anna schwartz

Teaching is a natural extension and translation of my practice as an artist. It is where I discover purposeful service in my field, where responsibility finds form through every dialogue and gesture, objective and project, and where I practice persistence and empathy as I support students in their development. 

I offer a challenging, serious, positive space where students realize their creative capacity within contemporary artistic practice. Teaching requires a constant creative dialogue with students. This dialogue takes different shapes. Often, it is a conversation and, at other times, a demonstration where students practically engage their senses in artmaking and the creative acquisition of alternate forms of knowledge. 

When this dialogue is successful, students gain insight into their curiosity and an awareness of how they learn, which imbues them with skills that transcend beyond the studio. Moments when this dialogue has not been successful require a return to beginner’s mind: I inhabit and explore my student’s perspective to navigate challenges and refine assignments in my ongoing pursuit of more equitable, engaged, and reflective teaching.  

I commit to evolution and learning primarily by engaging critically with my field as a practicing artist. Exposure to new media, international communities, and professional development via residencies and workshops deepens my knowledge as an artist and subsequent offering as a teacher. In living a life of practice, I work to serve my students in an embodied capacity where I integrate with the values I promote in the studio: critical thinking, risk taking, wonder, responsibility, and discipline.  

At the core of my belief is that the practice of art making is one of becoming a finely attentive participant in life, regardless of whether it is one’s primary discipline. Artmaking opens the perceptual capacities and self-efficacy of all who practice it. Once we feel the importance of our attention and its implications, we nurture behavior that guides us to sustain a more engaged life. In my own, I have seen the profound critical significance of this expansive attunement to our world. The sensitivity, mastery, heart, and courage that art demands call us into a higher relationship with what it means to be human.

The path that lies ahead of my students when they leave my courses has hopefully widened and enthralled them with possibility in the conscious creation of a life of purpose, where the questions they hold are as potent as the answers they seek.