For Mark Dixon, professor of art, his vocation goes beyond following a set of instructions. It’s a pathway for creation. From the way one walks to an unmolded block of clay, anything is an opportunity to portray the human experience — the source of art. 

Hailing from an art-focused family, it seems natural that Dixon would end up in his current career. 

“It was like the path of least resistance,” Dixon said. 

He came to Guilford, class of 1996, as an art major. During his time as a student, he was able to refine art’s role in the context of other fields. 

“I think art was a discipline that could see me. I felt unseen by some disciplines that I was really into … I did not feel like I belonged in science, even though I had a deep love for science,” Dixon said. “Bit by bit, I realized that I can just make art my version of science.”

His time at Guilford also coincided with his decision to join a rock n’ roll band. 

“It was completely extracurricular, but I learned so much about life in that band,” Dixon said. 

The contrast between his band and his art studio was stark. 

“In a performance space, there’s all this reciprocity, and it’s immediate,” he said, “so if the audience does something, performers respond. If the performers do something, the audience responds, and that’s like an engine that just keeps cycling, and it can be very powerful. Having had that experience in music made my studio feel a little bit lonely.”

Reaching out beyond current constraints is a common theme in Dixon’s work. He went to Carnegie Mellon for graduate school, propelled by a desire to keep creating. 

“I went to Carnegie Mellon on the notion that I needed to resolve this crisis that I was having,” he said. “I had this really strong art practice making sculptures, and I had this really strong music experience in the rock-and-roll band. And I was also like, goofing around and making sort of like machines and silly stuff and sound-making objects that I didn’t really consider my art.

“And as these things do, the side project kind of started taking more and more and more space,” he continued. “That’s when I thought, OK, I have a good reason to go to graduate school. I have this question to resolve, what to do with these fighting tendencies in my own creative practice.”

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Dixon looped back to Greensboro, and to the college where he first began. The role of David Newton, the associate professor of arts, swayed him to permanently return to Guilford. 

“At that time, I was really just putting my life together on odd jobs,” Dixon said. “I had taught a few classes at Guilford at that time, but when Newton got sick, he called me on a Sunday night and asked me if I could cover his classes for him while he healed. I started on Tuesday morning, and he did not heal. He had a really bad diagnosis, and he passed, and I’ve just been here ever since.”

Newton left a permanent mark at Guilford. While Dixon’s position wasn’t gained by wanted means, he used the situation to advance the field Newton was dedicated to.

“He was a real inspiration to me because he was so well-loved by his students,” Dixon said. “And one thing that’s true about him is that he was not loved because he was easy. He was very hard. He’s a very challenging professor.”

 Currently, Dixon uses his philosophy of art to inspire students to reach beyond their imposed limits. 

“I love that I teach in this discipline, and people roll their eyes and say, what can you do with that? Generally, I’ll say, what can’t you do?”