Learning is an art; and just like art, learning is driven by process. Understanding this fundamental part of learning art at the college level has helped me not only as an artist, but also as an instructor. Also like art, teaching requires passion. In order to become a great artist, there must be passion and love in what you do; I believe the same can be expected of great teachers. I teach because I find an overwhelming reward in being able to help nurture and facilitate creativity in the minds of new and emerging artists. I teach because I want to encourage the emotional, intellectual, and creative growth of my students. But most of all, I teach because I am truly passionate about art, and love being in a classroom, sharing that passion with young artists.
As an instructor of art at the college level, I strive to create an environment that encourages interactions between students. By building a classroom setting around consistent dialogue, critique, and cooperation, students learn to incorporate and reciprocate this interaction in the process of art making in the classroom and beyond. In a studio art setting, learning happens in very different ways that the standard classroom milieu. It is not only knowing, but understanding this learning situation that allows the instructor and the students to see eye to eye and get more out of the art making experience. When establishing the feel of the classroom, I strive very hard to encourage my students to see themselves as equals, and peers. I do my best to help them see me as a mentor, a sharer of knowledge and experience, but most of all, as a fellow artist. I share my successes and failures with them, so that they can see that growth is part of the artist experience, hence they learn to function as critical thinkers and creative individuals by making informed assignments about their work, and the work of their peers.
Through a combination of lectures, demonstrations, workshops, artist examples, and critique, I strive to make a classroom environment conducive to refined artistic thought and dialogue about the work that students are creating. I focus the students to think of everything as an experience: each assignment, exercise, or piece becoming part of his or her artistic growth. This helps to create a setting that is comfortable for the students, which encourages risk taking with their work. By evaluating their level of conceptual thinking, risk taking, technical knowledge, and critique participation, I am able to assess where the individuals students are when the class starts, and how to meet their needs and growth within the goals of the course.
Most importantly, it is my goal as an educator to help create self-aware, well rounded, and creative individuals and artists. Each student, no matter what their background or long term goals, can benefit from studio art education as a means to better articulate creative concepts, and see their world in a new aesthetically critical way.
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