In this episode of CAA Conversations, Kimberly Sandoval moderates a discussion on what it means to be a border artist and what separates Border Arte from other aspects of Chicana/o art, featuring Amanda Pardo and Samantha Ceccopieri, as well as Dr. Constance Cortez and Dr. Karen Mary Davalos, creators of Mexican American Art Since 1848. Amanda Pardo was working toward a BA in history with a minor in art from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) at the time of recording. Her work and research focus on the history of women, gender, and sexuality. She has given a public talk about her work and research as part of a lecture series and participated in pop-up exhibitions dedicated to the discussion of modernity and the domestic space. Samantha Ceccopieri has a BFA with a K–12 certification from UTRGV. Her work and research focus on the usage of art in mental wellness to reduce anxiety in scholars, both young and old, working with students and educators throughout the Rio Grande Valley. She has shared her research at TAEA and other art education conferences as part of UTRGV’s Engaged Scholar Program and School of Art and Design. Constance Cortez is a professor at UTRGV for the School of Art and Design, currently teaching Chicano/a art history as well as special topics courses such as Women in Art History. Dr. Cortez is a prominent figure in Chicano/a scholarship, with works like The New Aztlan: Nepantla (and Other Sites of Transmogrification), published in 2001, and has an extensive background in early Mesoamerican art history. Karen Mary Davalos is a professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, currently teaching topics in Chicano studies and art history as affiliated faculty. Dr. Davalos is also a prominent figure in Chicano/a scholarship with works like Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora, also published in 2001, and recently presented a paper on Nepantla aesthetics at the CAA Annual Conference in 2024. Kimberly Sandoval is an independent scholar, artist, and MFA alumna of UTRGV. Her work speaks to the life and experiences occurring around and within the Brownsville, South Texas, borderlands. She has exhibited her video artwork across the United States and Indonesia. She has also spoken about culturally affirming art pedagogies at art education conferences and chaired a panel discussion on Border Arte at the CAA Annual Conference in 2024 .

In this episode of the CAA Conversations, Amanda Douberley, Clarissa J. Ceglio, and Alison Paul discuss the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut, which brings student perspectives into its galleries and fosters belonging through innovative curricular partnerships. Three recent projects undertaken by classes in UConn’s School of Fine Arts produced student-centered interpretive materials for the Benton’s exhibitions. Each interactive project connected the museum with the campus community in a different way and cultivated a sense of belonging for both students enrolled in partner courses and student visitors to the Benton. Clarissa J. Ceglio, PhD, is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, Associate Director of Research, for Greenhouse Studios, and Associate Director of Collaborative Research for UConn’s Humanities Institute. Her research focuses on the ways in which museums, past and present, engage diverse communities in issues relevant to individual and civic thriving. She looks, too, at the affective and rhetorical uses of material, visual, and digital artifacts in constructing national and social imaginaries. Through her teaching and research, Ceglio also collaborates with museums, libraries, and communities on interdisciplinary public-facing and grant-funded projects that engage diverse audiences in topics of contemporary concern. Amanda Douberley is Curator & Academic Liaison at the William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs. She is responsible for connecting Benton’s collections and exhibitions with teaching in departments across the university. She has curated numerous exhibitions at the museum, often in collaboration with faculty and other campus partners. Douberley holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on 20th-century American sculpture and public art. Before coming to UConn in 2018, she taught in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Alison Paul is an Associate Professor of Art and Area Coordinator for the Illustration/Animation concentration in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut. Paul creates illustrations and stop-motion animations using cut paper collage. Her work is fundamentally about storytelling to a variety of audiences. Paul’s animations have been shown in film festivals internationally, and her children’s books have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. She has curated exhibitions at the William Benton Museum of Art in Storrs and the Roots Reading Room in Providence, RI. Professor Paul has taught at UConn since 2011.

