Nicole Gnezda
July 25th
The purpose of my career was to be there for students, for them to study and make artwork that helped them understand their own and others’ lives. My career began as an art teacher in Worthington, Ohio in the early 1970s. I taught art at a high school building for just ninth graders, for six years; in the middle was a year of maternity leave. It was a small school and the teachers knew all the students and cared about the kids and how we taught them. My husband was an experienced teacher at the same school who helped mentor me and support my rather independent style of teaching. When I had two children, in 1980, I quit teaching to be home with them. Also because my now part-time salary was very low and childcare was difficult to find.
A professional portrait of Nicole Gnezda and one of her poster prints which can be purchased on her website: compassion, creativity, and teaching
In 1976, while still teaching, I had decided to get my Masters degree from Ohio State University in Art Education. Right before I started my first class I discovered I was pregnant with my first child. In 1981, I graduated a month after my third child was born. At the graduation ceremony I had a military escort help me on the stage because I had just had a Cesarean section. My memory of parenting, teaching, and being a grad student is that it was a blob of interconnected activity in a “however you can get though it kind of way.”
Within a couple of months after graduation, I was asked to teach a course at The Ohio State University College of Dentistry. This lasted, off and on, for several years. I taught “Perceptual Drawing Skills” to dental students based on (2001) The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, to offer a different approach to spatial skill development for students needing extra help. In addition, I later taught a series of dental aesthetics classes, as the Dean felt most of the dental students were white male and European. He wanted a multicultural curricular approach to help students become more aware of the aesthetics of the face. These were innovative courses that a couple of special people thought up and I designed and piloted. However, the College of Dentistry eventually lost funding for these ancillary classes and my time there was terminated.
Nicole Gnezda’s 2005 book Teaching Difficult Students: Blue Jays in the Classroom
One year, I taught pre-school. This experience helped me develop the humane disciplinary approaches that I used with future students and formed the basis of my (2005) book Teaching Difficult Students: Blue Jays in the Classroom. Following this experience (because of low wages), I went back to public school and taught middle school part-time. In this middle school I was unhappy with how my colleagues treated each other. I defended a student during a team conference and also called Children’s Services over a child who was in danger of sexual abuse and I got in trouble for that.
A portrait of Nicole Gnezda early in her teaching career from 1973.
Then I got hired to teach at a really fine public high school. I taught at this school but was laid off at the end of the first year - even though I was told I was “a dream.” The kids wrote a petition with 100 signatures to try to keep me from being let go. I was hired back the next year, having to travel between 2 elementary schools, teach 2 high school classes and work on the yearbook. Then I was laid off again. Replaced (very) part-time by a male swimming coach.
It was traumatic for me to be out of work, so I went through the phonebook, calling every place in town that was a school. I was hired part-time at another suburban district to teach at two “magnet schools.” In this district, art was regarded as providing planning time for classroom teachers. There was a comment made by a teacher that “I wish they would do more cute projects in the art class.” I was doing intercultural projects that pushed students to consider cultures and heritage and projects that encouraged students to think creatively. After two years I was increased to full time by teaching at the two elementary schools and a high school. I had a half an hour to commute from one elementary school to the high school, eat lunch, and do all my planning. The next year they changed my assignment to two new elementaries and no high school – my forte. I went to the Personnel Director to talk to him about staying at the high school. He wouldn’t even talk to me about it and told me to leave the building. Then the next year they decided to change all the art teacher assignments again, shortening our classes to 35 minutes, no time between classes, and some “art on a cart.” I decided that I couldn’t teach that way. I gave up a full-time salary and tenure to start over somewhere else.
Nicole Gnezda featured in NEAE Today in 2005.
I went back to my original district for the opportunity to work somewhere that would support my teaching and pedagogy. After two years I became Department Chair and had a very supportive and student-centered principal. I used to say I was “teaching in Heaven.” But he stepped down and was replaced with a female principal, whom some consider a sociopath. For instance, she harassed a teacher (who had a Ph.D.) to the point that the teacher consulted with an attorney and almost filed a civil rights case. Another female teacher pursuing a Ph.D. left in the middle of the year because of harassment.
This principal tried to force me to leave the school, maybe because I was outspoken and a student advocate. I was also studying for my doctorate at this point. No one would stand up for me in the upper administration. Eventually the principal left and I stayed there for the rest of fourteen years. I decided to retire after another principal screamed at me. Part of my unhappiness on the job may have had to do with being a woman. I am five foot two and have felt that if I was a big man people would have listened to what I had to say. Some colleagues could be very dismissive. Some male staff members would interrupt and cut me off or hardly speak to me in the halls. I perceive this has to do with being a little woman. Maybe I was too forceful or loud or strong or outspoken. I think that if I had kept my month shut I would have had less trouble. But then I wouldn’t have been fulfilled in my need to try to make schools kinder places for students.
