Creation of art can inform and augment any student’s education. The skills in critically thinking, craftsmanship, and composition students learn in the studio cannot be learned in a lecture hall. With these tools they can approach their education and their career from a unique view point. In my classes I emphasize exploration of inspiration and dedication to the crafting of well composed work.

                Most of my current students will not become artists; they pursue degrees in engineering, health care, the hard sciences and the humanities; and while studio art may not seem beneficial, it is my goal to teach my students to look at problems differently and find creative solutions. I teach brainstorming techniques early in my classes to show how a single idea can have many facets, and the intersectionality of problems. I require students to develop these skills by assigning increasingly complex projects prompts. I ask my students to look hard at themselves and the world around them, and teach them to ask questions that lead them to the roots of their ideas. By encouraging thorough exploration of an idea, feeling, or issue I give my students the tools to think deeply about complex problems and find solutions or conclusions laterally.

As technology becomes more ubiquitous and more integrated with our experience of the world making things with one’s hands have become skills of greater and greater rarity. Helping my students learn to think critically and creatively is important, but the answers they find cannot be communicated to their audience affectively if they do not have the requisite skills or familiarity with tools, process, and materials to convey their message. The benefits of the practice, patience, and dedication required to create a finely crafted object are reflected in much more than the object itself. The connection between maker, tool, and material require students to slow down and see the effects of their actions on their material.  I try to build their skillsets and familiarity with materials and processes progressively throughout a semester. As they gain knowledge and skill their materials change and processes become more complex. My students therefore gain an awareness of and sensitivity to the affects their manipulations of different tools have on different materials.

With each project in a semester I introduce my students to new material. From the time they begin sketching I ask them how they will incorporate the new material with the skills they have learned throughout the semester.  They are required to supplement their sketches with an explanation of their material and process decisions in a written proposal. During in-progress critiques the class has the opportunity to help one another evaluate their decisions and in some cases offer alternative directions that might be more successful. During critiques at the end of each project each student has the opportunity to get feedback from their peers on the success of their decisions, how they might improve, or a different approach they might use. After critique I ask my students to write a reflection on their compositional and conceptual successes and shortcomings, and their plans to improve the piece in the future.

                The choices I have made and the direction I have taken in my professional career were influenced by several dedicated educators and mentors.  As an educator and an artist I continued to be thrilled by the possibilities open to me. Each new group of students and each class I teach presents new and unique challenges, the solutions to which change and shape my evolution as a teacher and an artist. One of my proudest moments as an artist was when a mentor of mine said he considered me his colleague not his student.  I learned in that moment my students and colleagues would also be my teachers and collaborators. It is my hope to continue to learn and develop as an educator and an artist, and continue to open new paths of seeing, thinking, and making for my students and colleagues as my mentors have for me.