A composer and project leader tracks the connections between the needs of incarcerated students and a successful music-making studio program design. Central to the work, and applicable to any art form or educational setting, is the informed predicting of students' potentials and the communities transformation of the meeting place--in this case, a…

Despite the significant role of pottery in preserving cultural identity and providing a source of livelihood to the people of Nanumba, their artistic development of pottery production has been stagnant. This has resulted in low patronage of their products, which is further accentuated by the influx of the plastics industry on the market. This in…

Teaching artists often find themselves working in schools and communities that are new to them, whether these are situations close to home or farther afield. This issue of Four Questions highlights teaching artists who travel extensively as part of their teaching and artistic practices and bring their expertise, energy, and creativity to…

In this issue, editor Amara G. Hark-Weber speaks with two practicing artists who teach in very different programs and settings at college level. The first works with individuals who want to make a career out of their craft. Terry Gess is a potter in Western North Carolina who maintains his own practice and studio while also teaching at Haywood…

In art, the idea of pots being circular and cylindrical is an intuitive proposition that defines why potters have, up to the present, made wonderful decorations in the round. It is believed that potters do not want to subvert or break away from their tradition, perhaps because the art started as family craft. In this study, the authors describe…

In February 2010, the author arrived in the city of Sofia, Bulgaria, to teach mural painting at the National Academy of Art for his five-month Fulbright U.S. Scholarship Program lecturing award. He targeted Bulgaria as his host country in his 2009-2010 Fulbright U.S. Scholarship Program application because of its rich mural painting culture. He…

The last two sections (EJ1039315 and EJ1039319) presented stories about specific moments or lessons. Also, situations infused with complexity where the writers had to toggle back and forth between providing the larger context and the details that support readers' understanding of that big picture were presented. In this section each story is…

Walter Gropius built the internationally known movement and art school known as the Bauhaus between the years 1919 and 1928. This new institution was born by combining two fledging schools: the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts with the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts. In this new academy all media were regarded as acceptable as Gropius sought to…

Art education can be profoundly important to individual students, to learning collectives, and to our conceptions of what schooling might be. The value of student engagement in the arts as a way to develop imaginative approaches to constructing knowledge has been richly described. However, a less commonly studied component of visual art education…

In this article, the author describes a four-day teaching artist workshop at North Carolina's Penland School of Crafts. Led by Dr. Madeleine R. Grumet of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, participants of the seminar undertook the pleasurable job of examining the ins and outs of teaching visual art. Their morning was modeled on a…

In this article, the reviewer focuses on a study of a professional development workshop and visual art studio workshops for adolescents. It is her hope that teaching artists will draw new ideas about curriculum and content from the discussion of this work and that the issues discussed here may provide inspiration for their own shift in thinking…

Throughout history, visual artists have consciously pulled away from the mainstream hustle and bustle to concentrate, be alone and get work done. Many students in traditional school settings do not have the opportunity to experience those work conditions, given the numbers of students in a typical classroom and class period time restrictions. Even…