As an educator I tried to help kids. I thought I was at least planting seeds so that when these kids were independent adults they could make their lives better. The personal connection with my students was the reward of my teaching. I loved my students, in a teacher way, and know that sometimes I changed lives. My students did quality artwork and we talked at high levels.
In my last district there is a lot of support for the arts – all the elementary schools have self-contained art rooms and certified art teachers. Art classes are built into the curriculum. Yet, still there is not an understanding of the value and potential of the arts. I have sensed a power struggle between the Social Studies or Science Departments and the Art Department, which seemed to be considered not as academically important. Even amongst my colleagues, I often felt I needed to prove myself. Finally I gave up trying and just did my best with students and endured until I could retire.
It was always a disappointment that the district would not hire specialists or experts from within their own schools and would instead hire more well known individuals from outside the district for thousands of dollars. I thought that having twenty-five years or more of experience and a Ph.D. [from Ohio State University (2001)] in Creativity & Education would give me some credibility for my ideas but many administrators and colleagues seemed kind of put-off by it.
Nicole Gnezda in 2009.
Throughout my career I was able to start programs that were designed to use art to help students with the challenges in their lives. I created a program for behavior prevention through the arts. I was an “Expressive Arts Specialist” who met with students in In-School Suspension. I adapted an art therapy model to help students talk about and identify underlying causes of their behavior problems. This program lasted for a semester and then the superintendent cut the funding. I created and supervised an after-school group called “Creative Mondays” that used art to open conversations with kids about the issues in their personal lives and in the world.
Much of my philosophy of teaching comes from the partnership I shared with my late husband Gary Alan Smith who was an extraordinary coach and changed kids lives through his teaching. He died at 53 and we received condolences from all over the world from former students telling us how much he had impacted and changed their lives. Part of my relationship with him was this mission to change schools and make them more humane. In the last chapter of Teaching Difficult Students I said I realized from Gary’s death how extraordinary a teacher’s reach is. It extends into the future and around the world. Gary and I shared a mission to make school better for young people.
Since I’ve retired I’ve been writing and have an article that just came out in the July 2009 issue of Art Education, entitled, “The Potential for Meaning in Student Art.” In addition, I’ve been volunteering at a facility that is part of the Homeless Families Foundation in Columbus. This school was set up by a woman who had lost three of her four children. I volunteer there and do art activities to help kids talk about their lives, similar to what I did in Creative Mondays and the In-School Suspension room. One project was to help kids see themselves as a gift to the world, draw it and put it in a gift box with a bow. This is a place were I feel appreciated.
A year ago I lost my 29 year old son in a car accident. His name is Tony Smith. Although he was not a certified teacher he ended up teaching kids with serious learning disabilities at two different schools and helped change the teaching and pedagogy at the Jemicy School, outside Baltimore. After he died, the school named their arts festival after my son and created a student reading room, also named after him. His short career demonstrates how important it is to care about students and teach to their needs. I have learned that there are schools whose focus is on students and that welcome new ideas. I wish I could have taught there. We need to teach teachers about non-traditional methods and the importance of their relationships with students.
I had originally planned to teach until I was seventy. But by the time I had my thirty years in I was glad to be done. I wish I could have ended my teaching career with a warm heart and great memories. It’s too bad that the profession tends to wring you out. I do remember my students lovingly and am in contact with a few. I kept all of my rosters.
Bibliography
Edwards B. (2001) The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. London: Harper Collins
Gnezda N. (2005) Teaching Difficult Students: Blue Jays in the Classroom. Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield Education.
Amy Brook Snider
September 3rd and September 4th 2009
It may be considered ironic that, as an art educator, I am interested in art that’s made by people who have not had an art education and are not professional artists. I am also drawn to the work of little known (at least in this country) women artists like Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) and Emily Carr (1871-1945). Salomon, died in Auschwitz and did a series of autobiographical paintings called, Life or Theater, and Carr, a painter who is well known in Canada and associated with their Group of Seven, lived on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and documented the now lost villages of indigenous peoples in a series of watercolor studies. She also wrote wonderful short novels.
A portrait of Amy Brook Snider and a poster for the conference entitled “Childhood”.
My contributions to the field are ephemeral: in the sense that there are few publications documenting my work. There have been, however, numerous conference presentations, panels, committees, a traveling exhibition with a catalogue, now out of print, mini-conferences, and the organization of national conferences—one on Studio Education and, more recently, one on Childhood.
