.

How do you balance your personal practice with your position as the MCAD MFA Visiting Artist?

This is always challenging in any teaching position. What I’ve found to be helpful is to identify those times that I generally don’t have schedule conflicts and make them studio times. This seems obvious, but the important part of this is that I try not to be too flexible with this and don’t leave these times open for scheduling other things. I currently have a studio outside of the home and a small space at home as well. Dividing up projects between the two spaces has been helpful too. Sometimes I only have a couple of hours and it’s not worth going to the studio, but if I have some small tasks I can do at home that move the project along this helps in using time wisely.

How do you deal with feeling creatively blocked or burnt out?

I don’t generally feel creatively blocked. Maybe it’s because I could always use more time to work, but there’s always something to do. I do have difficulty making decisions about work though. Sometimes it can take weeks to make decisions. I’ve learned to try to use this time to do other things that don’t involve decision making but just require work. The burnout factor is probably more of an issue because the work is really time-intensive and sometimes repetitive. Deadlines are critical in moving work forward.

When did you first know you wanted to be an educator?

I probably knew at an early age but didn’t really recognize it within myself. I think that I probably became more aware of the possibility when I was in the MFA program. At the time there wasn’t a structure in place for students to gain teaching experience though. When I taught as a VA in the Fine Arts department many years ago, it was the first time I had taught.

Do you find that your personal artistic practice informs your teaching? How so?

My practice has a very strong connection to my teaching and vice-versa. It depends on the class I’m teaching as to how this manifests. I would say, generally, that in undergraduate courses that are more foundational, the actual techniques I use in the studio become what I teach in the classroom. Conversely, if I’m required to teach a technique I don’t use or don’t know, learning the technique for the purpose of teaching it often comes full-circle back to the studio. In higher level classes, I think the modes of thinking and making and my experience of working in the studio appears in the classroom also but in a more conceptual form. For example, I’ve been thinking about the critical, interpretive, and empirical streams of practice-based research and these are becoming ways to structure critical modes of thinking in the classroom.

What jobs have you had between your time as an MFA candidate and now? Which did you enjoy the most? What challenges did you encounter?

I’ve been lucky because 95% of the jobs I’ve had have been teaching positions. I’ve taught at a number of institutions: Columbia College - Chicago, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, and The Art Institute of Illinois, among others. My teaching positions have been a combination of adjunct, full-time lecturer, and full-time. With adjunct teaching, it’s difficult to make enough money but perhaps easier to find studio time, with the full-time positions it can be opposite of this. I also worked briefly as an art restoration apprentice in a conservation lab and as a coordinator for a public art firm, both in Chicago.

What is the most helpful piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

I can think of two things. One was art-related and the other wasn’t at the time but has proven to be very art-related. The first one was when I was in high school and working at a catering department. I was asked by someone to set up the dessert table in a kind of fancy way and left to do this however I wanted. By the time I was done it looked like a cross between a science experiment and an art installation. My boss asked me if I knew what KISS meant? I thought he was talking about the band. He said, “keep it simple, stupid”. This has generally been good advice, although there are certainly times in art-making when complexity is what’s called for.

The other piece of advice came from Michael Kareken and happened during my Thesis Review. In response to the work I had made he gave me the advice to not let go of observation as a key part of my practice. This has helped me through a lot of work.

What do you like most about mentoring students?

The best analogy I have to being a mentor is that it’s like being a music producer. You get to work with really talented people, help them see their work in a different way, help them hone their talents and ideas towards completed projects, and have some really good conversations along the way. I look forward to these meetings every week.

For more information:

Michael Banning

Interviewer: Hallie Bahn
Illustrator: Yi Wan