Jan Estep Retiring from the Department of Art
About Jan and Her Work
By Diane Willow, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice
An inspiration to many, Professor Jan Estep leads with her vibrant curiosity and expansive compassion. To say that Jan is an artist, writer, educator, philosopher, and yogi is to also say that she is a passionate learner and a generous teacher. Recount her degrees in biology/art (BA), studio art (MFA) and philosophy (MA, PhD), her training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) from UMass Medical School Center for Mindfulness, in Kundalini Yoga in the lineage of Yogi Bhajan, in Art and Yoga with Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa, in Emotional Liberation with Guru Meher Khalsa, and in Prana Vinyasa Flow with Shiva Rea and you begin to glean the breadth and depth of her commitment to wholeness that connects mind, body, and spirit. She nurtures creativity as growth, change, and transformation that is essential to being fully alive.
Jan Estep has an extraordinary capacity to share what she has learned and to set ideas, energy, practices, and questions in motion and to keep them circulating. Through her generative process we, the extended Regis Center for Art community, also experience and witness instances of growth, change and transformation that Jan has catalyzed with her art, writing, public talks, leadership positions, and teaching. Courses that she designed, such as Art + Yoga: Combining Somatic, Contemplative, and Somatic Practices, Art + Life: Thinking about Ethics through Art, Art + Language: Say Something, Make Something, Performed Photography: Documentation of Artistic Acts and Social Interventions, trace Jan's creative research and her joy in sharing this with experiential modes of learning.
Are you there, Guanyin? a sound work exhibited at the MIA, her Conversation Portraits at the Weisman Art Museum and the Soap Factory, the Grand Canyon Suicide Map and Metta Meditation at the Grand Canyon, Ad Infinitum at Art in General, a time-lapsed video On Certainty, and Thinking Portraits reflect the range of her interests and facility with images, media, language, and experimental processes. While this may read as an introduction to Professor Jan Estep, her abundance of talents, skills, and knowledge, it is marking her nearly two-decade long tenure at UMN. And while this may be noted as an announcement of her retirement, in essence it is marking the beginning of Jan's next courageous, creative endeavor as she shapes more paths and invitations for participation in art, life, and healing. She is certain to have canine companions on this journey. And, we anticipate an expanded digital presence that continues to connect us with Jan Estep and her profoundly meaningful work, work that is resonant and in tune with the rhythm and pulse of a sustaining creative life. Thank you, Jan!
From Jan Estep
As I reflect on the past 20 years at the University of Minnesota, I’m amazed at the incredible growth and transformation I’ve experienced here, both internally and externally. I came to the U from a position teaching philosophy at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, thankful that the department took a chance on hiring a philosopher/writer/artist. Consequently, this place has been at the center of my professional life and has afforded me opportunities that I’m incredibly grateful for: the ability to teach and learn from students and colleagues, to impact and shape higher education, and to pursue my creative research as it has morphed from conceptual, photographic, and linguistic practices into ones that are more experiential, process-based, and mindful. It’s been an honor to contribute to a community that values education and connectivity as well as the impact and meaning of art.
Creating new courses has been a highlight for me as an educator/practitioner: Art and Life: Thinking about Ethics Through Art, Art and Language: Say Something, Make Something, Performed Photography: Documentation of Artistic Acts and Social Interventions, and Issue: Image and Text. The most recent course I developed, Art and Yoga: Combining Creative, Contemplative, and Somatic Practices, is the ultimate integration of things that mean the most to me: the way a life of the mind integrates with the life in the body, the way creativity supports the heart, spirit, and presence. Each course explored ways art matters through a distinctly intermedia, interdisciplinary approach.
Shepherding the first-year graduate seminar, Theoretical Constructions in Contemporary Art, throughout my time in the department, I’ve had the privilege of working with the incoming MFA cohorts over the years, sharing a depth of commitment and curiosity that sustained my own interest in the field. Where else could I talk about art with such conviction, variety, and care, amid such wide differences of perspective and material engagement? It’s the relational connections through art that has made teaching rich and satisfying and I’ll miss those conversations. To any student I’ve touched in the courses I’ve taught, know too that you have touched me.
Artists tend to take risks, each in our own way. Testing the limits of the known, embracing the mystery of the unknown. As I move into the next phase of my life, relocating full-time to the high desert of rural, southwest Colorado, I let go of academia with a mix of emotions: fear and excitement, anger, grief and joy, hope, a mix of heaviness and lightness. Yet as in art so too with life: only by creating more space can something new and wonderful arise. Trusting the creative process once again to lead me to the next best step, I am grateful to be taking all the experiences of the past forward into the future. Thank you for walking beside me for a little stretch of the way while I traveled in Minnesota.
Please keep in touch and let me know how you fare on your way too: Instagram @jan_estep, www.janestep.com, jestep@umn.edu
May 11, 2021
