Art Students Experiment with New Approaches to Design
During Steven Aimone's Weeklong Artist Residency

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Artist Steven Aimone critiques a student design.

Visual artists communicate primarily through images, not words, so when students have the opportunity to learn from an artist who is also an inspiring teacher, the classroom sparks with creative energy.

Such an artist/teacher was Steven Aimone, who spent five days in Susanne Abrams' art classes as artist in residence. The theme of his residency was principles of design, and his provocative exercises challenged students to improvise design in new ways.

Working along the wall, which had become a continuous easel with brown craft paper tacked to it, students responded to quick challenges of composition and design. They explored visual rhythm, balance, symmetry, and asymmetry. In one exercise, students utilized the rhythm of their signatures to create abstract designs.

The week went by quickly, said Ms. Abrams, and students are continuing to work on design projects following Aimone's residency.

Steven Aimone's beautifully illustrated book, Design! A Lively
Guide to Design Basics for Artists and Craftspeople, will be
issued by Lark Books/Barnes and Noble in early spring 2004.

Aimone is an artist, fine arts instructor, and independent curator who has taught numerous design workshops and courses to a wide variety of audiences, including professional artists and craftspeople, college students, museum patrons, and school teachers. He has an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Brooklyn College and today lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Aimone listens to a student's reaction to a recent series of his sky paintings, displayed behind him.

Aimone says of his work that he "is continuing to develop two distinct bodies of work that have compelled him for more than two decades: a series of alla prima compositions in oil with landscape as reference, and a series of formalist abstractions executed in manipulated paper." His paintings and collage compositions have been the subject of four solo exhibitions in New York City, and his work is in collections nationally. He has taught at Western Carolina University in North Carolina and at Stetson University in Florida.

Aimone was co-founder and Director of Curriculum and Instruction for ProArt Institute, a non-profit "university without walls" that furnished university-style short courses for working artists. He is now teaching workshops in design and art through AimoneArt Services, a joint venture with his wife Katherine.