U-M Creative Currents

Arts Research + Creative Practice: Clare Croft and Anne Mondro on U-M’s ARIA Program

• Arts Initiative • Season 4 • Episode 8

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In this episode of U-M Creative Currents, host Mark Clague talks with Clare Croft, Faculty Director of Research & Creative Practice for the U-M Arts Initiative, and Anne Mondro, visual artist and professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. This episode is part of Creative Currents’ special podcast series on the Michigan Arts Festival (September 25 – October 26, 2025).

Featured Programming & Highlights include:

  • ARIA Faculty Research Showcase, October 23 at 4 p.m., Michigan Union Ballroom
  • Faculty projects exploring art, health, design, and interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Works highlighted during the episode include: Mondro’s Tethered, Perpetual Sunshine & The Ghost Girls, The Heirloom Project, and Hygroscopic Envelope

Croft discusses how the Arts Research: Incubation & Acceleration (ARIA) program elevates creative practice as research, fostering new interdisciplinary partnerships across campus. Mondro shares insights on Tethered, her ARIA-funded project using woven metal forms to explore empathy, illness, and human connection through art.

*Production Note: This episode is part of U-M Creative Currents' special Michigan Arts Festival podcast series and is edited by Sly Pup Productions.


Mark Clague:

Welcome to Creative Currents, the Michigan Arts podcast, where we explore the power of collaborative creativity and the ways that the arts inspire dialogue and connection. I'm your host, Mark Clegg, and I'm excited to continue our conversations today, celebrating the 2025 Michigan Arts Festival and the people bringing the festival to life. Today I'm thrilled to welcome two University of Michigan professors, Claire Croft and Anne Mondro, to the Arts Initiative Studios. Claire is a dance historian and theorist, as well as a dramaturg and dancer herself, who recently published a pair of books about feminist author and dance critic Jill Johnston. She's a professor of American culture in Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts. But most importantly for today's conversation, she also serves as the faculty director of research and creative practice for the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative. Anne Mondro is a visual artist and professor at Michigan's Penny Stamp School of Art and Design, where she pioneered the innovative community engagement course Memory, Aging, and Expressive Arts. The course connects art students with persons with dementia to strengthen community empathy through creativity. Her studio practice explores the physical and mental complexities of the body during illness through anatomical imagery and religious artifacts, and her work is being exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent shows at the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Cranbrook Art Museum, and the New York Series Gallery. It's currently at Berea College in Kentucky. So, Claire and Ann, welcome to Creative Currents.

Anne Mondro:

Thank you.

Mark Clague:

So the inspiration for our conversation today is the ARIA faculty showcase that is going to be on Thursday, October 23rd, I think, 4 p.m. Michigan Union. Claire, can you tell us a little bit about the ARIA program? What is it? What does that acronym mean? We have so many acronyms here at Michigan. Any cool thing has to have a good acronym. So, but what does it stand for and how does the program work?

Clare Croft:

Yeah, thanks, Mark. So ARIA is a good acronym. At least it like has a has a reference. And I think there's actually something interesting in the acronym, which stands for Art, Research, Incubation, and Acceleration. And thinking about the way the acronym ARIA sort of suggests how sound moves and sort of and moves all over into bigger and bigger spaces. And I think in some ways that's one way I think about ARIA, which is a program that sponsors faculty research in arts research and creative practice, which are of course overlapping spheres. And ARIA is really meant to give faculty an opportunity to deepen their work. The grants range from $25,000 to $50,000, which is a pretty good chunk of money to really From artists for sure.

Mark Clague:

We're not used to the big sums like that.

Clare Croft:

Yeah, absolutely. And so to have sort of this chunk of money to take your practice to a deeper and more expansive place. And it's been exciting too, as I've directed ARIA for the last two years to learn about the incredible range and depth of our faculty work in the arts. And that's part of why we're having this showcase is for those of us who've served on the peer review panels for ARIA or been part of developing and running the program, we've gotten to learn about the wide expanse of work across the university. And the showcase will give us an opportunity to show that work to a wider audience and get to learn about it as well as getting to recognize the 29 projects that have been funded through ARIA thus far. And I'm really excited that Anne has agreed to be one of the featured uh artists in our uh conversation and show-off of all this great work on Thursday, October 23rd at 4 p.m. in the union. So yeah. That's great.

