As the newest addition to the School of Art, faculty assistant art professor Cory Wagner doesn’t see teaching as just a job, but rather, as another form of art.
"I look at teaching as my greatest artwork," Wagner said. "One can actually effect change in the world… by teaching."
After graduating from Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, Wagner taught at the Maryland Institute of Art for two years before accepting the teaching position at UH. As a teacher, Wagner uses examples from his own professors as well as himself to find inspiration.
"I think everybody comes to the way they teach from a different angle, and it’s usually a conglomeration from the things that worked for them as they were being taught and also some new ideas as they experiment," Wagner said. "I try to figure out what it is (the students) really want in their work and assist them in reaching their goals."
Wagner said that the students in the UH art program are comparable to those whom he taught at the Maryland Institute of Art.
"There really isn’t a difference between the best students at the Maryland Institute and the best students here," he said. "There are some excellent students here, and I’m really excited about their ideas."
One of the differences between the East Coast art school and the southern research university that Wagner has noticed is the integration of the University’s graduate and undergraduate programs. While the programs were divided at Maryland Institute of Art, Wagner said he enjoys the unity between the two here.
In addition to the graduate program, Wagner also looks forward to expanding the facilities of the art school.
"I would like to see a new facility get built. The old building is working for us now, but if we’re going to be truly interdisciplinary and update ourselves to the contemporary art scene that’s emerging right now, we’re going to need new facilities to draw the best students we can and allow students to have access and use of both new and old technology in the same facility to give them the experience they need and learn the things they need to learn in art school," he said.
Art Director John Reed also sees the expansion of the art facilities as necessary to the continued development of the art school.
"We desperately need new sculpture facilities. The South Park Annex (where the sculpture program is located) is really far from here, so if you have an interdisciplinary program where students are using all kinds of different media, its very inconvenient for them to take a sculpture class and then try to come over to take class in the Fine Arts Building," Reed said.
Reed also said that he believes a critical part of community involvement in the art school is a student gallery.
"We have no student gallery. Blaffer is great, but it’s not a student gallery," Reed said. "An art school without a gallery is missing an element of dialogue I think you really need for a lively art atmosphere of art making."
Reed is eagerly awaiting future changes of the art program at UH. He said that the University has been researching how to better the experience for students. Wagner is also enthusiastic.
"I want to see this program grow and I want to be apart of this," Wagner said. "There’s a lot of energy right now and I’m excited about it."
Reed admires Wagner’s energy and enthusiasm for the job, and said that one of the most important aspects of art is versatility.
"(Wagner) is a little more multidisciplinary than most," Reed said. "He doesn’t need to stay in a sculptural box. He can work across disciplines and we were definitely looking for that."
One way Wagner works outside of the box is by embracing the technology that is part of the changing art scene, working with computers and various genres of art such as performance art and installation pieces.
"Installation requires more in that the viewer is a part of the piece and also entails using the space as part of the piece as well, something that is installed and… integrated into the space."
Wagner has won numerous awards for his work, including being named a 2007 Fellow from the Center of Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia and receiving a full Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center. In addition, he has shown his work in many venues, most recently, at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.
"I’ve had lots of opportunities to exhibit up and down the northeast corridor, and I really think it’s a positive thing," he said. "I’ve had a lot of accomplishments in the recent past. I really try to put them all up there and try not to rest on my laurels. I just have to keep going because you can’t sit in one spot."
Wagner hails from a small town and has always dreamed of life in the big city.
"I grew up in Wyoming. I was born and raised in a really small town (of) about 3,500 people nestled in the Rocky Mountains," he said. "It was an idyllic childhood. It was really beautiful, but I was incredibly bored, and as soon as I had an opportunity I went to the city."
Before arriving in Houston, Wagner developed an interest in art that continued to increase throughout high school and college.
"I did as many art classes as I possibly could. I did some ceramics. Very few pieces survive, as lots of ceramics do (break) through many moves," Wagner said. "I actually went to the University of Wyoming for a brief period of time studying psychology, but I was drawing all the time, so when I finally went back to school at Montana State I knew that I was just going to do art."
Wagner studied painting and sculpture at Montana State University and subsequently earned a master’s of fine arts at the Rhinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore.
"I went to graduate school at the Maryland Institute, which has the oldest sculpture program in the nation," he said. "It was taken in by the Maryland Institute in the 1980s. Until then it was run by the Peabody Institute, and it was free, but it was very expensive when I went there."
While in school, Wagner studied a variety of subjects besides sculpture.
"Sculpture is what I do, but at the same time I do stuff with new genres, computers. I still have a very deep love of the object," Wagner said. "My interaction with materials… really is the basis of me as an artist."
