On August 15, 2020 Conceptual Art & Teaching organized and hosted an international marathon zoomposium called What Happens at the Intersection of Conceptual Art and Teaching?. The zoomposium was enacted by 39 artists, teachers, and scholars from Poland, Canada, Korea, Mexico, colombia, Sweden and fourteen States of the U.S. (UT, MN, NY, IL, CA, TN, MO, GA, OH, AZ, NC, IN, MA, and CO). The whole event lasted six hours and ten minutes.
A book containing all the essays from the zoomposium—and new original artworks—is forthcoming.
Most of the videos from the event are cataloged below and on this YOUtube playlist.
Special thanks to Catalina Hernandez-Cabal (CA&T Research Assistant) for her unmatched dedication and imagination. Without her this project would not have been the success that it was. Also, thank you to Alicia de Leon for production management (on the day of the event) and Slow News for providing musical interlude during the event.
Follow this sequence of videos to somewhat recreate the marathon zoomposium.
Jorge Lucero, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Introductory remarks.
Daniel T. Barney Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
Daniel T. Barney received his PhD from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, in Curriculum Studies. He is Professor of Art Education in the Department of Visual Arts at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, where he serves as an Associate Chair of the Department of Art. He teaches courses in issues in contemporary art, curriculum theory and development, and arts-based inquiry and creation methodologies. Dr. Barney is a past president of the Utah Art Education Association, Editor of Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, and publishes and presents widely at national and international academic conferences.
NOTE: Agnieszka Grodzińska’s presentation was not recorded. If you saw it, you are one of the fortunate ones.Agnieszka Grodzińska, Academy of Arts of Szczecin, Szczecin/ Poznań Art Academy, Poland
Agnieszka Grodzińska is the author of installations, open-space realizations, paintings, drawings and video images. She usesfound footage technique and has strong interest in multiplication, reproduction and the mechanisms of social and individualdiscipline. She creates art books, conducts researches and writes about art. Grodzińska took part in multiple exhibitions and istwo times recipient of the Polish Ministry of Culture scholarship (2009, 2011), and the Visegrad Fund Scholarship (2016(Praga), 2018 (Budapeszt), 2019 (New York); She had received her post-doctoral degree at the Universityof the Arts Poznań, and co-runs the studio at the Academy of Art in Szczecin.
Ellen Mueller, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN,
Ellen Mueller has exhibited nationally and internationally as an interdisciplinary artist exploring issues related to the environment, hyperactive news media, and corporate management systems. She received her MFA from University of South Florida and is currently the Director of the MFA Program at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Selected artist residencies include Ox-Bow, Ucross Foundation, Nes Artist Residency (Iceland), VCCA, Signal Culture, Playa, Bunker Projects, and Künstlerhaus Lukas (Germany). Mueller has also published Elements and Principles of 4D Art and Design with Oxford University Press, and Remixing and Drawing: Sources, Influence, Styles with Routledge. Links: http://ellenmueller.com
Samuel D. Rocha, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Samuel D. Rocha is Associate Professor in the Department of the Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. www.samrocha.com
Eunji Lee, Teachers College, Columbia University, NY and South Korea
Eunji Lee (Ed.D., M.F.A.) is an artist-educator and researcher who explores the educational implications at the intersection of artistic practices, public engagement, and the participants’ experience. Eunji has worked as a public art curator at the Seoul City Gallery Project, Korea. She was chief curator for the annual School Gallery Project (2009-2011) curating artist-led interventions and aesthetic programming in underserved public schools in conjunction with the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. Eunji served as the President of the Community Arts Caucus, National Art Education Association (NAEA) (2019-2020); and has been actively teaching in educational spaces in New York City and Seoul, Korea.
