Research Statement
​
My research practice is grounded in critical inquiry, intersectional awareness, and an embodied engagement with both art and education. Through my PME thesis, I explore the complex identity of the artist-educator using an autoethnographic and a/r/tographic methodology. This research investigates the tensions between creative autonomy and pedagogical responsibility, drawing on interviews with art educators and personal reflection to consider how professional roles intersect, overlap, and evolve.
​
Earlier research—including my undergraduate thesis—examined how artists such as Marlon T. Riggs, Daniel Sotomayor, and Nicholas Nixon responded to the AIDS crisis through deeply personal, politically charged practices. This work fostered a sustained interest in how art operates as both cultural resistance and community witness, themes that also underpin my essay on the visceral, socio-political power of Ana Mendieta’s work.
​
My reflective practice essay further connects making and teaching, positioning material exploration—particularly through ceramics and installation—as a method of critical thinking and student engagement. Across all areas of inquiry, I am committed to research that bridges theory and practice, and that foregrounds art’s potential as a transformative, socially conscious force within and beyond the classroom.
How Do Artist-Educators Explore The Tensions Existing Between Art Practice and Pedological Roles
This dissertation explores the dualistic identities of the artist-educator within secondary school art education, focusing particularly on art making as a form of research. The focus will be on a qualitative approach to research that implements an autoethnographic and a/r/tography methodology. This methodology is balanced through the interviewing of a small selection of secondary school art teachers who exhibit the ideals of the artist-educator identity. The main research goals include developing a deeper understanding of how educational backgrounds influence pedagogical approaches, what balance is struck between being an artist-educator within the classroom and the tensions existing between art practice and pedological responsibilities. Through comparative thematic analysis and autoethnographic arts-based research, the findings reveal the diverse perspectives and lived experiences of art teachers across a variety of educational backgrounds and career experiences, including desires to realign their experience of the artist-educator identity and feelings of frustration towards external limitations. The research participants highlighted the vulnerability they experience within the classroom, as well as the difficulties in transitioning from studio backgrounds to educational roles, focusing on how their identity has shifted while working in educational contexts. The insights gained through this research underscore the challenges of the artist-educator experience and offers reflections on how external school environments and curriculum shape identity roles within the classroom. The conclusion of this research offers educators perspectives relating to the experiences of art teachers and the desires to connect further with their artist identity.
Understanding Discomfort of a Symptom of Grown in the Artist Educator Identity Formation
The focus of this reflective practice essay is the discomfort felt when teaching secondary school art students mediums, methods and techniques that seem incongruent with personal art practice. This lack of comfort stems from feelings of unease with professional teacher identity and can be commonly felt by student teachers. The purpose I’ve sought from this reflective practice essay was to explore a broader understanding of practice in both the teaching and artistic context. Through reflection I’ve posed ‘How have I found the ‘artist-educator' identity applicable in my classroom experience and how have I been limited by my understanding of it’. Through structured reflection focused on connecting experiences I’ve had in the classroom to theories and frameworks such as Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), I hope to explore the intersection and boundaries between art practice and my pedagogical practice. These reflections focus on issues of the development of teacher identity, adaptability to curriculum demands and responding to student expectations. Supplementary theoretical framings for this reflective piece will be Schön’s Reflective Practice Theory with specific focus on The Reflective Practitioner (1991) as well as Biggs and Collis Solo Taxonomy drawing from their writings in Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (1982). From these framing key introspections will look towards ideas of reflection in action stemming from Schön and the development of learning from the initial discomfort as focused through Biggs and Collis’ understandings of solo taxonomy. Reflective practice is a key characteristic of professional growth as identified by Peter Silcock in The Process of Reflective Teaching (1993). Silcock sees two avenues for reflective practice: first Schön’s reflection ‘in-the-action’ and a second avenue that ‘represents to practitioners details of their own craft, allowing them to modify an application beyond immediate circumstances’ (Silcock, 1993, p.274). This reflection ‘on-the-action’ frames a pedagogical approach informed by experiences beyond the immediate. This relates to the Critical Reflective Teaching of ‘sustained and intentional process of identifying and checking the accuracy and validity of our teaching assumptions (Brookefield, 2017, p.3). The exploration of this reflective practice takes the form of a written essay that extends autoethnographic reflection towards solo taxonomy framing. This approach allows for a personal interrogation of practice within the confines of pedagogical approach and identity growth. This essay situates itself within broader explorations of arts education and the experience of developing teacher identity and could facilitate new approaches to assimilation of professional and personal identity.
