With year-round programming, the MCAD Continuing Education Department (CE) offers art and design classes for all ages taught by professional working artists. This summer, MCAD MFA Alums taught six of these courses with topics ranging from Exercises in Collage and Assemblage to Wordpress Website Setup and Design. We caught up with two MFA alums to hear about their experience:

This was Andi Fink ’16’s first year teaching a Continuing Education course for MCAD. During the year, Fink teaches graphic design and illustration at Dakota County Technical College and is also a food stylist, photographer, and graphic designer for Yoplait. Fink, who taught Intro to Modern Calligraphy and Preparing Hand Drawn Type for the Web, said that she enjoyed the extended format of the continuing Ed courses which allowed her to meet with her students multiple times instead of for just a couple hours. Fink says “hand lettering and calligraphy has been a passion of mine since I started designing, and teaching followed close behind. Being able to combine those two loves together and share that passion with those eager to learn has been a treat. I love that CE students are students who have taken the extra initiative outside of their regular coursework or day to day life to learn something new – they are extra focused, ask great questions, and are really engaged with the class.

“My goal in each class is for each student to leave feeling empowered to start from wherever they are, whether they have had previous experience or not, and to have confidence in their work by looking beyond the flaws. I tell my students to embrace their own wiggles and develop a personal style that is “perfect” (tip: no one is) but works perfectly for them.”

This summer, Erin Sandsmark ’17 worked with both adult learners and with teenagers. Sandsmark taught Intro to Painting for Teens, as well as Drawing and Painting through Art History: American Modernism. She reflects, “I enjoy teaching for Continuing Education because the student population is so varied. I have been able to work with a group of young teens just beginning to foster their interest in visual arts, while also working with adult learners that vary in skill. Through this class, some picked up a brush for the first time in 20 years. Both provide their challenges and their immense rewards. The variety of learners and excitement to learn, that’s what’s so exciting about Continuing Education.

Another exciting component to Sandsmark’s experience is that she had the opportunity to propose and design her course Painting through Art History: American Modernism. During the year, Sandsmark is an art instructor at both ArtiCulture, and at the Rum River Arts Center in Anoka, MN in addition to working in the events department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and substitute teaching. When she is not balancing those many teaching positions, she can be found making work in the studio.

Interested in taking an MCAD Continuing Education Course? Throughout the year, choose from evening, weekend, and online art and design classes, noncredit certificates, summer art educator workshops, summer and school-year youth and teen classes, and professional and graduate programs designed to match the personal and career interests of students of all ages, levels, and backgrounds.

Photography by Yi Wan

For more information:

MCAD Continuing Education

Andi Fink

Erin Sandsmark