Michael
R. Sawdey
(Throughout, just click on the
signature
image of the ice floe to return to my
index page.)
Some background
Academic:
I have been at Aurora University (Aurora, Illinois, about 40 miles
southwest of Chicago) since July of 1985. In that time, I've held a
number of administrative positions, including Director of Continuing
Education, Registrar, a couple of college deanships, couple of
vice-presidential appointments; most recently, I was for five years the
executive director of the Schingoethe Center for Native American
Cultures. Simultaneously, I have held academic appointments, including
Associate Professor of English, Associate Professor and Professor of
Communication, and University Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies.
In January of 2007 I moved to full-time faculty in my present
position as Professor of Fine Arts.
The main focus of my current teaching is in
photography, within the newly-inaugurated fine arts major at Aurora
University. This roots of this go back a ways: about fifteen years ago
I designed the introductory photography course as part of the
Communication curriculum and oversaw the conversion of an "animal room"
(yes, literally; the mice and snakes moved to better quarters) into a
darkroom. At that point I had too many other things on my plate to
teach the course, so I supervised part-timers for many years, and am
only now teaching the course regularly myself. I have also designed
intermediate and advanced photography courses for the curriculum (the
intermediate version was first offered in January 2007 and the advanced
version in January 2009). In addition, I have occasionally taught some
courses outside of the photography area, including IDS1600
Culture, Diversity, and Expression and HIS3810 Introduction to Native
American Studies. Both of these courses reflect a long-term interest in
cultural studies. Within the Fine Arts curriculum, I indulge my
cultural studies interest through ART3540 Photography and Society.
Formal: I completed my
undergraduate degree (B.A. in English, minor in German) in the Honors
College of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I received an M.A.
(English; minor in History of Science) and Ph.D. from the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (my dissertation concerned Samuel Beckett's
novels). Over the years I have also done graduate study in adult
development (Johnson State College, Vermont) and higher education
administration (MLE/Harvard), as well as various workshops on whatever
interested or puzzled me at the moment (PhotoShop has been a recurrent
theme). I should probably also mention that, for no apparent reason, I
received a very fine science education at Hilton Central School (New
York), many decades ago.
Aesthetic: I've been
photographing, one way or the other, more or less all my life, starting
as the proverbial kid with a camera and some hand-me-down lab equipment
in the basement. Tri-X came on the market just in time for me to
terrorize/immortalize my high school cohort in available light, such as
it was. At the age of thirteen I saved up $75 and purchased my first
"serious" camera, a Kodak Medalist I, dating from 1944. Since then, I
have hardly ever not photographed, going through periods of what might
be called photojournalism, landscape, urban landscape,
near-ethnography. I was a fairly early adopter of digital technology,
though my approach has been, pretty consistently, only to use the
digital means to achieve what I would have done with wet processes, had
I had the time, materials, patience. Through it all, I've tried to
maintain a few simple rules: never rearrange the thing photographed;
never combine images, except to form panaramas; expose for the
highlights and let the rest go hang; fill the empty holes in the
composed world; photograph people with care, compassion, and permission.
Personal: My wife (Laurel
Church) and I live in Aurora, our children and grandchildren in
Illinois and Minnesota. We travel when we can, mostly to the U.K. and
Ireland, garden when the weather and the rabbits cooperate. I'm an
inveterate mechanical tinkerer, operating on victims as diverse as
photographic equipment, vintage electronics gear, and a 1950 Dodge rat
rod project (no end yet in sight).
For more specifics, go to: Curriculum Vitae
Descriptions of my classes
A
gallery of some of my photographic work