Mark Clague:

When I think of an ARIA, you know, there's that's usually like the showstopper in an opera when you know a wonderful singer comes out and it's it's sometimes virtuosic, but often it's it's that sort of heartfelt moment when you're reflecting on the life story of the character or some kind of critical thing about their identity that then becomes the the the sort of dramatic crux of the show or of the narrative. So, Ann, for you're one of the recipients of an ARIA award. And can you tell us about your project Tethered that'll be featured on October 23rd and maybe a little preview of of what that's about?

Anne Mondro:

Aaron Powell Sure, I'm happy to, and and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Um, Tethered is a series of work that uh sculptural work that is created in response to my experience as a caregiver and care recipient. I um went through uh cancer and I was a uh new mother and this all the emotions that came with having this diagnosis and and wanting to care for my child, but really having to care for myself.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, you're talking about being pulled in two directions.

Anne Mondro:

Yes, yeah, and there was, as you can imagine, moments of joy and um moments of intense fear in that journey. And tethered is um through the making of Tethered, I was um really able to dive deep into um processing those emotions and experiences. Um and the work itself is crocheted wire sculptures that are made of silver and um gold-plated wire. And the forms are reminiscent of those found within our bodies, lungs, and hearts, and even looking at some bone structures and lymph nodes. And I'm pairing these forms together in different configurations and really wanting to create these objects of wonder out of this experience I've been through.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, well, I've I've seen s similar works, but also the pictures online from Tethered, and they they ri they're really intimate. I mean, and complex. Like they draw you in trying to see both the detail of this wire that's been woven together in this sort of remarkable way. You know, you're not used to seeing wire look like it's string, basically, right? Or yarn. Um can you talk a little bit about the process? Like how do you get wire to behave this way?

Anne Mondro:

Um I have been crocheting with wire for many years. I was um when I was an undergrad student, um I picked up a book on textile techniques. And my mom actually taught me crochet in yarn. Oh wow.

Mark Clague:

Well so many, so many students these days I see are using, you know, are knitting and doing other things with crochets.

Anne Mondro:

Yes, yeah. So um so I started to put those two together. And um and I just realized that, oh, I can generate form um that is both light and airy, but also dense at the same time. And um And for me, I I crochet in the round, so I never make anything flat and then then bend it up. So I don't know, it's just it's become a very natural process for me. I I study um images, I study anatomical models, and then I just start going with it. And it it just it's just um I'm able to um perfect that stitch just out of practice and patience and and understand form um just because I've been working with it so long and I feel uh that the material is able to do what I want it to do at this point. I want it to be complex and I want it to um provoke the sense of awe through the materiality of the work in addition to the form.

Mark Clague:

And I would the ones of that I've seen in person are like, you know, a foot eighteen inches around-ish, maybe the size of a basketball, uh more or less. How long does it take to make one?

Anne Mondro:

Yeah, um it varies. Um it varies on the time of year if I'm um teaching and have my my full workload, the work goes slower and it'll take um like three or four months to make a piece. Oh wow. Yeah, it's it's slow moving. A lot of times I will start a piece and then stop it and let it rest for a while, and then I'll I'll start another piece and then I come back to the work. And then and then through working on that next piece and problem solving that next piece, I generate the idea for that first piece and I go back to it and complete it. So so I do tend to work. They do. They always speak to each other. Yeah.

Mark Clague:

Interesting. Well, you know, the Arts Initiative just launched um in collaboration with some of our partners across campus, Wolverine Wellness, University Health and Counseling, a program we're calling Arts RX, which is all about, you know, sort of mental health and the way in which arts practice can sort of help us just process the world and process our relationship to it, um, connect with other people. And it seems like your work is, you know, speaks to a similar space. I mean, both for you personally, but the idea of tethered of of like joining things together, of the fact that that we are dependent upon one another and interdependent, that there is that care, but we also need to receive care. You know, that these these themes of like just how vital art is to our community at a time when notions of community are increasingly fractured, right? The the algorithms of Google are putting us in our little boxes and telling us the things that we expect to see that we're we're used to seeing. They're not giving us contrasting views, they're not necessarily connecting us with everyone. Um so is does that resonate with you and in the messages you're hoping people take away from these works?

