"Art Educators Reflect and Practice" exhibit

Yesterday I helped hang an exhibit of my fellow student teachers' artwork. At the end of our internship course last semester we had a final project which involved visiting the Narcissus in the Studio exhibit at PAFA, filtering out some themes within the show, creating our own work of art in response to one of the themes, and designing a lesson plan based off of our own artwork. Our professor was quite pleased with the resulting range of work and decided we should show it off. The art history and art ed classes are held down in a bright-white and fluorescent-lit basement at Tyler. The hall leading to the classrooms is covered in homosote, but it's very rarely used to display anything.

 Here  are some of my favorites:

Ben Dasher's hitchhiker drawing- lots of mark-making



Lisa Noce's Self-portrait Pieta in acrylics on unstretched canvas



repetitive Lithograph- very Ida Applebroog

Sorry, need to find the names on these two again.

recurring dream landscape watercolors sewn together

Kristen Eberly's burnt book spines and shell encrustations

Gay-Hong Hua's teacup animal caddy

Alyssa Lombardi's beach nostalgia with digital transfer, drawing, and tissue

My daughter's jeans patchwork

 The patchwork jeans were my contribution. They are a pair that my daughter had outgrown. I found lots of fabrics that she had worn throughout her childhood and stitched them in a progression representing growth and change.

detail of my daughter's reproduced cat drawing

 I reproduced one of her drawings in thread and included her zodiac sign. The jeans are completely stitched through, rendering them an unwearable object and an artifact to preserve my own nostalgia.

detail of my daughter's zodiac

The title of the show was chosen to let everyone know that these fine works were made by art educators (often looked down upon in the art school setting). "Reflect" refers to both the Narcissus reference and the inspiration of the project. "Practice" signifies that these art educators ARE practicing artists. There's also the term "reflective practice" which refers to the teacher's role in educating also being one of critical thought, revision, and learning for ongoing improvement.