Teaching Philosophy

My teaching, creative work, and research are deeply intertwined. I situate my work within a lineage of artist-educators whose work and teaching are often blurred: Joseph Beuys, who opened his classroom for inclusion in art contexts like Documenta; Paul Thek, whose idiosyncratic Teaching Notes places students' thinking, making, and relationships in the broader world and emphasizes the social contract of the classroom; Sister Corita Kent, who brought her art, activism, and students together; and Tim Rollins, who taught through his collaboration with students and created spaces of equality among them.

My approach to teaching is based on a foundation of access, DIY approaches, public pedagogy, community collaboration and engagement, valuing and acknowledging multiple forms of knowledge, and an interdisciplinary approach to contemporary art that emphasizes social value. In my teaching, I encourage students to develop a sustainable creative praxis and to find and create contexts for their work. My assignments and syllabi appear in publications including Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory, Practice, and Instruction (2017), Out of Place: Artists, Pedagogy, and Purpose (2021), and Wicked Arts Assignments: Practicing Creativity in Contemporary Arts Education (2021).

There are three key tenets to my teaching philosophy:

Learning in Context

Rooted in Colin Ward and Anthony Fyson's Streetwork: The Exploding School (1973) and its vision of the school without walls, I treat the environment and community as primary educational resources. Students find partners, organizations, and contexts in which to embed their practice, learning in the field rather than in isolation.

Contributing to a Discourse

I facilitate opportunities for public output—publications, events, exhibitions—so students can position their work within a specific context and see their ideas circulate outside the confines of academia. Making work with a real-world public outcome creates a heightened sense of accountability.

Contemporary Application

Inspired by Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School, I work to create art education that is as relevant as possible—one that connects school, environment, and community by encouraging personal agency and social accountability.

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Selected Courses:

AAP 1100: The Worlds We Make, 2023–present

In fall 2023, Cornell's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning launched AAP 1100: The Worlds We Make, a course I helped develop as Associate Dean for Diversity and Equity and for which I serve as primary instructor of record and lead coordinator. The class brings together faculty from Architecture, Art, and Planning and all first-year students across the college to examine structural racism, colonialism, injustice, and bias—and their manifestations in our disciplines—while developing the skills to work toward a more just and equitable future. Students hear from practitioners across our fields about their community-engaged work and how they are creating spaces and places that model their values and visions for the future.

To Publish is to Make Publics, 2023–2024

Co-taught with Paul Ramirez Jonas at Cornell, this class focuses on art forms that are reproducible, accessible, and democratic. Its culminating project is Multiple Paper Feed, an alternative art print fair that students plan, name, organize, publicize, and staff—learning about the international world of book and zine fairs, distribution, and community print endeavors in the process. Multiple Paper Feed is now an annual tradition.

LAND: Art, Ecology, and Environmental Activism

ART 3099/5099 LAND blends outdoor education with a contemporary art studio, bringing together students from majors across Cornell—global development, urban planning, art, human ecology, agriculture and life sciences—to learn about local ecologies in the field and create projects that intersect with and serve them.

Pandemic Lessons: What Just Happened?!, 2020

The Pedagogical Impulse, 2017

The Pedagogical Impulse is a research-creation project at the intersections between social practice, knowledge production, pedagogy, and “school.” As a site for artistic-research in art and education it has initiated a number of experimental, critical, and collaborative projects. As part of this research project my course ART 101 Signifying Practices: An Introduction to Art Making and Critical Thinking.

The purpose of this class is to prepare you to be an interesting, knowledgeable and productive artist citizen (culture maker) in the 21 century. This course is designed as an introduction to theoretical perspectives from many fields and discourses, now often grouped under the heading Visual Culture studies. We will become a community of learners in which each of you will develop the knowledge, perspectives and skills that will support your unique artistic/culture making practices. You will work on evolving a personal writing style that will be useful as you develop yourself as an artist/citizen/intellectual—supporting your thinking/research/making as well as your ability to explain and promote your work.

Blog address: https://signifyingpractices.wordpress.com/

Rethinking Arts Education, 2014

PSU Art & Social Practice Program 2008-2015

From 2008 to 2015, I co-directed one of the first MFA programs in art and social practice in the nation at Portland State University and created the first flexible residency art and social practice MFA program. I devised a curriculum that focuses on place, engagement, and dialogue: students do not have studios; instead, they find community partners, organizations, and contexts in which to embed their practice. The flexible residency model allows artists to remain embedded in their communities throughout their course of study, creating meaningful work where they live.

The program brought the School of Art and Design international recognition as one of the primary locations in America for the study of socially engaged art. Faculty I brought in to teach at PSU included Mark Dion, Fritz Haeg, Pablo Helguera, Julie Ault, Tania Bruguera, Shannon Jackson, and Paul Ramirez Jonas.

School of the Air Band Class, 2011

Let Knowledge Serve the City: A Social Education, 2010

Excerpts from this essay appeared as flags marking sites of learning identified by PSU students in the DUMBO neighborhood in New York.

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Parties Prenantes: Info Point, 2009

For Parties Prenantes: Info Point I worked with Jonathan Quesne to create a display and presentation about his favorite book, Les Trois Mousquetaires.

Parties Prenantes: Info Point is an exhibition of informational displays that have been created to represent the interests and knowledge of people who are in the ZAC Paris Rive Gauche. These displays are made collaboratively with people from the neighborhood and associates of Portland State University MFA Art and Social Practice Concentration. Similar to the format of a science fair or a conference poster session, displays are produced that communicate the research, interests, and positions of the involved parties.

Art and Social Practice starts and ends not in rarified spaces, but out in the world, although there are intersections with studios/galleries when necessary or appropriate. This way of working is not restricted to any medium, but instead uses various forms, methods, and approaches as the situation dictates. Sometimes Art Social Practice might look more like sociology, anthropology, social work, journalism, or environmentalism than art, yet it retains the intention of creating significance and appreciation between the audience and artists