In my courses at Pratt, I rely on texts by writers, anthropologists, scientists, psychologists, and others; at the moment, my interest lies in story, play, and collecting, as a form of research. As the former Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, I am obsessed with developing strategies for teaching a kind of clear and thoughtful writing to all my students. In my 29 years as Chair of the Art and Design Education Department at Pratt Institute, I have found a comfortable leadership style by building consensus through working with a team of faculty and students to guide me in the development and administration of our programs—I definitely lean toward a feminist approach.
Although I have been teaching (for the most part) since 1961, my pedagogy is constantly evolving. It includes:
- A spirit of collaboration that infuses both my teaching and administrative work.
- An interdisciplinary approach that enriches each subject.
- My decision not to give grades to my students for their weekly written responses to the course texts. Now, I write them each a critique and wait to grade until they understand what I am looking for and feel comfortable with writing.
- Learning that the most imaginative artwork comes from a fairly narrow set of limitations during my fifteen years as an art teacher in the NYC public schools. I became a collaborator with my students in the production of innovative projects.
- Beginning to figure out how to mediate between the needs of each individual student and my own values and principles.
- Applying pedagogical ideas and strategies to conference organization in the mini-conferences I designed or collaborated on at the NAEA, Style: Is it a Question of Gender in Art Education?, And the Walls Came Tumblin’ Down: A Celebration of Diversity, and The Conference as Ritual: The Sacred Journey of the Art Educator.
I find the question of my identity as a woman and art educator difficult to answer. In some ways, it changes with the individual I am with or the groups I relate to–be it with a friend, colleagues, students, or a researcher, Joanna, like you. Perhaps Walt Whitman said it best:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Another portrait of Amy and students engaging in her pedagogy.
Right now, I’m a mother, grandmother, sister, teacher, chairperson, home owner, gardener, collector, and book and movie lover. I enjoy having people for dinner and sitting around for hours, not with multitudes, but with a few good friends.
I have been discriminated against in my work as an art educator and a woman but cannot discuss the details in a public forum. As for my thinking about the field, I heard a talk by Dennis Fehr, the Executive Director of the National Education Taskforce, on September 25th and he suggested that the four groups who dominate our field at the moment—the followers of Lowenfeld, Social Theory, DBAE, and Visual Culture, should get together to shape Federal education policy. I like that idea. I am also proud that it was at my suggestion that the Women’s Caucus developed awards for art teachers as well as college professors.
I majored in Art (painting) at Queens College, with coursework in Comparative Literature and Anthropology and after a short break, got my masters in painting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. After many years of struggling with five research topics, I was awarded my PhD from New York University in 1995.
Laurel Lampela
Laurel Lampela, Pier In The Desert, 2005, digital photo, collage, ink jet print on Arches, 4 3/4 x 23 1/8 in.
September 5th
- What is your educational background and where did you complete your Ph.D.? If you have not completed your Ph.D. please provide information on your highest level of education.
B.S. Art Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975
MEd, Art Education, Wright State University, 1988
PhD, Art Education, The Ohio State University, 1990
Left, From Our Voices, 2003, book cover. Right, Laurel Lampela.
2. What are your current research interests and contributions to art education?
Since the early 1990s I have worked to compile information on historical and contemporary lesbian and gay artists and their works in order to make the information available to art teachers who chose to include it in their curricula.
This was a difficult research agenda to pursue at the time since very little had been written about lesbian and gay artists up to 1990 and I was aware that other scholars had been discouraged to undertake such studies since it could be a real threat to tenure, promotion, reputation, and personal safety (Harbeck, 1992).
Although, it was professionally risky for me to undertake my research agenda I had no other choice since I am a lesbian and did not want to be silenced. It has proved to be the right decision and I was not denied tenure or promotion each time I went up for each.
During the early 1990s it became quite apparent to me that the lack of information on lesbian and gay artists in the curriculum was having a debilitating effect on not only lesbian and gay youth but on lesbian and gay teachers. I read about the plight of lesbian and gay youth and teachers from several sources including three anthologies: Karen Harbeck’s (1992) Coming Out of Classroom Closet, Sue McConnell-Celi’s (1993) Twenty-first Century Challenge: Lesbians and Gays in Education, and Kevin Jennings’ (1994) One Teacher in 10: Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Stories.
As one of the co-founders of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer Issues Caucus (LGBTQIC) of the NAEA I joined several art educators in the NAEA in the formation of a group to make visible lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues within the field of art education and to actively work against misrepresentation and bias of lesbians and gays in our culture and teaching institutions.
I crafted the mission statement and constitution for our group using the mission statements and by-laws of other similar groups within the fields of art and education as models. The first draft of our constitution was completed by April 1995.
The next year an article I wrote about the need to establish a lesbian and gay caucus within the NAEA was published in Art Education under the journal subtitle, “Exploding the Canon.” In that article (Lampela, (1996) Common concerns of lesbian and gay caucuses within the fields of art, education and art education. Art Education, 49 (2), 20-24).
