Associate Professor of printmaking Ernest Milsted was honored at the Fall 2017 convocation with the President’s Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity. He is distinguished by his passion for art and teaching.
Larshell Green/The Lion’s Roar
 

Associate Professor of printmaking Ernest Milsted recently received the President’s Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity at the faculty convocation.

Although Milsted’s talents in printmaking were confirmed on Friday, Aug. 11 at the annual faculty and staff awards ceremony, his passion as a multi-talented artist was confirmed over a decade ago.

“I’m an artist,” said Milsted. “The methodologies of printmaking seem to make sense to me when it comes to being creative.”

However, Milsted remains inspired by his award and feels that he is in good company with past honorees and colleagues. 

Milsted explained, “When you go back and look at some of the past winners of this award, four other professors in my department won the award. Dale Newkirk, our current department head, has won the award.  I really look up to them for what they have accomplished in their careers, and that award is quite an honor. It feels good to get acknowledged for what you do and to receive support from the university. My full-time job is that I’m a teacher here, but also my full-time job as an artist is to make work and get that work out and so that kind of support really helps.”

Newkirk talked about his colleague Milsted.

“Ernie Milsted is an energetic teacher who is committed to teaching students the art of printmaking and art practices in general,” said Newkirk. “Under his leadership, the printmaking studio attracts some of our best students. The studio work that he is currently involved in is important in that it explores issues surrounding coastal erosion and land loss in southern Louisiana through powerful visual imagery.” 

Milsted is known for using photography and printmaking pieces to inform audiences about coastal erosion and climate change in south Louisiana. The Houma, Louisiana native was inspired after he took trips with university Ceramics Instructor Dennis Sipiorski and Nicholls State University biologist Dr. Gary LaFleur Jr.

“They were teaching a course at the Louisiana University Marine Consortium that was a combination of science and art,” said Milsted. “I had visited these places as a kid. I grew up in Houma, which is just north of the islands. I was amazed at how different these places were and how much the landscape had changed.”

In his 11th year at the university, Milsted remains an educator in all of the printmaking courses at the university that span across a variety of concentrations such as etching, screen printing, photography, relief printing and digital printing. 

Milsted found his inspiration for printmaking while attending Nicholls as a general studies major.

During his last semester at Nicholls, Milsted gained an interest in becoming a film director and made plans to attend the University of New Orleans to study film. After developing a relationship with former Nicholls photography instructor Sipiorski, Milsted decided to take more photography courses and study printmaking. 

“I had taken all of the photography classes that I could take, and I sort of hit a dead end with my photos,” said Milsted. “I was like, ‘I can make black and white photos, now what?’”

Inspired by his newly acquired skill, Milsted began researching the work of artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who found success as photographers and printmakers in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

“Printmaking was sort of a way that I could use those photos to reprint them, layer them on top of each other, and it opened me up to another world of art that I hadn’t seen before,” said Milsted. “I fell in love with that sort of work and finished up at Nicholls in 2002 with an undergraduate degree in art.”

After graduating from Nicholls in 2002, Milsted attended graduate school at the University of Notre Dame and earned a master’s degree in fine arts. 

After completing studies in printmaking, a visit to the local area revealed a job opportunity at the university following Hurricane Katrina. 

“There was a printmaking and a drawing class that I taught here when I first got here in 2006,” said Milsted. “They were doing a national search for a tenure track position, which meant not instructor, but assistant professor. In 2007, I got that job, and I started here in 2007 as an assistant professor of printmaking.”

After being promoted to associate professor in 2012, Milsted began to take new roles in the art department. 

“I am also the foundation’s coordinator,” said Milsted. “I see all of our students in the capacity of they do a sophomore review, which is a check on other foundation’s courses like drawing and design. I’m in charge of getting that together. I am also the lab technician. If something breaks in here, I’m the one that fixes it. It’s all specialized equipment, so I’m the printmaking guy at Southeastern.”

Despite his many roles in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Milsted is grateful that his role as an instructor allows him to teach constant lessons of creativity and passion. 

Madison Lane, a senior art major with concentrations in visual art and printmaking describes the impact that Milsted has made on her. 

“Ernie Milsted is the kind of teacher that you don’t want to disappoint,” said Lane. “He is so enthusiastic about art that it is contagious. It encourages his students to create extraordinary work.”

Milsted explains the practices that he hopes students take with them upon graduating.

“What I try to tell my students is that when they leave the motherly arms of the institution, they won’t have us there to tell them,” said Milsted. “Nobody’s going to care if they make this stuff or not make this stuff, so it’s really important that they develop a practice while they’re here and stay true to that practice because it’s very important to mankind.”

Milsted instills this way of thinking about the importance of art into his students. 

“Creativity is very important, and it’s very important for all of the students in the department to continue that artistic practice when they leave here even if they don’t get a job as an artist,” said Milsted. “They have to something that they want to do and make sure that they are thinking about it and working at it every day.”