My objective an art educator is to motivate my students to discover their own learning interests and methods of critical thinking so that it may apply to their own studio practices and career future. I encourage my students to go beyond a theme and parameters of a project and to consider their own interests, experiences, and identities and how it feeds into their work. As a result, I prepare my projects to make connections between my student’s own knowledge, culture, art history, and considerations in contemporary art practices. The techniques and content taught through these projects work for students that they may be stimulated to think beyond their comfort zone and feel encouraged to be encouraged to become more involved with the research that is applied to these projects. Through these activities and classroom critiques, I encourage students to make connections between their studio practice and other disciplines. This may include working interdisciplinary in the arts or making connections in other aspects of their life.
Concerns with diversity, equality, and inclusion have been central to my upbringing. As a toddler I had moved with my family outside of the United States. I spent my childhood moving between Venezuela, Italy, Ecuador, and South Texas. I attended schools and had friends from countries and backgrounds different from my own. Even though I was surrounded by a diverse community, there was still a share of racial and gender discrimination; not only for being a Mexican American female, but I had witnessed and been discriminated against being born in the United States. These experiences rooted from my childhood have shaped my current everyday interactions and the research into my own work.
While my work has a great consideration for geography, it also considers individual personal histories attached to land. Included in these reflections is how peoples from different or multiple identities my share very similar experiences. This mode of thinking goes hand and hand into my teaching methodology. While I personally avoid using labels to describe artists, I do encourage my students to take ownership of their identities and to consider how they can actually be cross-sectional. I aspire for my students to take ownership of their own stories and to break the mold of the society that they live in.
I am a firm believer that strides in diversity and inclusion start in the classroom and with the younger generation. Living in Texas, I have worked with many students coming from environments where they may have never considered becoming an artist or working in the arts. Teaching and working in higher education, I strive to steer students in directions that they may have never considered before. In Spring of 2019, at the SGC International conference in Dallas, I moderated an “Inkubator” discussion entitled Minority Reports with Sangmi Yoo and Stephanie Alaniz. The initial panels shared creative projects, in concern with underrepresented groups. Following this, I co-led a discussion with Alaniz brining educators, administrators, and students together to discuss inclusivity in the classroom or shared community setting. The discussion brought forth concerns, ideas, and solutions for the drive of diversity in the arts and art education.