I stressed the need for such a caucus and urged the field of art education to join other educational organizations and art organizations in the establishment of an affiliate devoted to lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues. The caucus was granted affiliate status in 1996 at the annual NAEA conference in San Francisco.
Left, In Tribute, 2003, digital collage, collage, ink jet print on Arches, 27 1/2 x 14 ¼ in.. Right, Constructed Reality 540198, 2001, digital collage, collage, pencil, ink jet print on Arches, 22 x 29 ¾ in.
I also wanted to provide role models for youth by providing information about both historical and contemporary lesbian and gay artists. During the 1990s while I was teaching at Cleveland State University a 15-year old girl and a 14-year old boy from two different suburbs of Cleveland committed suicide because of the difficulties they faced being lesbian and gay teens. During that same decade Matthew Shepard, a 21-year old gay university student from Wyoming was beaten and murdered.
It became obviously apparent to me that lesbian and gay youth would benefit from access to information and to positive role models and art teachers could address artists who were or are lesbian or gay in their curricula.
I published an article that stressed how art teachers could become more aware of homosexual artists, provide accurate information to students about various artists, and provide gay and lesbian adolescents with positive role models. I included information about Harmony Hammond, Janet Coooling, Gilbert and George, and Deborah Bright, who all openly identify as lesbian or gay (Lampela, L. (1996b). Gay and lesbian artists: Toward curricular inclusiveness. Taboo: A Journal of Culture and Education, Fall, 2 (2).)
In the late 1990s I was interested to learn if art teachers throughout the country were aware of artists who are lesbian or gay, whether they included the work of lesbian and gay artists in their curricula, and if they were willing to disclose the sexual identity of gay and lesbian artists in their classrooms. I conducted a national survey of art teachers in the NAEA and found that the average art teacher was aware of some lesbian, gay, and bisexual artists that they included in the curriculum but neglected to mention to students that the artists were either lesbian or gay. I also discovered that some art teachers wanted more information about the lives and works of gay and lesbian artists, were ready to bring up issues of sexual identity in the classroom, but lacked the curricular and resource materials necessary. This research was the first of its kind in the field of art education and the results were published in Studies in Art Education (Lampela, 2001a).
In 1999, Ed Check and I (Check & Lampela, 1999) provided NAEA members with resources to address lesbian and gay issues in the classroom through the NAEA Advisory, a publication of the NAEA sent to each of its membership. The advisory provided readers with names of several contemporary and historical lesbian and gay artists, as well as provided teachers with examples of art lessons that addressed the issue of homosexuality.
Left, Parents, 2003, digital drawing, collage, pencil, ink jet print, 17 x 12 ¼ in.. Right,
The Way Out, 1998, wood, Plexiglas, acrylic pt, 8 in. x 15 in. x 5 in.
In 2000, I contributed to the anthology Realworld Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professors Never Told (Fehr, Fehr, & Keifer-Boyd, 2000) with a chapter that focused on contextual approaches to understanding the work of some lesbian artists including Sadie Lee, Romaine Brooks, and Gluck (Lampela, 2000).
That was followed by an article in Art Education (Lampela, 2001b) that provided readers with information about the lives and art of three historical lesbian artists who each lived her life as an out lesbian – Rosa Bonheur, Romaine Brook, and Gluck.
With Ed Check I co-edited the anthology, From Our Voices: Art Educators and Artists Speak Out About Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Issues (Lampela & Check, 2003). Published by Kendall Hunt it includes first-person narratives from art educators, art teachers, visual artists and an art historian who each explore how sexual identity affected their teaching, learning, and art. The anthology has been adopted as a course text in several universities throughout the United States and Canada.
I am also doing creative research and have exhibited my work is several group exhibitions and will have a solo exhibition at an ABQ gallery in December. My work concerns the construction of hybrid realities through digital collages and hand-pulled intaglio solar gravuere prints. Since I have spent much of my life living in the Great Lakes region I often see the illusion of an expansive body of water when I look to the west since moving to the southwest. My work often depicts the contrasting areas of the country that converge to create an illusion of what could exist. Both areas of the country are my realities and I create a simulacrum (sim a lay crumb) from the two. Living in New Mexico affords me the opportunity to be continually reminded of the old Western movies with vast landscapes of deserts and mountains and mesas. This has had a significant influence on my work.
Left, Trigger II, 2007, solar gravuere on Stonehenge, 6 3/8 x 5 in. Right, Dr. Laurel Lampela.