In this episode of the CAA Conversations podcast subseries, “The Museum Worker,” guests Robert Cozzolino, Mia Locks, and Kelli Morgan discuss some of the significant challenges facing those working in museums, including the lack of institutional transparency in decision making, the culture of philanthropy, change management, and the failures of hierarchical structuring. The guests also offer some strategies for workers endeavoring to navigate fraught institutions. Robert Cozzolino is an independent curator, art historian, and critic. Mia Locks is the Executive Director and co-founder of Museums Moving Forward. Kelli Morgan is the founding Executive Director & CEO of Black Artists Archive. Erica Warren is a member of the CAA Museum Committee, an independent curator, and assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

This episode of CAA Conversations reprises themes from "Acts of Care," a CAA 112th Annual Conference panel (2024) sponsored by the Women's Caucus for Art. Moderated by Rachel Epp Buller, the discussion brings together four artists and art historians to consider how caring gestures and labors take shape across activist, academic, curatorial, and performance contexts.  Rachel Epp Buller is an artist, art historian, professor, and gallery director at Bethel College. Her books include Reconciling Art and Mothering and Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity (edited with Charles Reeve). Her current research addresses listening as an artistic method. She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar and the CAA liaison to the Women's Caucus for Art.  Mya Dosch is Associate Professor of Art of the Americas at California State University, Sacramento. Their research focuses on art and urban space in Mexico City, from monuments to protest interventions, with a secondary research interest in art history pedagogy. Their work has appeared in Future Anterior, Sculpture Journal, and the edited volumes Teachable Monuments and Imágenes en colectivo. Elena Marchevska is Professor of Performance Studies at London South Bank University. Elena is a practitioner-researcher writing on issues of belonging, displacement, the border, and intergenerational trauma. Her artistic work explores borders and stories that emerge from living in transition. Gloria Dai is an independent curator, art critic, and graduate student in the Arts Management and Art History programs at George Mason University. Her professional work at GMU focuses on building the community through arts and culture activities and organizing educational programs. Recently, she curated the exhibit A Path to Healing & Transformation at the National Veterans Art Museum and co-curated RE(FORM)ER at Fenwick Gallery, George Mason University. Deirdre Donoghue is a visual and performance artist, practicing birth doula, and Research Associate at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven University in Antwerp, Belgium. Her work centers on issues of relationality and the aesthetics of care from feminist, decolonial, and posthumanist perspectives. In her artistic practice, she works across disciplines to design encounters that facilitate the production of new knowledge systems.

In this episode, Kim Conaty, Anne Rose Kitagawa, and Rory Padeken talk to the host Magdalena Moskalewicz about everyday challenges of curatorial work inside collecting institutions such as university museums, art museums, and large, encyclopedic institutions. The curators share their own career paths and address the profession’s current aspirations and needs. The Museum Worker is a subseries of CAA Conversations about pathways to careers in museums, featuring candid conversations with professionals in the field. Museum workers share how they got where they are today, what they do, and the role of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in day-to-day work as well as hopes for the future of the field. Anne Rose Kitagawa is Chief Curator of Collections & Asian Art and Director of Academic Programs at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon. Kim Conaty is the Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Rory Padeken is the Vicki and Kent Logan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, at Denver Art Museum, Colorado. Magdalena Moskalewicz is a member of the CAA Museum Committee.

In episode two of this two-part conversation, interdisciplinary scholars Miranda Belarde-Lewis and Temi Odumosu continue to delve into the possibilities that emerge when arts pedagogy is integrated within the STEM-oriented setting of an information school. Belarde-Lewis and Odumosu describe their practices of teaching, curation, and research while discussing insights, methods, and core skills they have developed along the way. Together, they highlight why it's important to move beyond the siloed nature of traditional disciplinary boundaries to seek truly polyvocal contexts and collaborations. The conversation is moderated by David Strand. Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit) is an associate professor of North American Indigenous Knowledge at the iSchool and an independent curator. Indigenous knowledge systems are central to her work as she examines the role of social media and the arts in protecting, documenting and perpetuating Native information and knowledge. Her work highlights and celebrates Native artists, their processes, and the exquisite pieces they create. She has worked with tribal, city, state and federal museums to create Native-focused educational programming, publications and art exhibitions. Belarde-Lewis holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona, an M.A. in Museology and Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Washington. Temi Odumosu is assistant professor at the UW Information School and an independent curator and cultural heritage consultant. Drawing on her training in art history and international teaching experience in media, visual communication, and cultural studies, she takes a creative approach to mentoring information professionals. For over two decades she has been interrogating the visual politics and legacies of colonialism, activating collections as sites of memory and conscience, and collaborating with contemporary artists, designers, and curators to communicate unfinished histories more sensitively. Her current research and curatorial work centers wellbeing, considers the ethics of digitization in the age of AI and big data, and engages Black archival histories and possible futures. Odumosu is author of the award-winning book Africans in English Caricature 1769-1819: Black Jokes White Humour (2017). She holds both a Ph.D. and MPhil in Art History from the University of Cambridge (King’s College). David Strand is an editor, curator, and emerging informational professional pursuing his M.A. in Library & Information Science at the University of Washington. He currently works as the graduate research assistant for the Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) at the University of Washington Information School. Strand has over a decade of experience working in the arts and museums. He previously worked at the Frye Art Museum as associate curator and prior to that as the manager of exhibitions and publications. Strand holds a B.A. in Visual Art and English-Creative Writing from Seattle University.

