The University of Alabama at Birmingham
This Teaching Portfolio focuses on my experience at The University of Alabama at Birmingham between 2014 and 2016 as the Drawing Adjunct Professor. I had the opportunity to teach a variety of classes after graduate school: ARS 100 - Foundation Drawing, ARS 200 Experiential Drawing, ARS 210 - Beginning Painting, ARS 301 - Figure Drawing, ARS 302 and ARS 502 - Special Topics: Stitched, ARS 410 and ARS 400 - Painting and Drawing, and ARS 490 - Independent Study.
UAB helped train me in a variety of classes, gave me the opportunity to create my own curriculum and content, and work with professional artists. I also curated art shows at the UAB Project Space with my students: Seven, Women Wielding Floss, and People on Paper.
Below you will see documentation of student art work.
Beginning Painting
ARS 210 is a beginning level course in Oil, which assumes the student has a firm foundation in drawing, however not necessarily with paint. It is a particularly demanding and fast paced course, which foucses on the academic approach to observational painting as means for developing and understanding paint as a language. Issues of content and problem solving will be addressed in the final assignment Issues of content and problem solving will be addressed in the final assignments at the end of the term. This course may be taken twice for credit.
Advanced Drawing and Painting
ARS 400 and ARS 410 is an advanced art course focusing on drawing an painting. This class is structured around art theory such as; “Art for Arts Sake,” “Kitsch,” “Is Painting Dead?” And the “Death of Art.” Each student is challenged to create a body of work, participate in critique, and defend their art work verbally and through writing. The students are required to participate in creating a group art exhibition on or off campus.
Foundation Drawing
ARS 100 is required course for all art majors. Students will investigate the fundamentals of drawing in order to learn the elements and principles of art, to improve their dexterity and visual perception, and build skill for advanced art practice.
Figure Drawing
ARS 301 This course will explore the technical and expressive language of art through the use of the human figure as a subject: introducing the human body, anatomy, quick sketching (gesture), long-term studies (value), conceptual projects, and final project at the end of the semester dealing with a narrative.
You will learn how to identify proportional relationships relating to the figure. Identifying and illustrating the essential skeletal, muscular body shapes, and demonstrate basic modeling techniques associated with defining the human form, while understanding your picture plane and compositional layout.
Special Topics:
Stitched
ARS 301 The word ‘embroidery’ comes with baggage; more often than not it evokes images of crocheted tea towels and tweed cushion covers. But over the last few years, a new generation of drawing and textile artists have been using both machine and hand stitch to challenge these preconceptions; they often honor traditional techniques but use them in combination with more contemporary mediums or methods to create artwork that is original and refreshing.
This class emphasizes contemporary technical, conceptual, and creative directions available to drawing and stitching. Students are exposed to and challenged by a series of studio and research-based projects. Experimentation and development of technical ability towards your aesthetic development will be one of the major goals for this class. This class will promote studio-based understanding of the history and theory of drawing and stitching and its cultural context, while exploring and experimenting with non-conventional materials, processes and applications of drawing and stitching. Students will foster and generate discussion and critical analysis of Contemporary trends in drawing and stitching across a range of cultures and societies.
Experiential Drawing
ARS 200 This course will expand students’ knowledge of drawing and will explore a variety of approaches and media to improve their creative practice. Students will engage in active research of their individual creative practice as well as collaborative experiences.