3. Could you describe your leadership style?
I was recently told, by the Dean of our college, that I have a quiet leadership style. I would guess that means I try to make change without trying to call too much attention to myself. I prefer to write, rather than speak, and help others make the changes needed in the schools. If what I write helps them show their administration the attention that lesbian and gay issues deserve I feel I’ve affected change on some level.
4. Could you describe your teaching pedagogy?
I have emphasized learning through experience and practical application. Teaching through experience is the cornerstone of my pedagogical methodology. I teach my students by modeling the teaching techniques that I believe work best; class discussions, small group work and individual inquiry. My teaching involves a hands-on approach rather than a lecture format.
Depending on the particular course I teach I use several different methods of experiential teaching. In some classes I pose questions to facilitate discussion. I also have students purchase a course reader where I have chosen a variety of readings from several Art Education journals, rather than rely on one textbook with one perspective. I update the course readers each semester.
In the past I have had students pose questions based on the readings and we use those questions to facilitate weekly discussions. Currently, I have students write abstracts on the readings and share those with the class because I believe that each person can get something different from a reading and each perspective is valid to some degree. Students begin to see that their thoughts and opinions are as important as anyone else’s.
I love to share the stage so to speak, so I have each graduate student facilitate one discussion from a list of topics on the syllabus. This provides students with the opportunity to bring in additional readings that they find relevant to the discussion and have the opportunity to add their unique teaching style to the class. I enjoy how this format generates a lot of excitement and enthusiasm from students when they have the opportunity to lead the discussion in a way they see fit.
I continually tweak and change my course syllabi and course readers so that the material reflects not only the current trends and issues in art education but also in the socio-political issues of the day. I realize that to be an effective teacher I must be flexible, open to change, and willing to change.
I also have been incorporating a lot of technology in the classes I teach. These include the creation of several PowerPoint presentations; the use of email as a method of accepting class; use of various websites that we visit during class; and most recently the use of Facebook where I can share articles I have read with students outside of the class contact hours.
I also try to model the qualities of organization and accuracy that, to me, are two of most important characteristics necessary to being an effective teacher.
Left, Permission to Wear Pants, 1999, wood, acrylic, photo transfers, 30 x 22 in.. Right, Grazing, 2006, solar gravuere on Stonehenge, 7 ½ x 9 ½ in.
5. What are your contributions to Women’s Caucus and women’s issues in art education?
I have presented conference papers through the Women’s Caucus and work to highlight the lives and artwork of historical and contemporary lesbian artists
6. Could you describe your current identity as a woman and art educator?
I see myself as a proud lesbian feminist art educator, in a wonderful relationship with a lesbian artist, as a very amateur golfer, and as an art maker. I am very interested in reading more about the emergence of a spirituality that has no dogmatic religion but is concerned with recognizing the essence of every living creature, including the earth. I am working to become more enlightened through my spiritual quest, my teaching, my artwork, and although the path is an arduous one, it is an exciting one.
7. How has this identity changed and grown over time?
I started out as a very closeted lesbian art teacher for a few years and then joined the Air Force as a Public Affairs Officer. Strangely enough, while I was in the Air Force I became an ardent lesbian separatist, torn between two worlds – the heterosexual military (or so it seemed to me) where I worked and the lesbian separatist community in which I lived. I thought that anger was necessary to get what I thought I deserved as a lesbian. It was then I began to seek out a more real existence, perhaps spiritual. My path led me back to being an art teacher and then to graduate school. I realized I loved teaching, accepted my sexual identity as a lesbian, and met my life partner. I found teaching at the college level exciting and challenging and that hasn’t changed. Since moving to New Mexico I have again found my art making self.
Left, Laurel Lampela. Right, Foraging, 2007, digital photo, collage, ink jet print on Arches, 10 1/8 x 13 1/8 in.
8. Have you ever felt held back or discriminated against because of your gender?
Absolutely. I literally was held back while in Officer Training School because I believed that women should be able to wear pants just as the men were able to wear pants. I had to march alone behind my flight if I wore pants and that’s exactly what I did. I also have felt that I have had to work much harder because I am a woman at every job I’ve had. Now, I am trying to see how everyone, women and men, are conditioned to believe certain things about their selves because of their biological sex and because of their gender. I’m hopeful that women and men will be able to be both their masculine and feminine selves without encountering any discrimination.
9. Have you seen other professionals in the field discriminated against in educational workplaces?
Yes and it is so unfortunate. I’ve personally witnessed how two wonderful lesbian colleagues suffered “psychic gynocide in diabolical ways” at the university level – one stayed on at a particular university and the other was fired from the same. Both were put through a living hell because, as I saw it, they were proud lesbian feminists not afraid to speak up when injustice occurred.