In episode one of this two-part conversation, interdisciplinary scholars Miranda Belarde-Lewis and Temi Odumosu delve into the possibilities that emerge when arts pedagogy is integrated within the STEM-oriented setting of an information school. Belarde-Lewis and Odumosu describe their practices of teaching, curation, and research while discussing insights, methods, and core skills they have developed along the way. Together, they highlight why it's important to move beyond the siloed nature of traditional disciplinary boundaries to seek truly polyvocal contexts and collaborations. The conversation is moderated by David Strand. Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit) is an associate professor of North American Indigenous Knowledge at the iSchool and an independent curator. Indigenous knowledge systems are central to her work as she examines the role of social media and the arts in protecting, documenting and perpetuating Native information and knowledge. Her work highlights and celebrates Native artists, their processes, and the exquisite pieces they create. She has worked with tribal, city, state and federal museums to create Native-focused educational programming, publications and art exhibitions. Belarde-Lewis holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona, an M.A. in Museology and Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Washington. Temi Odumosu is assistant professor at the UW Information School and an independent curator and cultural heritage consultant. Drawing on her training in art history and international teaching experience in media, visual communication, and cultural studies, she takes a creative approach to mentoring information professionals. For over two decades she has been interrogating the visual politics and legacies of colonialism, activating collections as sites of memory and conscience, and collaborating with contemporary artists, designers, and curators to communicate unfinished histories more sensitively. Her current research and curatorial work centers wellbeing, considers the ethics of digitization in the age of AI and big data, and engages Black archival histories and possible futures. Odumosu is author of the award-winning book Africans in English Caricature 1769-1819: Black Jokes White Humour (2017). She holds both a Ph.D. and MPhil in Art History from the University of Cambridge (King’s College). David Strand is an editor, curator, and emerging informational professional pursuing his M.A. in Library & Information Science at the University of Washington. He currently works as the graduate research assistant for the Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) at the University of Washington Information School. Strand has over a decade of experience working in the arts and museums. He previously worked at the Frye Art Museum as associate curator and prior to that as the manager of exhibitions and publications. Strand holds a B.A. in Visual Art and English-Creative Writing from Seattle University.

The Museum Worker is a subseries of CAA Conversations about pathways to careers in museums, featuring candid conversations with professionals in the field. Museum workers share how they got where they are today, what they do, and the role of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in day-to-day work, as well as hopes for the future of the field. In this episode, Cynthia Cao, Matt Isble, and Leticia Pardo discuss the challenges facing those working in museum exhibition design and installation as well as their dedication to making museums more accessible. Cynthia Cao is an artist and freelance art installer in San Jose, California. Matt Isble is an exhibition Designer and Chief Preparator at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California as well as the founder of museumtrade.org. Leticia Pardo is the Creative Director of Exhibition Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Samantha Hull is a member of the CAA Museum Committee and the Museum Engagement and Operations Coordinator at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University in California.

In this conversation, Alison McNulty talks with Katerie Gladdys about the vast interdisciplinary territory she navigates in her work and pedagogy to “encourage others to look more closely at what constitutes . . . everyday existence.” Gladdys’s courses in studio art and technology view creative practice from the intersection of social and ecological inquiry, open spaces, and opportunities for her students to practice art that is based in diverse modes of research and nontraditional sites, and make creative use of resources and unexpected partnerships. McNulty and Gladdys also discuss the inspirations and questions guiding Gladdy’s research and pedagogy, the strategies she uses to craft and implement her courses safely, with reciprocity and flexibility to serve all students, and where she finds the support and resources to work with her students in these challenging modalities. Katerie Gladdys is a transdisciplinary artist who thinks about place, marginalized landscapes, sustainability, mapping, consumption, food, agriculture, and disability. She creates installations, interactive, sculpture, video, and relational performances. Her creative work has been exhibited in national and international juried venues, including in the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, and Croatia. She is an associate professor in Art and Technology in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida. Gladdys received her MFA in New Media from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BA in Art and Design from the University of Chicago.    Alison McNulty is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator based in the Hudson Valley, NY. She grounds artmaking in embodied poetics through explorations of ordinary material histories, precarious places, and ecological entanglements. Her work has been presented at museums, galleries, conferences, and unconventional spaces throughout the US, Europe, and Columbia. McNulty was recently awarded an Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Commission, a Saltonstall Foundation Residency Fellowship, the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award from Washington University in St. Louis, and the Empowered Artist Award from Arts Mid-Hudson. McNulty is an assistant professor at Parsons School of Design and the director of Ann Street Gallery, a nonprofit contemporary art space in Newburgh, NY. She earned a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA at the University of Florida.