Miriam Dolnick, Art Teacher, Nicholas Senn High School, Chicago, IL & Casey Murtaugh, Art Teacher, Nicholas Senn High School
Miriam Dolnick is a fifth year CPS teacher, a born Chicagoan, and CPS graduate. She received her Master of Arts in Teaching from the School of the Art Institute in 2015 and graduated from Earlham College in 2010. Before becoming a CPS teacher, she co-taught in the Drawing and Painting and Mosaic programs at Gallery 37/After School Matters. Miriam currently teaches at Senn High School in Edgewater working with neighborhood and magnet students enrolled in the Senn Arts Program. Her own work takes the form of collage, mixed media, and painting.
Casey Murtaugh is an artist & educator living & working in Chicago. Her teaching & art practices have become intertwined since becoming a Chicago Public School teacher. Both are focused on understanding the process of making & learning as the real work. She received a Master of Arts in Teaching from the School of the Art institute in 2013, a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College in 2006 & BFA in Studio Art from IL State University in 2002. Casey currently teaches at Senn HS in Edgewater working with neighborhood & magnet students enrolled in the Senn Arts program. Hot yoga & waves.
Brian Black, Crawford High School in San Diego, CA & Ryan Bulis Director of the Boehm Gallery and Teacher at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA
In a collaboration that has spanned over a decade, Brian Black and Ryan Bulis have developed the team-like persona known as Brian and Ryan. This artistic duo appropriates iconic activities and images that explore preconceptions of communication, masculinity, identity and athleticism. Their intervention-based work highlights the peculiarity of rules (both real and implied) in public spaces. To test the limits of these policies, they define new rules of engagement and explore systems that allow them to interact with both the space and people in that space. This same approach to engagement and systems can be seen in their teaching practices. www.brianandryan.com | Instagram | Artconnect
Nathan Shackelford, St. Charles East High School, St. Charles, IL
Graduate of Biola University (LaMirada, CA) and Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL) - Nathan has been collaborating with high school artists for 24 years, and outside of work he explores natural things, and enjoys family. Nathan's main interests relate to growing, fermenting, baking, slurping, and eating. Instagram
Heath Schultz, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Heath Schultz is a research-based artist and writer. His work engages a critique of white supremacy, liberalism, and capitalist ideologies. His writing has been published in Lateral, Radical Teacher, Parallax, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. His work has been shown at the New Zealand Film Archive, Auckland, New Zealand; Pro Arts Gallery & Commons, Oakland, CA; and Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND, to name a few. He is an assistant professor of art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Heathschultz.com
Kira Hegeman, Ph.D., Saint. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
Kira received her PhD in Art Education from the University of Georgia, where she pursued interests in printmaking and book arts, sustainability, and community engaged arts education. Her current research navigates intersections of feminist new materialism, interventionist art practices, public pedagogy, and making. After teaching courses in Art Education at the University of Georgia and Edinboro University, she recently expanded her work to museum spaces as the Associate Educator for Teacher and Student Learning with the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Christina Hanawalt, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Christina Hanawalt is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at The University of Georgia, Athens. Her research explores the experiences, practices, and mentoring of early career art educators as situated within the complex entanglements of public schools, accountability politics, and neoliberalism. Through post-structural and process-oriented theories, as well as arts-based methodologies such as collage, she aims to provoke new possibilities for the ways art education is conceived and practiced in schools. Christina is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Education and the Arts and has published in journals such as Studies in Art Education and Visual Arts Research. hanawalt@uga.edu | https://www.christinahanawalt.com | Instagram
Clark Goldsberry, Brigham Young University, American Fork High School
Clark Goldsberry is an artist, photojournalist, and art teacher. clarkgoldsberry.com | Instagram
Angela Inez Baldus is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Angela Inez Baldus is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. She is interested in following and attending to different forms of art education as they pertain to the speculation of its future, what it is, and what it might become. Her process incorporates creation, scholarship, and research pertaining to and influenced by relational practices in teaching, learning, and studying art. Instagram | www.angelainezbaldus.com
