By SARAH DEASON

smd025@latech.edu

 

The School of Art is attempting to send art students to study in Paris this spring. Dean Dablow, director of the School of Art, accompanied art students to Paris in 2004.

“We went to Paris once in the spring of 2004, and it was very successful,” Dablow said. “There hasn’t been enough interest the last two years to go, though.”

Dablow said the application deadline for a “French Quarter in Paris” is scheduled for Nov. 1. If there are enough applicants, plans for the trip will be finalized, however, without enough interest the trip will not take place, Dablow said.

Despite the weak responses the last two years, the School of Art continues to offer the study abroad in Paris due to its educational value to art, Dablow said.

“Paris is the perfect place for art,” Dablow said. “Students learn about works of art in their art history classes, and [in Paris] they get to see the real thing, from Egyptian and Roman to conceptual.”

Jonathan Donehoo, a professor of communication design, will accompany students who may attend to supervise their education abroad.

“We are trying to make our students citizens of the world,” Donehoo said. “Travel is the best education.”

Students will start the spring quarter at Tech and prepare for Parisian culture, Donehoo said.

“There is a certain informality that Americans often interpret as rudeness,” Donehoo said. “Their reputation as rude is as unfounded as Americans’ reputation as loud and obnoxious.”

Students respond to their experience in their art, Donehoo said.

“The end of the last French Quarter culminated in an exhibition in which returning students responded to the trip,” Donehoo said. “It was very well received by the public.”

Colin Todd, a senior photography major, said he documented his time in Paris by taking photos and showing them in the student exhibition at the Visual Arts Center.

“Paris influenced my art for a long time,” Todd said. “There were so many inspirations in my surroundings, and the art I saw I continually refer to as inspiration for new projects.”

Todd stayed in Paris three weeks studying upper level courses.

Dablow said he will accompany faculty members Donehoo, Saul Zalesch, a professor of art history, and Mary Louise Carter, a professor of studio art, to supervise the trip.

He also said the tentative schedule for the French Quarter in Paris 2006 is April 1-21.