In this conversation, Alison McNulty and Steve Rossi touch on topics of site responsiveness, site-specificity, performance, and environmental ethics, as they relate to foundations and studio art pedagogy, as well as connections with these topics in each of their creative practices. Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.  Alison McNulty is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is a Part-Time Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design at the New School where she’s taught in the First Year Program since 2015, and is currently the Director of Ann Street Gallery, a contemporary art space in Newburgh, NY, a program of Safe Harbors of the Hudson, a nonprofit organization that combines supportive housing and arts. Her practice as an artist explores the layered histories and poetics of ordinary reclaimed materials, precarity in sites, species, and ecological entanglements. Her work has been presented at museums, galleries, conferences, and unconventional spaces throughout the US, Europe, and Columbia. In 2023 McNulty was awarded an Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Commission and a Saltonstall Foundation Residency Fellowship. She received the 2022 Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award and an Empowered Artist Award from Arts Mid-Hudson in support of her work with the Artist in Vacancy initiative of the Newburgh Community Landbank.

In this conversation Steve Rossi, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University, and Lyn Godley, Full Professor of Industrial Design at Thomas Jefferson University discuss their work developing studio art and design pedagogy informed by a healthcare context. Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Lyn Godley is a Full Professor of Industrial Design at Thomas Jefferson University, where she has developed a cross-disciplinary curricula in Lighting Design with a focus on light as experience. She is also the Director of the Jefferson Center of Immersive Arts for Health, an initiative to investigate the impact of dynamic light and interactive art on health. She has spoken at national and international conferences on these topics along with lighting design education. In addition to her academic work, she also is a multi-media artist. Her designs, done individually and as a partner of Godley-Schwan have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous international museums and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2000, her studio work has focused on merging light and art and the relationship between art, technology, and its impact on the viewer. Her studio practice is linked to her research through integrating dynamic light in artwork that can create a deeper engagement by affecting both the environment and, ultimately, the user.

The Museum Worker is a subseries of CAA Conversations about pathways to careers in museums, featuring candid conversations with professionals in the field. Museum workers share how they got where they are today, what they do, and the role of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in day-to-day work, as well as hopes for the future of the field. In this episode, Lisa Abia-Smith, Erica Hubbard, and Nenette Luarca-Shoaf discuss challenges facing those working in museum education, engagement, and outreach, as well as their dedication to making museums more accessible. Lisa Abia-Smith is the Director of Education at the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Senior Instructor in the College of Design (School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management). Erica Hubbard is the Director of Chicago Programs at the Obama Foundation in Chicago. Nenette Luarca-Shoaf is the Managing Director for Learning and Engagement at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Erica Warren is a member of CAA’s Museum Committee, former curator and currently assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

In this roundtable dialogue, three art historians discuss pedagogical approaches in socially engaged art practices as they apply to the teaching of art history, paying critical attention to the ways these strategies intervene on and challenge neoliberal educational norms. How have contemporary artists working in various social and political contexts transformed public and alternative spaces into discursive platforms through which knowledge can be generated, shared, or amplified collectively? And what can we learn about teaching art and art history in the North American system by studying these artists’ approaches? This conversation emerged from a panel at CAA 111th Annual Conference, “Generative Pedagogies in Art and Curatorial Practice.” The project will culminate with the publication of Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices, edited by Noni Brynjolson and Izabel Galliera, forthcoming from Routledge in early 2025. Noni Brynjolson is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Indianapolis, where she has taught since 2020 after receiving her PhD in Art History from the University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on collaborative public art projects and examines themes of repair and construction in contemporary art. Izabel Galliera is an Associate Professor of Art History at Susquehanna University, where she is also an Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and co-coordinator of the minor in museum studies. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is at the intersection of contemporary art, activism, and social justice. Jessica Santone is an Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at Cal State East Bay, where she has taught since 2015. She received her PhD from McGill University. Her research concerns pedagogical art and social practice, particularly projects that expand knowledge around climate and science.

