News 2022: CVPA Ceramics in Public Service

CVPA Ceramics Professor Rebecca Hutchinson continues her longstanding commitment to art in public service.

As one of the 2021-2022 CVPA Community Engagement Initiative Microgrant award winners, CVPA Ceramics Professor Rebecca Hutchinson continues her longstanding commitment to art in the public sphere and in the public service.

Professor Rebecca Hutchinson teaches in both the undergraduate program and the Master of Fine Arts Ceramics. Between 2005 and 2011, Hutchinson was the leader of Community Outreach and Collaborative Activities (COCA), a CVPA organization dedicated to art student involvement in the creative economy of New Bedford. During those years, Hutchinson organized activities such as the Star Store Drive-in, which showed feature films and student-submitted electronic shorts to a public audience. Other free events included talks from visiting artists, musical performances, a sidewalk chalk contest with the Boys and Girls Club, and various art presentations in storefront windows. Along with graduate student facilitators and other partners, Rebecca Hutchinson’s work with COCA brought transformative public programs to New Bedford.

Hutchinson’s commitment to the local community continues. Recently, Professor Hutchinson was awarded a grant to support Art and Design 231 (AXD 231): Wheel Throwing, taught by MFA student Elizabeth Alvarez, in producing bowls to be donated and auctioned in support of The Neediest Families fund, a New Bedford non-profit fund of the South Coast Community Foundation that addresses local hunger. Over the course of a full month of the spring 2022 semester, the students of AXD 231, along with the CVPA Ceramics Club, were busy throwing and shaping bowls two nights a week for this cause. The group includes a mix of ceramic majors and elective students, each of whom made six bowls. In November 2022, eighty bowls will be auctioned off as part of this fundraiser. Interested contributors can learn more at the SouthCoast Community Foundation.