Joshua Harriman, 8 Week Program – Summer 2014
Being in the Rome Art Program for 8 weeks left me changed both on a personal and artistic level. Rome Art Program is a full-time art-making endeavour and participants are expected to treat it as such. Students travel throughout Rome and each location visited is thoroughly explored both through painting and drawing, as well as historically. By the time a student leaves, they will have an intimate knowledge of the city both inside and out.
The nature of this program is such that a participant cannot help but be overtaken by the power of their surroundings. Being immersed in the city in such an intensive and relentless way forces the artist to come out of the students here. Rome Art Program is not for the casual artist. If someone intends on visiting Italy and making art on the side, then this is not a suitable course of study. If you participate in this program, your time in Rome will almost exclusively be put towards it.
The faculty are very committed to the program and have a very clear idea of what they want students to get out of the experience. Students who are looking for guidance and close monitoring of their art practice may find this comforting. Students who are more independently driven may find this cumbersome. At times I found myself at both ends of this spectrum. But mostly I was somewhere in between those extremes and as the course progressed I was able to settle into a rhythm of working that I found very agreeable to my practice. It pushed me to think about the things that matter most to me as a painter.
Joshua Harriman, 8 week Rome Session 2014