Starting from a shared need to decolonize their curricula, ceramic educators Anne Drew Potter, Brendan Tang and Tasha Lewis discuss essential changes to the classroom which can help mitigate systemic concerns. They describe how acknowledging personal and historical bias can help jumpstart an ongoing conversation with students, centering student contributions to the class discourse and increasing student investment. Lewis also shares her experience employing rubric-based self-assessment in order to further these aims. Anne Drew Potter has coalesced a fascination with, adoration of, and abhorrence for the human condition into a unique sculptural language. Raised in Berkeley, California, potter has lived throughout the US and in Mexico, Germany, and Canada. She earned MFA degrees from the New York Academy of Art and Indiana University. Brendan Lee Satish Tang is a visual artist who is widely known for his ceramic work. He earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, both nationally and internationally. Tasha Lewis is a sculptor of many materials. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her academic study has consistently woven literature, theory and art history with her materially expansive visual art practice.

Starting from a shared need to decolonize their curricula, ceramic educators Anne Drew Potter, Brendan Tang and Tasha Lewis discuss essential changes to the classroom which can help mitigate systemic concerns. They describe how acknowledging personal and historical bias can help jumpstart an ongoing conversation with students, centering student contributions to the class discourse and increasing student investment. Lewis also shares her experience employing rubric-based self-assessment in order to further these aims. Anne Drew Potter has coalesced a fascination with, adoration of, and abhorrence for the human condition into a unique sculptural language. Raised in Berkeley, California, potter has lived throughout the US and in Mexico, Germany, and Canada. She earned MFA degrees from the New York Academy of Art and Indiana University. Brendan Lee Satish Tang is a visual artist who is widely known for his ceramic work. He earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, both nationally and internationally. Tasha Lewis is a sculptor of many materials. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her academic study has consistently woven literature, theory and art history with her materially expansive visual art practice.

Susan Altman, Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College, Erika Mahr an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College, and Steve Rossi an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University discuss their shared experiences related to the many benefits and challenges of teaching studio art to non-majors. Susan Altman is a Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College where she teaches courses in drawing, painting and printmaking to both majors and non-majors. In addition to her studio teaching, she is the Director of The Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching and where her research interest is in the pedagogy of teaching studio art, as well as improving teaching across the disciplines. As a practicing artist, her work is focused on drawing and printmaking. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a NYFA Artist Fellowship. She lives and works in New York City. Erika Mahr is an artist and educator based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College and is currently serving as the Department Chair for the Art + Design and Performing Arts Department. Her studio practice explores drawing with an expanded sensibility and is invested in the act of mediation, reducing, and repeating to locate where the ephemeral and concrete intersect, become blurred, and create tension. She earned a BFA from the University of Florida and MFA from Hunter College and is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Drawing. Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

In this conversation, Steve Rossi, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph's University, speaks with Lauren Whearty a co-director of Ortega y Gasset Projects and Emma Wilcox a co-director of Gallery Aferro. As non-profit gallery co-directors and artists with dedicated creative practices themselves, they each have a unique vantage point on the topic of studio art professional practices curriculum. In the first half of the conversation the history and founding of each art space is discussed, along with Emma and Lauren’s organizational roles, followed by a discussion of the nuts and bolts of general professional practices skill sets, a discussion of how failure can be framed as a creative act, as well as various employment opportunities explored along with advice offered to students preparing to enter the visual arts field.

In this episode of CAA Conversations, the authors of Racism Untaught: Revealing and Unlearning Racialized Design–and hosts of the book’s companion podcast—Lisa Elzey Mercer and Terresa Moses, speak with renowned designer Dr. Cheryl D. Miller. Antiracist design interventions can be difficult. Well-intentioned conversations can fuel tensions, activate racialized trauma, and lead to misunderstandings, especially in spaces not typically focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even when progress is made, white supremacist culture can resurface. Antiracist guidelines and approaches that lay bare racialized systems of oppression and fundamentally disrupt their replication are critical. This episode of CAA Conversations makes space for a frank discussion around design equity. In addition to being an advocate for Black graphic designers, Cheryl D. Miller is also a theologian and author. She is a Cooper Hewitt National Design Awardee and AIGA Medalist and has been inducted into the One Club Hall of Fame. Lisa Elzey Mercer (she/her) is a designer, educator, and researcher, and Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Design for Responsible Innovation at the University of Illinois. Terresa Moses (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, and the Director of Design Justice at the University of Minnesota, and a PhD candidate in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto.

