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I am a coach.  I am a facilitator.  I am a guide.  I am a mentor.  I am a friend.

 

I believe in the future my students will create.

 

You are a diamond.  You are a star.  You are a giant.  You are a trailblazer.  You are the sun.

 

I believe that everyone is creative and brilliant.  Everyone is important and everyone has ideas that can change the world.  By teaching foundational elements of form and design, and by exploring a variety of materials and mediums, I hope to encourage everyone in their ability to tell their own story.  I want them to feel the satisfaction of reaching mastery with technique.  With that new confidence, knowledge becomes less out-of-reach.

 

This space is a refuge.  This space is an oasis.  This space is a retreat.  This space is a shelter.  This space is a sanctuary.

 

My classroom space and my curriculum are ones of inclusion.  I want anybody to come into this space and feel welcome.  I meet students where they are in terms of cognitive development and life experience.  We are all on our own path in this art journey, but by being an enthusiastic guide for now, I can work with my students to confront challenges together without fear.  I aim to instill a sense of empathy and respect for others and I believe that art study/studio is one of the most applicable ways to do that. I am informed about all sorts of adaptive equipment and techniques and am excited to imagine ways for everyone to participate to their full potential, and I am grateful for the opportunity to work with all children.

 

My own art practice is based on the belief that there is something to learn with every mark.  I truly believe that art education is education for life, not just preparation for a career in art, or an easy elective.  Art dominates my whole life - whatever I do, I’m always an artist first.  I am very fascinated with process and I enjoy thinking about structure of all types. Surface structure, the structure of a plant, the structure of an idea, societal structure, and irregular/impossible structure are all themes that can be found in my work.

 

The world can be recreated.  The world can be transformed.  The world can be faceted.  The world can be altered.  The world can be friendly.

 

My hope is to help my students understand their own world and in that understanding realize ways to reorganize it.  I want them to feel like they are in charge of their own destiny, and not part of any system.  I want to motivate my students to feel the freedom and confidence to tackle social and ecological issues with their art making and to create a humane world in which they are proud to live.  By learning about the built environment and their place in it, I hope to encourage them to feel like true stewards of the earth, and of their fellow humans.  

 

I aspire for my students to have a “maker attitude”, and for that to be their first instinct when attacking a new problem of any sort. If there is a product they need that doesn’t exist, they can make it. Art is one of the few truly interdisciplinary subjects, and I plan to explore it with my students that way.  This allows learners to participate in creating sensible solutions for their own specific obstacles, and they can own that participation. When you believe you can solve problems in your own sphere, you will believe that you can brave the bigger, more global ones.

 

We are a team.  We are a crew.  We are a squad.  We are a club.  We are a family.

 

We learn together.  All of us are newborn, like a baby at times, but especially when our knowledge has been reconstructed as a result of an aesthetic experience.  Creating art does this.  Critically looking at art does this.  We will do these things together.

 

“A work of art, no matter how old and classic is actually, not just potentially, a work of art only when it lives in some individualized experience.  As a piece of parchment, of marble, of canvas, it remains (subject to the ravages of time) self-identical throughout the ages.  But as a work of art, it is recreated every time it is esthetically experienced.” (Dewey, p. 113)

 

Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group.