Anne Mondro:

Oh, definitely. I think for me the um the making process in and of itself has been one that has been um appealing for me. So for for the individual art um you know, art that can um improve your well-being and health. Um it's also for me has been a way to um not only find moments of uh peace or contentment, but also to come to terms and make meaning from my experience and my story. And um I think that uh uh ability to make meaning in various ways is is then in then sharing that with others, you're sharing stories, you're building connections through the story. Um one thing with my work, I've been able to um present it at a few events, and um some of the feedback I received is that um it's very vulnerable. And I I didn't intentionally go out to make this vulnerable series, but I realized like, oh yeah, this is about vulnerability, and that's something that really resonates in with people and with the community, and art can do that.

Mark Clague:

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, first of all, the the work is beautiful and the this the sort of motivation behind it is really beautiful. But I can sort of see that. I mean, I think the pieces I've seen have usually been in a box of some sort, you know, which in a way brings out the fragility of the work, right? I mean, this this work could be could be crushed, right? And it wouldn't it wouldn't just go back the way it was, right? I mean it's very in some ways it's very sturdy. I mean, you know, it it'll last a long time, I presume, being made out of wire. It doesn't degrade in the same way that that yarn would or otherwise.

Anne Mondro:

It has that duality, too.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, yeah. But it but it's also it needs to be cared for as well, right? So that's that's fascinating how the work sort of its own life tends to carry those themes forward. Trevor Burrus Claire, you know, it may surprise some of our listeners to think about arts as research. I mean, we're at a research one institution, the University of Michigan, we're a research-driven institution, we're creating new knowledge, trying to make the world a better place. Um, but is art research? I mean, I I never I say that provocatively because I know your answer is yes, emphatically. But can you talk a little bit about why what art research is, what creative practice is, um, why that term is important, and what what this means within the context of a place like the University of Michigan?

Clare Croft:

Yeah, I think there's a bunch of layers to that question, and some of them bump up against each other in kind of interesting ways. I think one is we often associate research with the ideas and things that happen in schools, and we haven't done a good enough job of integrating art into education. So I think that's partially why sometimes people are like, art is research. I don't understand how that happens. Yeah. So just thinking about the arts happening in educational settings, I think is is part of the challenge that sometimes bumps.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, and that's a big theme for us, right? That that art and creativity and innovation are necessary for for problem solving in any field.

Clare Croft:

Yeah. And that the how we think about research always involves creativity and systematicity. Um, things you want to repeat and get really good at. I'm guessing, you know, that you have really perfected techniques for doing this weaving that, and they're techniques that you probably learned from others, as you talked about with your mom, but also have developed your own, which I think is a great uh way to think about how research is in the arts is both drawing on, being creative, and learning how to be systematic to repeat something to get you to a particular end. The other way I love thinking about arts as research is artists engage with the world and ask questions about it, and then they move through those questions and address them in a variety of ways through their art practice, through their creative practice. I also think about arts as research in terms of when you take on a question, and you know, if you're taking if you're a scientist working in the scientific method, which we all learn about in seventh grade, when we probably should also be learning about artistic methods that might let us explore the world, um that you take up a question in the arts and the question actually transforms. We really start to come up with there's a maybe an idea or two that come together and make a new idea. And that's part of where I think Anne's work is such a great example of that, in the sense that when I look at your sculptures, you can both recognize some of the, I'll say, I guess, inspirations for it, you know. Like I'm thinking about one sculpture of yours where I look at it and I'm like, oh, that's a heart, you know, like I know I recognize the thing. But at the same time, it's representing something, the world, it's also moving beyond the thing it's represented, which, you know, maybe some people would call abstraction. I might call making new knowledge, you know, that, and I think it's really important. And the longer I've been in this job and gotten to learn about my colleagues' work, funded through ARIA, really understanding that arts, research, and creative practice are where transformational knowledge happens. Something new is produced, and it feels increasingly important to me that we think about how we develop new ideas. For instance, in Ann's work, new ideas about how we think about caregiving. You know, the fact that you're really understanding caregiving as this complex web that becomes materialized through the sculpture feels feels like a real gift. When sometimes we think about sort of the caregiver role and one specific person for whom they're given care, and it can really sort of focus on that one dyad. But understanding caregiving is really complex, and I think anyone who's moved through childcare, elder care, the hospital system knows the complexity of all those wires pulling you in different directions. And to have that web really represented in this both fragile and strong formation just makes me even rethink things in my own life where I've had experiences of caregiving. So yeah, I think the transformational piece and the fact that we can actually engage with the idea outside ourselves are just two of the many ways that arts research and creative practice is a way to make new knowledge.

