FRIDAY BLOG (and Thursday Highlights Too!)

Dustin Rubinstein quote of the day about the conference participants seen in the Convention Center:

"The number of scarves is EPIC!"

Almost midnight…so some short highlights of the past couple days:

I went to a terrific panel of scholars titled "Native Americans Affirmations of NAEA's Challenge for Social Justice, Non-Racist Art Education Theory and Practice. The panel included Elizabeth Delacruz and Christine Ballengee-Morris, who have written much on the topic of multicultural art education. Discussed was the fact that in 2010, American Indian mascots are STILL used in many places…and that we need to understand where these images come from and what messages they convey. Delacruz reiterates something that Kristin and I talk about a lot in Methods class: that kids should study the art of other cultures, but then make art about their own life experiences, ancestry & heritage.

Probably my favorite session of the day was Olivia Gude's  "Collaborative Murals & Mosaics as Curriculum: Art Teacher becomes Community Artist."  I met Dr. Gude last year at the NAEA conference and found her SO inspiring, and for those of you in Methods, it's no secret that she is one of my goddesses of Art Education. Renee already blogged about her presentation, so I will put a couple quotes here:

"Good art teaching functions by creating spaces for discourse"

"Something cannot be a reality unless we can imagine it, unless you can picture it."

"When dictators come into control, they always come after the art."

Olivia Gude is a positive, inspiring force in art education today. Dr. Rolling has invited her to lecture at Syracuse University in the near future, and she is looking forward to that when her schedule allows. I was happy to be able to introduce Renee and Corrie's student Marissa to Dr. Gude!

Today (Friday) I was happy to get one presentation over with…it went well and I enjoyed the discussion the audience had and then shared with the whole group. It was great to have Corrie, Renee, Kristin, Dr. Bey & Dr. Rolling there to support me. One more to go tomorrow!

After my presentation, Dr. Rolling treated all of our SU peeps to a delicious lunch across the street from the convention center. Thanks Dr. Rolling!

After that, I went to an interesting session on bringing back the notion of PLAY to art education, given by the editors of the International Journal of Education & the Arts. Dr. Margaret M. Latta was terrific and I also got to thank her for accepting the article I wrote with Dr. Kelly Chanlder-Olcott for publication.

Graeme Sullivan gave a fantastic session on arts-based research and moving beyond what we think of the typical research strategies of the scientific method. I took a couple of really neat things from his talk:

* You can take your studio practice with you wherever you go…you don't have to limit your "studio" to one physical space…let the world be your studio!

* A really cool idea I think I will incorporate into my summer class - Visual Bibliographies!

Examples of these can be found on the website accompanying the publication of a new edition of Dr. Sullivan's book, "Arts Practice as Research." You'll also see a host of amazing artists (including Dr. Rolling) and their own arts practice.

http://artpracticeasresearch.com/

We ended the evening with another dinner of DELICIOUS Mexican food at ELVIS in the Federal Hill neighborhood, followed by a not-so-nice person who served us delicious pie to go…more on a uniquely Baltimore cookie tomorrow!!