10. What changes would you like to enact in art education?
That’s an interesting question because although there are changes I would like to see, I know the only constant is change so change will happen. I would like to see all LGBT art teachers throughout the US and the world able to be open about who they are without fearing harassment or discrimination. I would like to see the spiritual brought into our field but I have no idea of how or in what ways that might occur.
Alison Aune
Artwork by Alison Aune left, Three Birds from Skåne. 2007. Acrylic, paper, on canvas. 8” x 8”. Right, Self Portrait Dyptych: Thinking About the Knackebrod Maker. 2006. Acrylic, paper, on canvas. 24” x 24”.
1. What is your educational background and where did you complete your Ph.D.? If you have not completed your Ph.D. please provide information on your highest level of education.
My background is in studio art, undergraduate and graduate, art education certification (double major studio/art history BFA UMASS Amherst 1984); MA studio University of Minnesota Duluth 1987; studio Ohio University MFA student (degree incomplete); PhD Comparative Arts 2000 (after being ABD since…1991: three children 1992,1995,1998!)
2. What are your current research interests and contributions to art education? Currently
I am a Fulbright scholar at Vaxjo University in Vaxjo, Sweden. I will be teaching and working on research in art education. The specific cultural paradigms that I will research in Swedish art education-which pertain to the cultural goals of art for all, the socially constructed national design aesthetic, various pedagogical issues related to art and the environment, to contemporary mass media, visual culture versus traditional folk art imagery, and to currently changing cultural identities in Sweden-will shed light on a culturally significant tradition. It will also add new perspectives, and possibly new solutions, to deficiencies in cross-cultural art education scholarship while informing and expanding my own approaches to theory and practice in art education and teacher training in Minnesota.
I am also having four art exhibitions in Sweden on my work Dekorgladje: Minnesota-Swedish Paintings
Left, Karen-Saami Spirit. 47” x 39” acrylic, paper, on canvas. 2009. Right, Dalarna Pansy and Knackebrod Border. 2007. Acrylic, paper, on canvas. 9. 8” x 10”.
3. Could you describe your leadership style? As area chair in art education, and the only one tenured (the other are adjunct), and this makes my situation from other area chairs in our department who work with other tenured faculty. I am leading our program. I write the mission statements, request goal statement for others, but am the one to fine tune all administrative aspects of the program. I am always encouraging faculty involvement in research projects, conferences, community outreach etc. I always invite faculty participation and collaboration. I also have worked to create an area that is diverse, we have different interests and strengths and we all get along. I ask for faculty input in area meetings but I am the main leader and doer of the program.
4. Could you describe your teaching pedagogy?
Directed/positive/ inclusive teaching style. I model for my students a positive academic/creative-artistic approach to teaching children and youth. I encourage active student participation/and lead a museum based teacher training program. Each semester is different. IT is an live curriculum. Our BFA Art Education Program provides a professional preparation for undergraduate art students to become K-12 art educators. The theoretical and pedagogical approach is directed towards developing critical engagement and artistic discovery through the direct contact with original and diverse works of art. In the methods courses, students have educational experiences that incorporate both traditional pedagogical strategies and methodologies with progressive alternatives in the field. Studio, museum, lab, clinical, classroom, and community experiences provide a range of instructional practice that broadens the domain of content knowledge in the field.
Turkish White Lilies 31″ x 48″ acrylic, paper, on canvas, 2006.
5. What are your contributions to Women’s Caucus and women’s issues in art education? I have participated in three women’s art slide caucus sessions: Washington DC, Minneapolis and Minneapolis.
6. Could you describe your current identity as a woman and art educator?
Associate Professor active in scholarship and creative research. MY artistic work is rooted in feminist aesthetics, rediscovering decorative-spiritual and symbolic roots of textiles. Very active in local, national, and now international exhibition venues. I also teach a course Women Artists through History.
7. How has this identity changed and grown over time? My work is becoming stronger as a painter/and my art history course is also becoming stronger and I have deepened the course content and feel strongly about adding this knowledge to our students (who even as seniors seem to know of only one professional artist: Georgia O’keefe)
Left, portrait of Alison Aune. Right, Body-Holding Life. 84” x 24” Acrylic, paper, on canvas. 2009.
8. Have you ever felt held back or discriminated against because of your gender?
In our university: Often I feel that my studio work is dismissed, although it is very popular, because of its decorative/figurative nature while male colleagues work in robotics, angst imagery, or other even if it is decorative it seems that their work as artists is seen as more significant: we have a male department head, male dean, male art museum director and curator: the vallidaters/people who in power for promotion, merit pay, course scheduling, committee assignments, artwork purchases, awards etc. While I am very successful with obtaining grants, my academic record is building and yet I am still not encouraged to proceed towards full professor. The male leaders do not seem to champion my artistic direction/commitment.
