Jessica Peters

As an art educator, I am committed to instilling confidence in students to express themselves in personally meaningful ways. I believe that art exploration allows students to develop insights and affirm themselves within the world. I believe in the value of each person as valid and important to the common good. My pedagogical approach addresses equipping students with basic skills as well as fostering creative process approaches. With public school venues, my curriculum is designed for building on experiences with a wide array of materials and associated technical skills, creative problem solving, exercising the use of expressive visual language, visual critical inquiry, and reflection. I use various instructional strategies that organize art experience into an accessible progression towards complexity. I instruct to multiple modes of learning through the use of visual-verbal presentations, interactive discussions, demonstrations, and formative assessment. I design art projects to strike a balance between structured criteria and open-ended resolution. I solicit reflection to enable insight about ones process and final products, as well as that of their peers. I equally emphasize the significance of the process of art, the art product, and art dialogue. Ultimately my pedagogical goals aim to build a community of visual arts expression and learning that is inspiring and satisfying. This is a learning environment that is physically and emotionally safe, sensitive to students in terms of growth and development, and responsive to the diversity represented across the student population and in the world.

As an artist, engaging with observing the inner or outer worlds offers an ideal space for my own personal meaning-making. Through use of a wide variety of mediums and goals for my art, I ponder enduring themes authentic to my concerns as well as to the creative problem I may be solving. For example, I may explore themes about interconnection in nature while exploring a landscape scene on site, or I may employ the use of iconography and symbolism to illustrate or reference song lyrics in a music poster. I would say that my favorite aspect of art making and design is to understand the creative problem and then explore and edit freely within that scope until I feel the pieces coming together into a powerful whole statement about something important to all of us. Visual journaling is the most open-ended creative task I engage in where I hold a personal dialogue with my self (maybe my soul?) to reveal wisdom, crises, longings, concerns and dreams to myself. They are very closely related to art as therapy, though they often uncover some of my most profound epiphanies, and therefor remain interesting to me. I especially love them because they are done for no definitive end and are authentic in that way.

I am interested in projects involving art making, design or and/or teaching.