teaching.

I embrace a wide-ranging, conceptually-based, and interdisciplinary approach to art making, informed by sources from the worlds of art and cultural criticism and beyond, to build an understanding of how art can function in the world. In the studio or classroom, students are charged to clearly articulate their explorations through visual media and to develop an understanding of—and ability to—participate effectively in critical discussion through both an art historical and theoretical lens. I challenge students to think expansively about art and about themselves as creators of culture, and to consider strategies of engagement for artists in the broadest terms possible. In the studio I encourage experimentation and technical rigor, and in lectures expose students to both a depth of creative practice by individual artists and a breadth of art practices, including those who are questioning traditional approaches to the practice of art.

I place a strong emphasis on the critique process as a crucial learning tool. Drawing on the work of dancer Liz Lerman, artist and professor Mariah Doren, and theorist Terry Barrett, I use a discussion model which is transparent and inclusive. This critique process makes clear the construction of meaning, building from image content to the artist’s formal choices to the viewer’s associations, from the personal and idiosyncratic, to those which draw on the interpretive lenses outlined in postmodern critical theory.

The most gratifying feedback I have ever gotten from a student came after a sculpture critique:

…I'm really impressed with your secret decoder ring (as Daniel Martinez puts it)—yer [sic] ability to look at all types of things and see what's going on and then to let yer [sic] opinions take back seat to your desire to really help and clarify things for the student…it's a good thing.

Contemporary art is an ongoing conversation among artists and their audiences—a series of questions posed and answers sought. I want the students in my classes to understand the dialogue and be engaged by it. After working with me students will both be better able to articulate their conceptual concerns and approach work they haven't seen before with a vocabulary to think about it and a context within which to place it.

» Statement of Teaching Philosophy (PDF).