MD / DJG is an intensive, hands-on program grounded in the belief that materials, experimentation, and problem-solving are not simply technical steps, but central to how meaning and artistic language take shape.

Rather than placing process and technique in service of ideas, the program treats them as active forces in the work itself. Participants are encouraged to work through uncertainty, test ideas through making, and let discovery shape direction. The goal is to support work that is both conceptually grounded and materially resolved—where thinking and making evolve together.

Daniel and Michael anchor the program through sustained, shared mentorship rooted in their own long-term practices. Drawing from their professional trajectories, they work closely with participants to examine how innovation develops through commitment to materials, constraints, and unresolved questions over time.

Core Mentorship Focus

Sessions with Daniel and Michael will focus on:

• How new materials and technical solutions emerge from specific conceptual needs

• The productive role of experimentation, failure, and revision

• Translating research, testing, and process into clear visual language

• Strengthening work through clarity, intention, and decision-making

Michael will also lead an in-depth conversation centered on the development of his Mirror Paintings, offering a concrete example of how collaboration, dialogue, and technical problem-solving shaped both the structure and meaning of the work. This session emphasizes not just outcomes, but the messy, generative process behind them.

Guest Faculty Engagement

Two guest mentors from the program’s core faculty will join for dedicated sessions, introducing additional voices, perspectives, and critical frameworks. These engagements expand the conversation beyond any single practice.

Guest mentors will:

• Offer direct, focused critiques of work in progress

• Share how their practices have evolved over time

• Engage in open discussions about contemporary practice, sustainability, and professional life

These sessions are designed to challenge assumptions, open new lines of inquiry, and help participants situate their work within broader artistic and professional contexts.

Studio Visit: Judy Pfaff

A central component of the program is an onsite visit to Judy Pfaff’s studio. This visit is not framed as a tour, but as an opportunity to learn through proximity to a living practice—observing how ideas, materials, and decisions unfold in real time.

Participants will explore:

• How material choices drive both form and meaning

• The relationship between process, scale, and spatial thinking

• How an artistic voice develops through sustained experimentation and risk

This visit reinforces the program’s emphasis on learning through observation, conversation, and direct engagement with working processes.

Structure and Outcomes

The program balances discussion, critique, making, and direct experience. Participants are expected to actively develop work throughout the program, using mentorship and guest input to test ideas, refine methods, and deepen conceptual frameworks.

Participants will leave with:

• Greater clarity around how and why they work with particular materials

• Stronger problem-solving strategies for future projects

• Work that is more focused, resolved, and ready to move beyond the studio

MD / DJG is designed for artists who want to grow their practice through sustained material engagement, critical dialogue, and long-term inquiry—artists committed to letting the work evolve through doing, not just thinking. 

The program will culminate in an exhibition based on selections presented to Michael, Daniel and our guest mentors.

Course Tuition: $2750.00
Payment Plans are available

Michael David is a Guggenheim Fellow, recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Yaddo and Edward Albee Fellow, Michael David has been exhibiting internationally since 1981. Exhibiting widely throughout the United States for 40 years, he has been the subject of much historical and curatorial acclaim. His work is included in many prominent private collections and the permanent public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Margulies Collection in Miami and the Edward Albee Foundation in Montauk NY, and was the subject of a one-person exhibition at Aspen Museum of Art. Over the last decade, David established the Fine Arts Workshop in Atlanta and the Yellow Chair Salon, working with artists on an immersive one-on-one basis, helping to develop their voice and professional practices, finding exhibition opportunities and taking their individual expressions to the next level. He has taught painting at Princeton, was head of the Graduate Painting Department at SCAD in Atlanta, and lectured and served as keynote speaker at many universities and art centers across the United States. Over the last eight years David has established, directed and curated two of the most successful galleries in Brooklyn: Life On Mars and M. David & Co.

Daniel John Gadd

Daniel John Gadd is an artist and educator whose work centers on material experimentation, process-driven inquiry, and the ways making itself generates meaning. His practice treats materials not as neutral tools but as active agents that shape form, language, and conceptual direction. Through sustained experimentation, uncertainty, and revision, his work investigates how physical processes can reveal structure, tension, and resolution within abstraction.

Gadd’s approach emphasizes problem-solving as a critical method, allowing discovery and failure to guide the evolution of the work. His studio practice is grounded in close looking, formal rigor, and an ongoing dialogue between intuition and intention.

In addition to his studio work, Gadd is deeply engaged in mentorship and arts education, developing intensive programs that prioritize hands-on experimentation, critical dialogue, and long-term artistic growth. His teaching philosophy foregrounds process as a site of learning and insists on the inseparability of material knowledge and conceptual clarity.

His most recent shows were mounted at M. David & CO. and John Davis Gallery and his work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic and Whitehot Magazine among others.He lives and works in the United States.