Other: My Women in Art History course, one of my favorite courses, had a low enrollment this summer due to several reasons, the largest being that the graphic designers no longer can take it because they have 4 other required classes. Despite my very successful class, my department head did not seem willing or interested to promote my class to the dean/etc. Instead he blamed me for not promoting the class enough myself. I feel that male colleagues are given more academic and artistic respect.
Left, August Daylily on Dalarna Fabric. 2007. Acrylic, paper, on canvas. 10” x 10”.
Right, Leif and the First Dandelion. 1993. Acrylic on canvas. 18” x 24”.
9. Have you seen other professionals in the field discriminated against in educational workplaces?
Of course. I work hard to empower my students-most of whom are women.
10. What changes would you like to enact in art education?
I am very excited about the field presently. The sessions in Minneapolis were absolutely wonderful!
Courtney Lee Weida
Artwork by Courtney Lee Weida . Left, Geode forms. stoneware. 2009. Right, Self-portrait. 2008.
July 24, 2009
It terms of leadership I see myself as a mentor and try to be a resource for my students. My background is in English Literature and classroom teaching. Those are two areas where I feel my suggestions are perhaps particularly helpful. I went to Northeastern University for my B.A. in Visual Art, English Literature, and Elementary Education (2003). Northeastern is very committed to urban education, and this was very influential for me. My teaching experiences were in elementary school teaching as a classroom teacher and then art teaching through middle school.
Courtney in Mexico, 2009.
One of my first jobs was an after school program for girls in elementary school. This was a place where the girls’ goals were listened to and valued. I explored a lot of art-related and community service-related activities in my early teaching experiences there. While at Harvard, where I completed my Master of Education degree in Arts in Education (2004), I worked at two museums and as an art teacher. These experiences deepened my leadership potential in art. I had some wonderful courses that touched on gender, race, and curriculum in ways that challenged and compelled me. Refining my teaching alongside my artwork and writing, I went through a lot of challenges finding and asserting my voice (something I am still figuring out now). I remember that Arts in Education Professor Jessica Hoffmann Davis observed that women are too often apologizing for or dismissing themselves before they present and share their work. This was something that I would notice amongst ourselves, and hope to counter as an educator too.
Left, Delicacy I. 2008. mixed media. Right, Experimental book form. 2008.
One topic I am currently exploring is the problematic role of motherhood as a metaphor for the clay medium, for pottery, and for women themselves within the field of ceramics. Sometimes motherhood is a taboo topic – it can be kind of unusual (both cliché and risque) to discuss with students or other professionals. There are very personal questions of how your academic life will fit into that choice. There are also many female professors that are trying to take care of their parents or have grown children too – so motherhood and daughterhood can be closely linked for women. I’ve heard women in education talk about the odd compliment of “you’re a great teacher” along with the prophecy that “you’ll make a great mom.” There are also these lurking, subtle differentiations in status and behavior, for example: who is being asked to get the food, take care of the administrative tasks, and/or get credit for the tasks at hand in K-12 and higher education?
Left, Toes. stoneware. ongoing. Right, Sketchbook Project Exercise. 2008.
There is also the perception that because women are the majority in art education, gender equality and camaraderie exists. However, there can be unspoken competitive elements due to the high number of female faculty members – encouraging the feeling that maybe less of us are needed. This can lead to many layers of passive aggression or bullying. Many of the incidents I’ve observed or heard about might seem to be very small (microagressions) yet are slowly built up over a long period of time. Academia is so strict and yet there is a lot of open-endedness to exploit if someone wants to be a bully.
Left, Art project in K-12. Right, Art-making at the university level.
I am slightly younger than your average professor and have sometimes wondered if folks would have heard me out differently if I was older, male, and/or more aggressive. These are difficult imaginings because they are confrontational, uncomfortable, and impossible.
For the future of my field, one thing I’d like to see is more teacher-centered research to represent many different voices across genders, cultures, and different areas of education. I am fortunate to teach a research course of this kind with my own art education students, encouraging them to explore lesson planning, art-making, and other practices of teaching and art-making as part of research activities.
Longings and Baskets and Detail. 2008. mixed media.
I also noticed that if you visited the art education Wikipedia page a few years ago, only men were represented and there was little to no mention of the major female figures in art education. This can be seen in some popular textbooks choices in the fields of art education and art history as well. I have wondered if men are more often academically encouraged in big, general ideas. It seems that women are often encouraged to be specific and focus in on fascinating, (but not necessarily text-book friendly) research topics. My own research explores ways in which contemporary women ceramicists often honor heritable and communal approaches to ceramics practice that echo a range of historically female craft traditions. I have observed that women in particular may respond variously and ambivalently to tradition: negotiating dualities of both acceptance and rejection/revision of that which might be considered female, feminine, and feminist within traditions of making. My current research seeks to collaboratively question, discuss, present, and exhibit the nuanced and layered ways in which ceramicists approach engendered craft histories within their practices. As an educator I try to consider carefully which views and voices are being represented and how I can be more sensitive to students so they can have diverse and meaningful encounters with research.
