A conversation with art teachers who make art.
A paragraph from "Ninth Street Women" by Mary Gabriel got us thinking about how art teachers find time to teach and make art.
"In 1958, Hans Hofmann was 78 and had been teaching younger artists for more than 40 years. During that time, he had been called a master,but it was not necessarily for his work. He had not had time to paint as much as he would have liked because he had spent so many of his waking hours helping others understand the majesty of art and the gift of making it. He had watched his students thrive, paint master pieces, win acclaim, and he had been proud of his role in their achievement." (p 655-656)
We've invited four art teachers from South Florida to talk about their experience as an artist and teacher, and to find out what they're working on now.
Our guests will be:
Nadyia Duff
Nadia Fernandez-Castillo
Zoraida Haibi Figuera
Ignacio Font, Font Squared / Warehouse 4726
Tom Virgin, Extra Virgin Press
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Participating artists (left to right): Nadyia Duff, Nadia Fernandez-Castillo, Ignacio Font, Zoraida Haibe Figuera, Tom Virgin
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nadyia Duff
Nadyia Duff is a Jamaican/American Artist, Art Educator, and Museum Educator. Nadyia creates elaborate narratives using her method of drawing and painting. She combines the painterly and realistic. Every layer is a unique and uncalculated build up of mediums and color. The juxtaposition of roughly drawn background imagery and the detailed subject imagery creates vast visual narratives.
Nadia Fernandez-Castillo
Over the past seventeen years, I have had a great opportunity to teach a diverse group of students from grades K-12, and I have developed highly effective teaching techniques and instructional methods. This experience has allowed me to educate all styles of learners, and foster an engaging and creative atmosphere that effectively teaches art appreciation, promotes creativity, and encourages higher order thinking and problem- solving life skills that prove vital to excelling in other disciplines. I have taught and excel in all levels (including Advanced Placement) of drawing and painting, digital photography, history of art, as well as some three-dimensional art forms. My goal is to increase student motivation and independence through understanding the arts while emphasizing interdisciplinary lessons involving all academic subjects, as well as contemporary social issues and multiculturalism.
Zoraida Haibi Figuera
An artist and educator with twenty years' experience teaching in both public and private systems with a career focus on cultivating public appreciation of art through exploration of emotions, language and visual thinking. Emphasis in teaching advanced students to value the many different cultures that encompass our society. Funded grant writer for art programming in the public school system as well media liaison for visual arts department. Focus involving college, public and school aged children within the society and culture exposing them to new artistic venues in the roots of South Florida. Active exhibitor in the art community of South Florida and other states. Bilingual in English and Spanish.
Ignacio Font
Ignacio Font was born of Cuban parents on the island of Puerto Rico, where he began his search as an artist. As a child, Ignacio always felt an outsider, not belonging to his family, neighborhood or school. At the age of 10, he visited New York with his family and felt a warm embrace when in front of a Jackson Pollock painting. A year later his family moved to Miami from Puerto Rico and the disjointed feeling he always had became an even greater contrast to the warm embrace of the Pollock painting. This disjointed feeling, coupled with the warm embrace, are the driving forces in his works.
Ignacio received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Florida International University, after changing his major from Computer Science – thanks to an astute Art History teacher who saw the artist in Ignacio. He later returned to the city where his love of art was ignited, and received his MFA from School for Visual Arts, New York. Currently, Ignacio teaches art at a private school in Miami, and creates work whenever and wherever he can.
Tom Virgin, Extra Virgin Press (Photo credit: Barron Sherer)
"I will keep teaching something, somewhere..."Tom Virgin is a Miami based artist, proprietor of Extra Virgin Press, and for twenty five years, a Title I Public School Art teacher. Virgin received his BFA in Printmaking & Painting from Florida Atlantic University in 1989, and an MFA in Printmaking at University of Miami in 1994. He studied printmaking, book arts, and letterpress in over forty post-graduate classes around the United States and teaches workshops in those subjects.Born and raised in Detroit, on jazz, blues, Motown, and rock & roll, Virgin has now spent twice as much time in Florida than in his native Michigan. Residencies around the U.S. in artist’s communities and national parks has also informed his practice. His work in collaborations, prints, book arts, and public art often depict shared civic resources such as public schools, National Parks, and his home states (Michigan, Florida).Extra Virgin Press began creating community around letterpresses in 2015, with support from John L. and James S. Knight Foundation, a Wavemaker/Long Haul Grant, MDC Cultural Affairs, Oolite Arts, Miami Foundation, and many community partners. The mission of EVP is to help preserve the art of letterpress printing in Miami through teaching, printing and bringing together a variety of community voices, including youth and the literary and artistic residents of Miami.
Tom Virgin, Proprietor Extra Virgin Press
@extravirginpress | www.facebook.com/extravirginpress