Paulina Camacho Valencia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Paulina Camacho Valencia is an artist, teacher, scholar. She is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective, a group of friends committed to building political artistic collaborations in multiple communities through art-making. After working with youth as a high school teacher for six years, Paulina enrolled as a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she is studying art education, gender, and women's studies, and Latina/Latino studies. Paulina’s work has most recently expanded to include an online project on the digital platform Twitch under the page and username the_couch_life_of_pau where she invites listeners to tune in to hear her read books out loud and play Animal Crossing. Twitch.tv/the_couch_life_of_pau
Allison Rowe, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL and Centennial College, Toronto, Canada
Allison Rowe is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher. Her artistic work attempts to re-personalize political discourses, exploring the possibilities that exist in this transitional process. She is a PhD candidate in Art Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she is researching institutionally supported socially engaged art. Allison holds an MFA in Social Practices from California College of the Arts and is the recipient of a 2016-2020 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship. allisonroweart.com
Lillian Lewis, Youngstown State University
Dr. Lillian Lewis is an artist/educator living in northeast Ohio. She serves on the faculty at Youngstown State University and is a community arts consultant and freelance curator. Prior to joining the faculty at YSU, she was the Director of the Zoller Gallery at Penn State and Curator of Education at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. Lewis was an art educator in Texas and Florida secondary public schools and continues to work extensively with K-12 educators through professional development workshops and collaborative arts research. Twitter | Instagram | lillianllewis.com
Cala Coats, Arizona State University
Dr. Cala Coats is Assistant Professor of Art Education at Arizona State University. Her teaching and research examine intersections of ethics and aesthetics with an emphasis on public pedagogy and socially engaged art. She is particularly interested in the affective potential of curiosity and attunement, using place-based, sensorial, and embodied inquiry to explore ecological interconnectedness.
Mindi Rhoades, Associate Professor of Teaching + Learning at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH & Brooke Hofsess, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
Brooke Anne Hofsess (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an associate professor of art education at Appalachian State University. Commitments to creative, ecological and relational pedagogies and methodologies inform her research in the field of art education. Her artistic practice occurs at the intersection of book arts and alternative photographic processes—influencing her approaches to teaching, learning and inquiring. She is the author of Unfolding Afterglow: Letters and Conversations on Teacher Renewal.
From Mindi Rhoades: I use arts-based approaches to research, teaching, learning, and activism. I love to play with materials + ideas. I have a high tolerance for chaos. I’m fine delaying or denying closure. I am unafraid of nonsense, foolishness, and failure. I love disruption. I am interested in seeing where things might go. I hate bios.
J. Guen Montgomery, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
Guen Montgomery is obsessed with the ordinary things of material culture. Her work looks at the life of objects, the longing to collect and acquire, and how possessions collaborate in our performances of identity. Materially, Montgomery’s work is located in the intersections between printmaking, performance, and sculpture. Recent pieces look critically at the relationship between possessions, historic privilege, and whiteness. Montgomery has work in multiple public collections including the Centre for Art and Design in Churchill Australia, and Mushashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan. In 2019, Montgomery started a new body of work during a residency at the Vermont Studio Center that will be exhibited in upcoming shows in St. Louis, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. She currently teaches in the studio program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she lives surrounded by ordinary treasures with her wife, dog, and three cats. www.guenmontgomery.com | @guenstagram | @showmeyourjunkdrawer | @nudlecats
Sue Uhlig, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, Lecturer at Purdue University; Ph.D. candidate, Penn State University
Sue Uhlig is a Ph.D. candidate in Art Education at Penn State University, where she has also served as supervisor for student teachers in art education. Early in her career, Uhlig was a classroom teacher and art teacher at the elementary level in the Midwest region of the United States. Prior to beginning her doctoral work at Penn State, Uhlig was a continuing lecturer in Art and Design at Purdue where she taught numerous courses in art appreciation, art history, and art education. She continues to work for Purdue as a limited term lecturer teaching distance learning classes. https://sueuhlig.com
Kaleb Ostraff, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL
Kaleb Ostraff is from Utah and recently moved to Illinois with his wife and two daughters to pursue a PhD in art education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his BA in visual arts and MA of art education at Brigham Young University. Before pursuing his PhD, he enjoyed teaching middle school art classes in public schools in Utah. Ostraff has an interest in studying learning and art practices through an interdisciplinary lens and embracing the overlap of disciplines.
