Advanced Mentored Studies
A vital link in the education of emerging artists.
Within the Advanced Mentored Studies program, students gain access to master faculty—top contemporary artists and educators—over a three-year period, providing rigorous inquiry and steady direction for their individual practice. Students gain the critical levels of knowledge and mentorship necessary to take the next, important steps of becoming serious contributors in their chosen fields.
Anderson Ranch offers Advanced Mentored Studies in the fields of Photography, Painting and Drawing, Sculpture, Digital Fabrication and Ceramics.
The programs, which include studio work, critical dialog and critique, offer artists the opportunity to expand the scope of their current practice as well as their ability to develop a critical eye regarding their work. In addition to weeklong or two-week workshops each year, participants engage in mid-year portfolio reviews as well as quarterly meetings with faculty to discuss their ongoing work and progress. At mid-year, the faculty conduct an online critique with the entire group.
Workshops
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IV
Level IV
Students have advanced skills and knowledge of the ceramics field. Students are highly motivated, have a minimum of five years experience in the field and have a portfolio of their artwork. Typical students are academics and professional artists.
Aug 4 - 15, 2025
9AM - 5PM
Advanced Mentored Studies: The Mold and Matrix: Ceramic Process and Narrative Form
Ebitenyefa Baralaye, Del Harrow
Tuition $2,250
Code C1001-25
This three-year mentorship program is intended for ceramic artists interested in critical feedback and immersion in a creative community and who are at a point of transition in their lives, careers, or artistic practices. Emphasis is placed on seeking connections, metaphors, and symmetries between processes for forming clay and developing ways of generating meaning. The objects we make tell stories and propose worlds; a coil and a mold are both techniques for forming clay and also propositions about the meaningful interface of material, body, mind, economy, and culture. We focus on ways stories emerge from physical objects and how narratives give structure to physical form. We welcome participants from many different backgrounds and experiences, centering on work in clay but with the potential for different outcomes, including work in other materials, writing, sculpture, and design. 2025 is the third year of this three-year intensive program. For more information about our next session of this Advanced Mentored Studies program, which begins in 2026, please contact Betsy Alwin, Visiting Director of Ceramics and Expanded Media at [email protected].
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IV
Level IV
Photography students have advanced skills and knowledge of photography and digital image processing. New Media students have advanced skills and knowledge of video, multimedia, coding or animation. Students are self-motivated and have multiple portfolios of their artwork.
Aug 18 - 22, 2025
9AM - 5PM
Advanced Mentored Studies: Visual Storytelling and Documentary Photography Projects
Ed Kashi, James Estrin
Tuition $1,850
Code P1201-25
The digital age has given documentary photographers and photojournalists new ways to tell stories with greater authorship and control. This workshop focuses on how to create a personal documentary project and get it seen. The ultimate goal is to find a subject that speaks to a personal passion, document it in a unique visual style, then disseminate the work. Participants engage new technologies to become more effective storytellers, which include social media, transmedia, virtual reality, and digital video. 2025 is the third year of this three-year intensive program. For more information about our next session of this Advanced Mentored Studies program, which begins in 2026, please contact Andrea Jenkins Wallace, Vice President of Artistic Affairs and Artistic Director of Photography and New Media, at [email protected].
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IV
Level IV
Photography students have advanced skills and knowledge of photography and digital image processing. New Media students have advanced skills and knowledge of video, multimedia, coding or animation. Students are self-motivated and have multiple portfolios of their artwork.
Aug 25 - 29, 2025
9AM - 5PM
Advanced Mentored Studies: Visual Storytelling and Documentary Photography Projects
James Estrin, Ed Kashi
Tuition $1,850
Code P1302-25
The digital age has given documentary photographers and photojournalists new ways to tell stories with greater authorship and control. This workshop focuses on how to create a personal documentary project and get it seen. The ultimate goal is to find a subject that speaks to a personal passion, document it in a unique visual style, then disseminate the work. Participants engage new technologies to become more effective storytellers, which include social media, transmedia, virtual reality, and digital video. 2025 is the third year of this three-year intensive program. For more information about our next session of this Advanced Mentored Studies program, which begins in 2026, please contact Andrea Jenkins Wallace, Vice President of Artistic Affairs and Artistic Director of Photography and New Media, at [email protected].
Advanced Mentored Studies Faculty
Ebitenyefa Baralaye
Ebitenyefa Baralaye is a ceramicist, sculptor, and educator. His work explores objects, text, bodies, and patterns abstracted through a diaspora lens and the aesthetics of craft. Baralaye’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is currently an assistant professor in Ceramics at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI.
James Estrin
James Estrin is a staff photographer for The New York Times. He is a founder of Lens, The New York Times’s photography blog, and has been its co-editor since it launched in 2009. He has worked for The New York Times since 1992 and was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team in 2001. James is a co-producer of the HBO film “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro”.
Del Harrow
Del Harrow lives and works in Fort Collins, CO, with his wife, potter Sanam Emami, and their son, William. He is a Colorado State University professor teaching sculpture, digital fabrication, and ceramics. His work is in the permanent collections of the Arizona State University Art Museum, The US State Department Art in Embassies Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes is a frequent Ranch faculty member and professor emeritus of painting at Rhode Island School of Design. Having exhibited nationally and internationally, Holly’s painting has been greatly influenced by both ceramic and printmaking practice and research. She loves “Salon Style” installations—the mixing of these genres on the wall—such as BLAZON created for the Dorsky Museum.
Ed Kashi
Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker and educator whose sensitive eye and intimate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his work. He is a member of the VII Photo Agency. Through his photography, filmmaking, and work as a mentor, teacher, and lecturer, Ed is a leading voice in the photojournalism and visual storytelling community.
Shahzia Sikander
Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for subverting pre-modern and classical Central and South-Asian miniature painting traditions into dialogue with contemporary international art practices and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. Recipient of the MacArthur grant, Sikander’s early work is touring at the Morgan Library, the RISD museum, and MFA Houston in 2021-2022.
Participants
Program Participants
“The program was essential to completing my long-term documentary project. It can be difficult to find the time for a passion project when you’re working on your own, especially when your work is emotionally challenging, and having my classmates ready to talk through the difficulties I faced helped me in more ways than I can count. I so value the people I met and the work I was able to produce through this program and know that it will continue to impact my work and career.”
-Lauren Justice, Graduate of the Advanced Mentored Studies program