Contemporary Issues in Art Education

Flávia Bastos, Ph.D. is a University of Cincinnati Distinguished Research Professor in the Arts and Humanities. Her research is inspired by the educational philosophy of educator Paulo Freire. Flávia is a Distinguished Fellow of the National Art Education Association, past chairperson for the Council of Policy Studies in Art Education, and former Director of the Higher Education Division of the National Art Education Association. Her current project Who is American Today? received the Excellence in Research in Education through Art, International Society for Education through Art in 2021. She received the 2009 Ziegfeld Award of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) and the Mary J. House Award of the National Art Education Association Women’s Caucus in 2007. She is past senior editor of the Journal of Art Education and has published and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad.

At UC Professor Bastos has directed the Graduate Program in Art Education for many years, helped establish the Latino Faculty Association, and served as Executive Director of the Emeriti Association. She joins the Graduate College leadership team in the role of Interim Associate Dean.

 www.flaviabastos.com

Artist Jorge Lucero is an Associate Professor of Art Education in the School of Art + Design. He sometimes serves as the Program Chair for Art Education at UIUC. Lucero studied at the Pennsylvania State University and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Prior to being at the University of Illinois, he happily taught art and art history at the Chicago Public School Northside College Prep. Jorge Lucero has performed, published, lectured, exhibited, and taught widely in the States and abroad.

Stacy’s work with rain, urban tides, and aquatic food webs gives new understanding to the life of water on sites ranging from nature centers to parking lots. Some of her works highlight the unseen life forms inhabiting local water, while other projects create a home for the rain on the site.  From puddles to watersheds. Stacy's work builds the bridge between art and science, as she collaborates with experts in many fields ranging from engineering to zoology.

Stacy has worked with urban tides in the East River and the Hudson, as well as the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.  She is currently working on a project in the  new East Midtown Greenway in New York City  to magnify the forms of common diatoms living in the East River.

A graduate of Yale University, Stacy also received her MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and attended the Architectural Association in London. She began her work as an urban forester in the Mid Atlantic region and has been working as an eco-revelatory artist in the public realm for 29 years. Stacy has been awarded the Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award and the Penn Future Award for Women in Conservation.

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter is an award-winning Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist, activist and educator who creates socially conscious music, film, and visual art through an autobiographical lens. Although it has been a decade since her release from a Pennsylvania prison, Mary’s time spent on the inside continues to shape the direction of her art and practice. Her entertaining but poignant works offer a critical perspective on the particular challenges women of color face when they become immersed in the criminal justice system.

Her work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA PS1, African American Museum of Philadelphia, Frieze LA, Eastern State Penitentiary, Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Waterbury Vermont, Martos Gallery, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and Brown University fall 2022.

Ms. Baxter is a 2017 Right of Return Fellow, 2018- 2019 Mural Arts Philadelphia Reimagining Reentry Fellow, 2019 Leeway Foundation Transformation Awardee, 2021 Ed Trust Justice Fellow, 2021 SheaMoisture and GOOD MIRRORS Emerging Visionary grantee, 2021 Frieze Impact Prize award winner, 2022 S.O.U.R.C.E studio Corrina Mehiel Fellow, 2022 Art 4 Justice grantee partner and 2022 Pratt Forward Fellow. 

Angela M. La Porte is the Director of Art Education at the University of Arkansas. She is Arkansas’ Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Liaison and recently co-authored Art for Life’s Sake: The Case for Arts Education as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Arts in Education. Angela is a National Art Education Association Distinguished Fellow and served as president of the United States Society for Education Through Art, chair of the National Art Education Association’s Lifelong Learning interest group, and Associate Editor for the International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education. She edited the book, Community Connections: Intergenerational Links in Art Education, and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is a Kenneth Marantz Fellow and recipient of the Pearl Greenberg and National Ziegfeld awards. Angela received the Arkansas Art Educator of the Year and Higher Education’s Art Educator of the Year. As an art educator of K-12 and across the lifespan, she is interested in further developing and studying an approach to service learning, inverse inclusion, to better understand how positive art education relationships across differences can begin to reduce stereotypes that emerge through the segregation of people and communities.