Lauren Whearty and Eric Hibit are artists, curators, and educators, who both think deeply about the importance of color as a subject in art, society, and in how they teach painting and design courses. Color is a vital component in foundational artistic studies, it also plays an important role in culture, technology, history, science, and more. In this episode Lauren & Eric will discuss the ways they use and think about color in their studios, Eric’s “Color Theory for Dummies” book, book recommendations, and how they each approach color in the classroom. Lauren Whearty is an artist, educator, and curator living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She received her MFA from Ohio State University, and her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She has been a Co-Director at Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and non-profit in Brooklyn, NY since 2017. Lauren has attended residencies such as Yale’s Summer School of Art through the Ellen BattelStoeckel Fellowship, The Vermont Studio Center, Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat, and the Golden Foundation Artist Residency. She has recently received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and Joseph Roberts Foundation. Lauren also received the President’s Creative Research and Innovation Grant from University of the Arts, to develop work for her first solo exhibit which was recently at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia. Lauren currently teaches 2D Design, Color, Painting & Drawing courses at University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia. Eric Hibit (born Rochester, NY) is a visual artist based in New York City. He attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design (BFA,1998) and Yale University School of Art (MFA, 2003). In New York, he has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Dinner Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, My Pet Ram, One River School of Art + Design, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Underdonk Gallery, Anna Kustera Gallery, Max Protetch Gallery, and elsewhere. He has exhibited nationally at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, VT, Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Wege Center for the Arts at Maharishi University in Fairfield, IA, Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA, The University of Vermont, Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, CA and internationally in Sweden, France and Norway. His work has been covered by the Washington Post, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic, Newsweek, New York Times and New York Post. Hibit has taught studio art at Drexel University, The Cooper Union, Suffolk County Community College, 92NY, Tyler School of Art, NYU and Hunter College. Artist residencies include Terra Foundation in Giverny, France (2003), and Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts (2019) and Green Olives Arts in Tetouan, Morocco (2019). Publications include Dear Hollywood Writers, with poet Geoffrey Young (Suzy Solidor Editions, 2017) and Paintings and Fables with Wayne Koestenbaum, a limited edition artist’s book (2017), and Color Theory for Dummies, published by Wiley (2022).  He is currently Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery based in Brooklyn, where he has curated exhibitions since 2014.

In this podcast, Christina (Chris) Penn-Goetsch and Celia Stahr discuss how Trabian Shorters’s “asset framing” could be used as a model in the college art history classroom, providing numerous examples throughout their conversation. Asset framing is a narrative model that defines people by their gifts and assets instead of the challenges they may face. Shorters’s model for pedagogy may prove useful for the art history classroom, a space where we create narratives on a regular basis that probably affect our students more than the facts and research that we share. Shorters’s observations, based on the work of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, argues that we internalize what we see as part of a narrative before we even employ the conscious mind. This suggests an even more imperative role for how we study the visual arts. Celia Stahr, who received a BA and MA from San Francisco State University and a PhD from the University of Iowa, has been teaching art history at the University of San Francisco for 18 years. As an adjunct who was named one of the top professors in Fifteen Noteworthy Art Professors in San Francisco, Celia specializes in modern, contemporary, African, and transnational or “traveling” artists with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Stahr is particularly interested in artists who cross cultural boundaries and the importance of place. Her book Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist was published in 2020 by St. Martin’s Press and has received many positive reviews in publications such as the New York Times, Art in America, and Publisher’s Weekly. Stahr is also interviewed in the forthcoming BBC three-part docuseries on the life and art of Frida Kahlo. Christina (Chris) Penn-Goetsch (They/She) finished their BA at the University of Virginia and a PhD at the University of Iowa. This professor has taught at Cornell College for 26 years now and was the recipient of Cornell’s Exemplary Teacher of the Year in 2018. They have had an active career in college service that includes serving as the chair of the college’s Diversity Committee and acting as advisor for Alliance and Gender Safe Space. Their main areas of research focus on early modern Italy and contemporary feminist art. Penn-Goetsch has taught for the Smithsonian Journeys program in Southern Italy and continues to offer college classes about architecture and imperialism in Rome, Italy. Their interest in asset framing stems from teaching classes in African, African American, Native American, Chicana, and Feminist art, as well as a new course last year, “Queer Eye for Art History.”