USF Photography Workshop To Give Military Veterans A Voice

TAMPA, FL -- This summer, the USF Contemporary Art Museum, part of the Institute for Research in Art in the College of The Arts, will offer Breaking Barriers, an intensive five-week photography workshop for military veterans. The course will be focused on memory, and led by photographer and educator Forrest MacDonald.

Breaking Barriers is an initiative to expand access to the arts for military personnel, veterans and their families. Breaking Barriers will give veterans the opportunity to have a voice through art, and interface and integrate with both the local civilian and larger veteran communities.

The workshop, held at the School of Art and Art History at USF, will meet Fridays from 1 to 5 p.m. July 12 to Aug. 9. Breaking Barriers is free to veterans, and no previous experience is required.

Designed for all levels of experience, beginning to advanced, Breaking Barriers invites veterans to explore tools and process in creating their own photographic images. Guided by MacDonald, participants will work in the studio, digital lab and environmental settings. The series concludes with a personal project and portfolio review, an exclusive VTS museum session, and a special showing of selected works from each participant will be exhibited and open to the public at the USF Contemporary Art Museum in the fall.

MacDonald is a photographer, painter, sculptor, mixed media artist, college professor and active member of the artist collective Fountain of Pythons. His personal work involves themes of interdependence of mutually dependent life forms, the transitory nature of existence, and the re-purposing of personal obsolete technologies into sculptures. He received his master of fine arts in photography from the University of South Florida in 2012.

For information, click here or email Leslie Elsasser at lelsasse@usf.edu or Kristin Beauvois at: kbeauvois@usf.edu.