Ross H. Schlemmer, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
Dr. Ross H. Schlemmer currently teaches Art Education and Art History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth emphasizing socially-engaged art and art for social justice. As an artist, teacher, and researcher, he continues to form alliances with community groups outside the school in an effort to provide alternative perspectives toward teaching and learning for his students through service-learning and socially-engaged art education. His work focuses on the lived experiences of communities and the social geographies that often lie in conflict and contradiction—and subsequently how socially-engaged art and education serve as a catalyst to mediate dialogs in those spaces. rhschlemmer@gmail.com | http://southernct.academia.edu/RossSchlemmer | Instagram
Albert Stabler, Illinois State University, Normal, IL
Albert spent seventeen years in Chicago, and then five years downstate in Champaign-Urbana pursuing his PhD. In that time he has taught art, written about art, curated shows, worked on advocacy projects, and made artwork. He did his dissertation on art and decarceration, and he is interested in critical discussions of race, disability, and conceptual art, as well as in thinking about the institutionalized entanglement of art and education. www.bertstabler.com
Alice Costas Northside College Prep. High School, Chicago, IL
Alice Costas is an artist, writer and teacher who lives and works in Chicago Illinois. She has been teaching at the high school she graduated from for the past six years, which is kind of like being in a David Lynch film every day. She enjoys knitting, reading, being in the presence of loved ones and constantly having her hands moving. She is grateful to come from a long line of mentors and teachers who have focused on the collaborative, conceptual and communal aspects of making art. www.alicecostas.com | Instagram
Dennis Helsel, Blue Ridge Elementary, Kansas City/Raytown, MO
Dennis Helsel is an artist, poet and elementary art educator. Helsel received his BS in Education from the University of Central Missouri in 2005 and his MA in Studio Art from the University of Missouri, Kansas City in 2011. He has taught at Blue Ridge Elementary in Raytown, Missouri since 2007. He currently serves as the Vice -President of the Raytown chapter of the NEA after serving a 3 year term as President. Dennis was selected as the 2019-2020 Teacher of the Year for the Raytown C-2 School District. https://www.instagram.com/helseldennis/
Rachel L.S. Harper, DePaul University, Chicago, IL
Rachel Harper is an artist, philosopher, curator, and educator from Chicago. Her work focuses on childhood and the rights of children, and the role of aesthetic experience in promoting lifelong learning and enhancing civic engagement. For the past 12 years, Harper has led the Teacher Institute at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which explores teaching as a socially-engaged studio practice
Elissa J. Rashkin, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa Mexico
Research professor, Centro de Estudios de la Cultura y la Comunicación, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. Author of: Women Filmmakers in Mexico (Mujeres cineastas en México. El otro cine), The Stridentist Movement in Mexico (La aventura estridentista. Historia cultural de una vanguardia), Atanasio D. Vázquez, fotógrafo de la posrevolución en Veracruz, as well as articles on Mexican and international film, photography, literature and cultural history. Coeditor with Ester Hernández Palacios of the recent book Luz rebelde. Mujeres y producción cultural en el México posrevolucionario (2019), and editor of the journal Balajú, revista de cultura y comunicación. https://elissarashkin.com | http://balaju.uv.mx/index.php/balaju/index
Nicole Marroquin, Associate Professor, Art Education. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Nicole Marroquin is a teacher educator and artist whose work explores belonging and spatial justice. She researches student uprisings in Chicago Public Schools between 1967-74, with the goal of recuperating the history of youth and women’s leadership in the struggle for justice. She facilitates projects with youth that interprets primary sources and problematize single-source narratives of history. She presents her work internationally, and is faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. https://www.nicolemarroquin.com/harrison-and-froebel
