Before I Thought… Now I Think!

Before I Thought… Now I Think!

View the April 26 recording here.

Download the accompanying handout here

Join us as we explore myths, discoveries, and “aha!” moments in visual arts, design, and media arts education that have shaped the perspectives and practices of our panelists. And, our conversation will be driven by questions asked by you! Get ready to share your revelations as an educator and receive new insight in return.

2022 is the year of NAEA’s 75th anniversary! In honor of this milestone, our Town Hall series this year will continue to tackle fresh content that is relevant to visual arts, design, and media arts educators while looking back at NAEA’s history and ahead to our future. Each conversation will reflect on lessons learned and discoveries made through an honest dialogue acknowledging challenges, accomplishments, and growth.

Complete information on all NAEA Town Hall Conversations is available here.

Panelists

Maritza Mosquera
Artist & Art Educator
Office of Refugee Resettlement
Pittsburgh, PA
She/Her/Hers

Art as spirit calling Art as social change Art as living form Art as healer Art as lover Art as the Universe, and Fabric of Life itself.

For the past 30 years, Maritza Mosquera’s major projects live under one umbrella called The Human Liberation Project. Her activating, healing, and expanding the Universe–focused work is created in her studios at 9Pines and Ice House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Her artworks, including This Body Is Mine, Translating Water, Fracking the Body, and Body in Diaspora, each focus on an aspect of personal or global liberation. These ideas inform her research and translations, and they catapult her multimaterial works, often exhibited as installations.

Mosquera takes part in the Excavation, Exposing, and Exorcising of all oppressions through the work with the #notwhite collective, of which she is a founding member.

Krissy Ponden
Visual Arts Department Chair
The Unquowa School
Fairfield, CT
She/Her/Hers

Krissy Ponden is the visual arts department chair at The Unquowa School in Stratford, Connecticut, where she has taught for 16 years. She serves as the Middle Level Commissioner on the National Art Education Association’s (NAEA) Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Commission. Ponden is a 2019 graduate of NAEA’s School for Art Leaders, and she was chosen as NAEA’s Monthly Mentor in June 2020. She has given workshops and presentations, and she has participated in panel discussions on equity and antiracism for a variety of organizations. Ponden was selected as the 2021 Independent School Art Educator of the Year by the ISAE Interest Group of NAEA and was recognized as the 2021 Outstanding Connecticut Art Educator of the Year.

Mary Ann Stankiewicz
Emerita Professor of Art Education
The Pennsylvania State University
State College, PA
She/Her/Hers

Mary Ann Stankiewicz, emerita professor of art education at The Pennsylvania State University, coordinated art education programs at The University of Maine and California State University, Long Beach; was a program officer at the Center for Education in the Arts of the J. Paul Getty Trust; and served as assistant vice president for academic affairs at the Ringling College of Art + Design. She edited both National Art Education Association (NAEA) journals, Art Education and Studies in Art Education. After serving as the NAEA Women’s Caucus President, 1985–1986, she received the June King McFee Award in 2003. A former President of the National Art Education Association (2003–2005), she received NAEA’s 2014 National Art Educator Award and the 2021 Lowenfeld Award. With Enid Zimmerman, she coedited Women Art Educators, Volumes I and II. Framing the Past: Essays on Art Education (1990), an international collection of papers on the history of art education was coedited with Don Soucy. Developing Visual Arts Education in the United States: Massachusetts Normal Art School and the Normalization of Creativity was published in 2016; Roots of Art Education Practice (2001) has been translated into Korean. Steppingstones: Pivotal Moments in Art Education History, coauthored with Paul E. Bolin and Ami Kantawala, was published in 2021.