Mark Clague:

Well, that's that's really great description. Um can you talk about some of the other work that'll be featured at the showcase on the 23rd?

Clare Croft:

Sure, I'm happy to. Um, it's a real range. So Anne will be there talking about her sculptural work. Benedict Boucheron, who is faculty in the Department of African American and Africanist Studies, will be sharing a work that she's doing in collaboration with an artist based in Detroit, Brendan Drake, who they are thinking about how to manipulate photography and create collages that started with uh photography from sort of American nostalgia, mundane photographs that are part of a collection that's based in Paris called the Anonymous Archive. And they are using those initial photographs from now 50 plus years ago and reformulating them, taking objects that were featured in those photographs and placing them in context that helped might help us think about uh Afrofuturism and black futures in the US. So, sort of moving from a kind of nostalgic image of Americana into uh different ways of understanding blackness in the US. And it's a really interesting collaboration between a theorist who's thinking about visual ways of expressing uh national identity in this case uh with uh a young artist based in Detroit.

Mark Clague:

Well also titled The Heirloom Project.

Clare Croft:

The Heirloom Project, yes, thanks, Mark. And um then Tian Ying and her work with Wes McGee, so with the intersection of architecture and engineering, and they'll be showcasing um this incredibly beautiful sculpture that is made from a sort of form of ceramic brick that they've developed. And the interesting thing is the sculpture is uh will eventually be in a public park in Henderson, Nevada, and will be both a sculpture and actually a water management system. And I'm happy to say that if you come to the showcase, we will have the prototype of the sculpture there in the in the union with us, and you can actually see how water moves through it. And it and this was an example of one. I was actually able to see it for the first time yesterday. You know, I read the application, I know this is an interesting and important project, but actually encountering the object itself. It didn't completely change the way I thought about the project, but when you're like, oh, this is even cooler than I knew. And then our final presentation will be from Lynn Shankl, who's an assistant professor in the musical theater department, who is developing a new musical, and we'll get to hear uh some songs and acting from the performance, which just had its Broadway workshop in May.

Mark Clague:

And so Perpetual Sunshine and the Ghost Girls.

Clare Croft:

Exactly.

Mark Clague:

Project about the Radium girls, the women who put radioactive material on watches and then actually ended up getting injured by that and really created sort of workplace protections in the United States. So it's a very cool project. We have another creative coherence episode on that project. So I everybody should check that one out, too. Um I'm really excited about the hydroscopic envelope as well, because that so the idea is that the sculpture sort of it rains and it sort of absorbs the water, prevents flooding in a sense, right? Slows it down because it releases the the water then over time afterwards. Is that how it works?

Clare Croft:

That is my understanding. I am not an expert on how water works in the desert, but um that is part of it. And so, and part of why it's in Henderson is thinking about that particular landscape, which I think is also interesting to think about how art has different meanings depending on where you see it. And how, yes, it will serve this public function in researching how water is being absorbed in the desert or also not absorbed in the desert, um, but also encountering the sculptural work in a public park, in collaboration with the city as to so meeting local needs and the particular place that they're engaged in.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, and this seems so important. I mean, when we think about like Ann Arbor and the need for water management here, I mean, one of the things that climate change has done to Ann Arbor, if you talk to our city planners, is that we get a lot more rain than we used to.

Clare Croft:

Like, yes, my basement will uh Exactly.

Mark Clague:

So we have flooding in places that we didn't have flooding before. And so literally just slowing down the water allows the drains to take care of it, right? So it sounds like we need to adapt this here too.

Clare Croft:

Um, I will just add on, though, I think it's interesting as you say that that to note that all of these projects have to do with big concerns in our work.

Mark Clague:

Right, exactly.