Catalina Hernandez Cabal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL & Natalia Espinel, Universidad Javeriana de Bogota, Colombia
MovEncounters is our way to exist as a long-term improvisational duet, experimenting with different sensitivities, proximity, multiple approaches of thinking, and making. In our duet, we have focused on the richness of meeting each other, and understand encounters as a creative practice. We believe that it is in encounters, where our vision of the world comes alive, becomes actions, and constructs spaces. http://movencounters.com/ Catalina Hernandez-Cabal Colombian-American artist, movement researcher and educator. Her work focuses on embodied and interdisciplinary creative explorations of difference, and their connection to learning and political action https://www.catalinahc.com/. Natalia Espinel, Colombian artist and educator, who works at the intersection of visual arts, performance, somatic practices and movement improvisation. Her projects unfold from shared forces of resistance and resilience by creating encounter zones that allow the experimentation of a collective body. http://nataliaespinel.com/
Ross Roadruck, Art & Design Teacher, Leroy Greene Academy, Sacramento, CA
Ross is an artist and teacher originally from the Midwest now living and working in the Sacramento Valley, California. He teaches Art and Design to 6-12th grade students and is the Co-Founder of Social Studies Residency, a rural artist-in-residence program in Colusa County, California. His work explores experimentation and play and repetition and appropriation and simplicity and complexity and chance and intention. www.rossroadruck.com | Instagram
Fredric Gunve, Artist and senior lecturer in visual art at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden
This education is a cure against fascism. Fuse, merge, blend, and bastardize categories such as teaching, art (making), performance, everyday life, fantasy, nonsense, journalism, climate, comics, and more is how Fredric approach and engage in education, art, and life. By taking part in different forms of teaching and education from the perspective of acting like a virus that bastardize the borders and definitions of art, life and education, different performative, coincidental, and temporary educational arts-based situations can take shape. Instagram | https://www.gu.se/en/about/find-staff/fredricgunve
Anne Thulson, Associate Professor, Art Education, Metropolitan State University of Denver, CO
Anne Thulson teaches art education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She has taught contemporary art practices to children at School of the Poetic City, The Odyssey School, and Anderson Ranch in CO. She makes both tangible and elusive art in and outside of teaching. https://annethulson.com | www.schoolofthepoeticcity.com
Sam Peck, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Samuel Peck is an artist, researcher, and educator from Providence, RI with teaching experience at the K-12 and university levels. He has a BFA from the University of Rhode Island and an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Peck is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota studying Arts Education. Peck’s summers are spent working as the head of Young Artists and Printmaking for the Chautauqua Visual Arts Program. Peck enjoys exercising with his dog Sundance and cooking with his partner Lindsay when he doesn't have his nose in a comic book. https://www.drawandplayhere.com/sam-1
Stephanie Springgay, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
“Stephanie Springgay is Director of the School of the Arts and Associate Professor at McMaster University. She is a leading scholar of research-creation with a focus on walking, affect, queer theory, and contemporary art as pedagogy. She directs the SSHRC-funded research-creation project The Pedagogical Impulse which explores the intersections between contemporary art and pedagogy. With Dr. Sarah Truman she co-directs WalkingLab – an international network of artists and scholars committed to critical approaches to walking methods. Additionally, she is a stream lead on a SSHRC partnership grant Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life. Other curatorial projects include The Artist’s Soup Kitchen – a 6 week performance project that explore food soveriegnty, queer feminist solidarity, and the communal act of cooking and eating together. She has published widely on contemporary art, curriculum studies, and qualitative research methodologies. www.stephaniespringgay.com