The investigative lesson plan traces major exercises from an early residency, Touching Outside the Walls, as a teaching artist to incarcerated women through Art Spring Organization, the process of building original pedagogy with the women that culminated in a public performance.

In this article, the author discusses how art, politics, and life intersect in a South African community visual arts studio program that seeks to educate artists as change agents. Artist Proof Studio (APS) was founded in 1991 and responded to the challenge of building democracy in a postapartheid South Africa. It is a community art center in…

When people think of a person "working the corners," a G-rated image does not generally come to mind. Yet that is precisely what the author, posing as "June Cleavage," did in New York City one dreary morning: she facilitated a meeting of strangers through the creation of a character and an approachable situation. June, with her…

On June 25, 2005, after 25 years of bringing the arts alive for students throughout the greater Rochester area, Aesthetic Education Institute (AEI) was closing its doors. To celebrate those dedicated years of service the founders, directors, board, staff, teachers, and Teaching Artists gathered for an evening of bittersweet memories and hopeful…

Americans have a passionate ambivalence about the arts. In this article, the author talks about the work of teaching artists, and argues that the roots of the unease about the arts are a deep part of the Puritan ethic and the pioneer spirit that shaped the culture of the early settlers on the eastern seaboard. That reticence and reserve in the…