What was the socio-political impact of art created by intersectional artists concerning wider public discourse during the first decade of the AIDS pandemic in the United States?
In reading and researching various materials surrounding this question, the suppression of other voices in AIDS discourse during the earliest years of the AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) pandemic is striking. Tinged with ideas of racism, misogyny and white heteronormativity, prevailing narratives about people with AIDS (PWAs) compounded the already stigmatised lives of marginalised communities such as the LGBTQ+ community, sex workers and those who used intravenous drugs. To understand the contribution other voices had to the national discourse surrounding the AIDS pandemic, we first must look at the socio-political climate of the time. This will include looking at the American political response to the crisis across the governments of both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as the response of the government at the Congressional level, as a means of understanding why artists felt it necessary to confront and disrupt the narratives the government produced. This will be aligned with an examination of society's response to the AIDS pandemic as well as the interconnected response of the previously mentioned marginalised communities. Dominant controlling hegemonies such as the Catholic Church played a huge role in the widespread misinformation regarding the pandemic and sought to shift blame onto the ‘lifestyles’ of PWAs. By examining the socio-political discourse around the pandemic we can understand the void that AIDS activists and artists had to fill by having to contribute to the AIDS in the public sphere debate. Secondly, the facilitations and limitations of AIDS discourse in American media at the time will be examined as an origin of the “moral panic”. In exploring Habermas's public sphere theory we can examine the role of the media and art activist collectives both held in acting as facilitators for widespread open public discourse on AIDS and how often the media failed in this regard due to its exclusionary nature. Finally, to understand the contributions intersectional artists made to the public discourse of the time three case studies of artists of different ethnicities, cultures, races and sexuality will be examined through the art they made in response to the AIDS crisis.
The Socio-political nature of the work of Ana Mendieta
Art has long been used as a means for change and in combating dominant socio-political hegemonies. Prevailing social and political attitudes have often ostracised artists with the capitalist nature of Western society often rendering artists as incongruent with the wider society's desires. Many contemporary artists have responded to this alienation by taking up the role of social parrhesia, a truth-teller who speaks the truth because they know it is the truth. The lived experiences of many contemporary artists have influenced their work with work stemming from the artist dealing with social issues of racism, sexism, misogyny and sexual discrimination common in the contemporary art world. Of course, the art world and art institutions in themselves are oftentimes complicit with wider social and political issues, with a sometimes unconscious desire to maintain a white heteronormative male-driven art world prevalent in many western-based institutions. Maura Reilly argued in her book Curatorial Activism that “sexism and racism have become so insidiously woven into the institutional fabric, language and logic of the mainstream art world that they go almost entirely undetected”. (Reily, 2018, P.21) This argument acknowledges the struggles of female artists of colour and opens dialogue on what the idea of normal is in an art setting. The idea of a ‘contemporary art genre’ in itself is paradoxical due to the overwhelming breadth of practice that it encompasses but what is clear is contemporary arts ties to the neo-liberal art museum. The neo-liberal art museum has instilled an inherent value system onto the art world. Museums have sought to follow the operations of the private art markets, focusing on the work of artists who have a known commercial value, a desire that often amplifies the work of deceased caucasian male artists. This high-performing art market work oftentimes is an apolitical aesthetically driven art practice that largely revolves around painting and sculptural work. This raises the question of whether museums are neglecting non-commercial art forms like performance, video or photography that focus on a social or political message as it’s often of little economic value, instead the value is in the metaphorical messages that art creates. To answer this question I’m going to look at the work of the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta who was active around the time of second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism brought an open dialogue to issues of sexuality, domesticity, the workplace and reproductive rights amongst others and Ana Mendieta's work was inherently feminist in nature with her use of her own body and emotional connection to nature prevalent in her work