Debbie Smith-Shank
Contemporary fine-art photography by Debbie Smith-Shank
June 30, 2009
Women need to listen to each other’s voices in research, community, and practice in art education. I had an epiphany after spending time with aboriginal women in Australia during my last sabbatical. A small community of artists in central Australia clearly let me know that while I was welcome to visit, I was not to steal their ideas for my own purposes. In the past, these women had experienced idea theft by other artists, researchers, and policy makers and wanted to be clear before sharing their space with me. After reading work by Linda Tuhiwai Smith that addresses this issue, I had been unclear how to integrate their knowledge and my own white, western, middle class experiences, so I began to use autoethnography to tell my stories; the aboriginal women became sprit guides for me. Their stories are their own and I have no rights or embodied knowledge of them. Yet, I can tell my story with their influences on my identity, artwork, spirituality, and research. I’m still working on this self-imposed challenge. I’ve been telling stories ever since I started doing research but I had not understood that my stories have always been an interpretation of an event framed within my relationships with others.
When I came to NIU there were about sixty-five faculty members in the School of Art, of which eleven were women. There was only one women faculty member in studio arts and there had not been anyone hired in art education in the last seven years. The art education faculty was very welcoming in spite of the fact that my research was outside their comfort zones — feminist pedagogy and semiotics. They also respected the fact that I worked very hard. I went up early for tenure and then to full Professor.
Over the past several years, I’ve often been invited to serve as an outside evaluator for women going up for promotion, which is significant as there are still few women full professors in art education. I’m not quite sure why is this. Perhaps it’s because the very presence of women challenge the historic patriarchy of academia. Women tend to research on what some academics may think of as fluffy topics. I have always scribbled outside the lines and am grateful that I never got stopped from doing it. I remember one woman academic who spoke to me after I published an article on the Grateful Dead (1997) and she asked me how I could do that sort of research and work toward tenure, as if it were somehow cheating.
Artwork by Debbie Smith-Shank: Amore and Celtic Trinity
Hormones Meeting, Dancer, and Goddess Butt
Academic cultural bias creates an atmosphere where women often feel they must do more statistical research. At most universities, men in suits are in administrative control and they can directly or indirectly create a socieocultural bias that directly impacts the professional culture, behavior, and research content of women faculty as they strive for advancement in their career.
Unfortunately there is still biological prejudice in academia. In some cases, (even though it is now illegal) young women may not be hired under the assumption they will become pregnant or spend time focusing on their children, rather than on their academic work. My two daughters spent many hours in college classes when they were small and I had a sleeping area for them in my office. However, as a new professor I would never overtly speak of either the trials or joys of being a mother. It was not an accepted topic of conversation. Maybe the pendulum is changing and academic mothers are now accommodated more fairly, but the differences between men and women are clear. As Margaret Mead so clearly argued, “women have babies and men don’t.” I think I always envied the many men in the faculty had wives who dealt with their children. I wanted a wife too.
Holy House and Angel Bridget
At Northern Illinois University, I have wonderful female colleagues in art education. One just had a baby and in spite of new institutional practices including (non-paid) maternity leave and the opportunity to stop the tenure clock while on leave, she still struggles with the conflicts of childcare, teaching, and research. Young women need to locate mentors they can trust to have their backs. They need to become aware of their rights while also paying attention to their obligations to their colleagues and their families.
Advice to young women academics: Work hard. Everybody is going to value you when you do more than your fair share. If you don’t volunteer for a job, then someone else will get stuck with it. Another important recommendation is from Enid Zimmerman who told me a long time ago, “write and submit all your presentations!” Find people to help you edit. My biggest challenge in graduate school was that I did not know I could write until my girlfriend, a former English teacher, told me that I didn’t have to get it right the first time, but rather that I just had to get it written down and the edits could come later. The most important advice is to live and work in a positive environment. Work at strengthening support for students and faculty in your local academic setting and building nurturing relationships in the larger art education community.
Karen Keifer-Boyd and Debbie Smith-Shank
Bibliography
Smith-Shank, D.L. (1997). Aesthetic experiences in American culture: A microethnography of the Grateful Dead aesthetic. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Research in Art Education, 14(1), 80-91.
Smith-Shank D.L. & Hausman J. (Eds.). (1994) Evaluation in art education. Chicago, IL: Illinois Art Education Association (IAEA) Press.