Clare Croft:

Medical caregiving is a massive, massive social question in the US and elsewhere. How we deal with changes in rain and ecology, how we think about, frankly, safety in the in the workplace is actually what the new musical is about. And also how we can imagine uh a multiracial coalitional world, which is part of what the Hairloom Project is thinking about. So also just really understanding that art is in the world and attached to it and trying to take on some of the biggest questions of our moment.

Mark Clague:

And that's why we need research and research in the arts as well. So and for you, what is it meant to have the support of the ARIA grant? I mean, I know it's it's quite a process to win one, so congratulations. But um, you know, so I assume there's a practical part of just getting the funding, but then there's also the process and the support you get as a result.

Anne Mondro:

Aaron Powell Yeah, it was um um first off, it was just having the time and space to dive deep into the into this project. Um and and to really as as an important part of just applying for it was having to really sit and think about what I want to say and what is this work really about, and how do I want to visualize it? So the application in of in and of itself was um an opportunity to really define where I want to go with my work, and then having, of course, um the time to create it. And and for me, because my work does take so so long to make, um I need that space. I need to to sit, to reflect um and make in a way that isn't always um afforded to me um in with everything else going on in life. And um moving forward, I I mean Claire has been super and it's been so great. I love you you use the word to celebrate us. And boy, did that give me a boost of confidence, confidence in myself and in just um remembering the value of arts here at Michigan, but how we are contributing to society. It was it was a little boost for me, so thank you. And um into now that I've made this work, um, I'm applying to other initiatives um to um and really thinking about this next series. And and now that I created this work, I I have a direction for that next series, and I'm excited about it. And I'm excited about making and being part of um stamps in in Michigan that values the arts.

Mark Clague:

Aaron Powell Yeah, well that's what certainly what we're hoping. So the the funding for ARIA comes jointly from the Arts Initiative and from the Office for the Vice President of Research, and we each put in half basically to give away um a half million dollars a year to arts research and to really support that in our faculty. And it's so important, especially as you know, there are so many changes in arts funding from outside the university at the state level, um, you know, at the national level. So we we are hoping basically by supporting this work that we emphasize really the value of arts research, that we we give you a little bit of a launch, a boost up into that national and international notoriety that that your work certainly deserves, and then hopefully attract people to support that beyond the walls of the university and not only engage and see it to to host exhibits of your work, but then to provide funding from national things. So I know that's very much part of the design Claire has come up with. Um I wanted to ask you, Claire, to talk a little bit about your work. Um, another component of the program is Creativity Lab and sort of um reaching out to other parts of the university to do arts integrative research. Um if you can uh give us a little sense of what that's about, that'd be great.

Clare Croft:

Sure. So if ARIA is there to support folks who have got an idea that has been baking for a bit and is really ready for acceleration, as the the ARIA name offers. Creativity Lab is thinking about the other end of the creative process, the moment when you you're trying to take a nascent idea into a new project. And for the last two years, we've been working more with people in the arts who are in that stage who really wanted to take a week out of their summer to focus on how to develop a project. And we're shifting creativity lab a little bit this year to think about how do we build teams towards new projects. And so this year's Creativity Lab will focus on bringing together the excellent researchers in our arts faculty and the excellent researchers in our medical school to think about what might happen, what might be a novel process that leads to a novel outcome when arts and medicine faculty really work together to imagine a process. And so I'm really excited to see what could happen when someone like Ann is working alongside, I don't know, a vascular surgeon. And how what what's the kind of sculpture artwork that might be produced at that nexus of collaboration?

Mark Clague:

Mm-hmm. Well, thank you both for the work you're doing. Claire, you just you've done a brilliant job, I think, in putting our ARIA program together. And I appreciate the advocacy. A lot of it's about building those individual relationships that you do so well. And Anne, just your work is gorgeous. And thank you. Thank you so much for sharing it with us through that ARIA program and and at the showcase. I'm really excited. So we'll see you in a couple weeks.

Clare Croft:

Thank you. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Clague:

Creative Currents is a project of the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative. Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. Send your comments and suggestions via email to creativecurrents at umish.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Jessica Dinks and edited by Slypup Productions. Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, an alumnus of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative, please visit our website at arts.umish.edu. Thanks for listening and for being part of the Michigan Arts community that makes our campus so fabulous. So until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep your creative currents flowing.