Personal Art Education History:
Reflecting on one’s career pursuit and considering the factors that have shaped and informed one’s beliefs is a valuable task; even more so when that career is education. As an educator, to know yourself, your beliefs and to reflect on your experiences is an essential part of knowing the content and being conscious of the delivery method. What you deem worthy information to pass along to future generations and how you express that value, is largely shaped by you own learning process; both good and bad. Reflecting on my experience of becoming an artists and an educator I realized that I have greatly benefited from teachers who have invested their time and energy into passing along their philosophies not only about art, but life, relationships, and spirituality. To me art brings those realms together and I have been lucky to encounter educators who have informed and nurtured the connection of those principles.
My earliest experiences with art came from my family. Both my parents grew up on farms in Kansas and learned the value of hard work. Growing up my parents where always working on creative projects; my mom’s sewing, my dad’s woodworking, or the collaborative kitchen remodel (my mom’s design and my dad’s building). Making something by hand was my primary mode of entertainment and a way to make my parents proud of me. I remember accompanying my mom to her oil painting class as young child. She set me up with a canvas and oil paints, not a box of crayons and recycled paper. I was so proud of my brightly colored, pallet knife abstract painting of a waterfall. It hung in our hallway for years!
I would say art was in my blood and has continued to be an important pastime, sense of identity, and self-expression. I was equally passionate about science and art and I felt really torn in college when I had to choose a major. A college professor helped me realize that I could make art about science and the process of observation and making things visual is really an experimental and exploratory process. Around the same time I fell in love with Art History because finally I could see how history unfolded and how cultures influenced one another. My teachers were all great storytellers and memorizing the symbolism, titles, artists, and dates came naturally my visual memory.
I studied abroad for my senior year of college at Lorenzo d’ Medici Art Institute of Florence in Italy. It was the first of what became many departures to Italy. I stayed for a year and traveled as much as I could. Being abroad was a time to reinvent myself, make new relationships, challenge myself artistically, and experience culture. In Italy I met my most important artistic mentors, Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky. I had Rose for mixed-media sculpture, contemporary art history, and Florence sketchbook. Working with found objects reinforced my natural creativity to work with what I had. This freedom to use the everyday objects became historically relevant when I learned more about contemporary art history. Rose’s enigmatic yet strict teaching style revealed to me the mystery of art as a healing and transformative process. I have since worked with Rosenclaire (their collaborative partnership) in several anti-institutional “Workshops” that convene in a variety of places like New York, Florence, Santa Ana and San Francisco. The workshops are about what happens creatively and artistically when we all come together. Collaboration and participation are guiding principles that have greatly impacted my teaching methods. I try to nurture relationships within my classroom, and recognize my students’ potential and their specific roles in the class environment.
Rosenclaire have modeled for me how education can become art. I used to think that it was an artistic sacrifice to become a teacher rather than a practicing artist. They have shown me how shaping young artists and art educators with the foundation and history of art is really about passing on a legacy of philosophy, a way of seeing the world and acting within it.
The last, ongoing impact on my artistic and art educational development has been my relationship with God and his Church. My faith in Jesus is really important to me, but one that I struggle to integrate with my career as a public high school educator. Much of what I believe is true about art is actually a physical analogy or parallel to what I believe about the Creator. Vince and Sue Palacios are amongst the few creative and godly mentors in my life. They helped me to consider the creative process as a reflection of God’s creation. My acts of creative transformation can be a reflection of God’s grace and mercy, taking something that is imperfect and has been rejected and giving it value is a principle I repeatedly try to express in my artistic expressions and within my classroom.
My earliest experiences with art came from my family. Both my parents grew up on farms in Kansas and learned the value of hard work. Growing up my parents where always working on creative projects; my mom’s sewing, my dad’s woodworking, or the collaborative kitchen remodel (my mom’s design and my dad’s building). Making something by hand was my primary mode of entertainment and a way to make my parents proud of me. I remember accompanying my mom to her oil painting class as young child. She set me up with a canvas and oil paints, not a box of crayons and recycled paper. I was so proud of my brightly colored, pallet knife abstract painting of a waterfall. It hung in our hallway for years!
I would say art was in my blood and has continued to be an important pastime, sense of identity, and self-expression. I was equally passionate about science and art and I felt really torn in college when I had to choose a major. A college professor helped me realize that I could make art about science and the process of observation and making things visual is really an experimental and exploratory process. Around the same time I fell in love with Art History because finally I could see how history unfolded and how cultures influenced one another. My teachers were all great storytellers and memorizing the symbolism, titles, artists, and dates came naturally my visual memory.
I studied abroad for my senior year of college at Lorenzo d’ Medici Art Institute of Florence in Italy. It was the first of what became many departures to Italy. I stayed for a year and traveled as much as I could. Being abroad was a time to reinvent myself, make new relationships, challenge myself artistically, and experience culture. In Italy I met my most important artistic mentors, Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky. I had Rose for mixed-media sculpture, contemporary art history, and Florence sketchbook. Working with found objects reinforced my natural creativity to work with what I had. This freedom to use the everyday objects became historically relevant when I learned more about contemporary art history. Rose’s enigmatic yet strict teaching style revealed to me the mystery of art as a healing and transformative process. I have since worked with Rosenclaire (their collaborative partnership) in several anti-institutional “Workshops” that convene in a variety of places like New York, Florence, Santa Ana and San Francisco. The workshops are about what happens creatively and artistically when we all come together. Collaboration and participation are guiding principles that have greatly impacted my teaching methods. I try to nurture relationships within my classroom, and recognize my students’ potential and their specific roles in the class environment.
Rosenclaire have modeled for me how education can become art. I used to think that it was an artistic sacrifice to become a teacher rather than a practicing artist. They have shown me how shaping young artists and art educators with the foundation and history of art is really about passing on a legacy of philosophy, a way of seeing the world and acting within it.
The last, ongoing impact on my artistic and art educational development has been my relationship with God and his Church. My faith in Jesus is really important to me, but one that I struggle to integrate with my career as a public high school educator. Much of what I believe is true about art is actually a physical analogy or parallel to what I believe about the Creator. Vince and Sue Palacios are amongst the few creative and godly mentors in my life. They helped me to consider the creative process as a reflection of God’s creation. My acts of creative transformation can be a reflection of God’s grace and mercy, taking something that is imperfect and has been rejected and giving it value is a principle I repeatedly try to express in my artistic expressions and within my classroom.