CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Four sculpture students and the art department’s chair may have laid the academic pipeline for collaborative teaching between Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland.

During Jack Gron’s two-week visiting artist residency Sept. 8-23 in Poland, he and officials at the Academy of Fine Arts discussed possible international exchanges with faculty and students. Gron, who has experience in international teaching, led the team of students engaged in a series of workshops.

Accompanying Gron were master of fine arts students, Brian Przybyla, Leonel Monsivais, Bill Raney, and bachelor of fine arts student Eric Fuertes.

“There is considerable interest in establishing a bona fide cultural exchange for faculty and students in the visual arts from the United States and Poland,” Gron said. “They are quite excited at the prospect of experiencing the American culture and our rather young traditions in the visual arts. We are equally interested in their long and rich history of creating art in the European Atelier approach.”

Gron and his students presented lectures and conducted a series of hands-on workshops and demonstrations at the mold-making and bronze and iron casting symposium. While in Gdansk, Gron also delivered a lecture on his sculptural activities. Art faculty members and students from the Academies of Fine Arts in Krakow, Warsaw and Wroclaw, also attended the symposium.

“This is a life and career changing experience for these young professionals,” Gron said. “The opportunity to share their expertise while learning and experiencing new information first hand through cultural immersion proves to be a pivotal device for early career and confidence building.”

The sculpture group was invited as a result of Gron’s trip in April 2006 to Ironbridge, England, where he constructed a sculpture at the Museum of Steel Sculpture in Coalbrookdale, England. It was exhibited at the fifth International Conference on Cast Iron Art. His meeting with sculpture professor Jan Szczypka of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk led to discussion on a collaborative symposium with artists from the two countries.

Gron has taught internationally in Cortona, Italy, with the University of Georgia in summer 1987; Ironbridge, England, in 2001 and 2006; Krakow, Poland in 2000, and most recently, in Gdansk, Poland.