“I am not going to teach you how to draw. I am going to teach you how to see. Then I am going to ask you to draw what you see. If you see better, you create better.”
This is the simple promise that I begin with each semester. I wholeheartedly believe in this promise because what I teach is refined vision and thought. Students benefit from my hands-on approach of personalized instruction and technique demonstrations in the studio. Drawing students begin the semester in the controlled environment of the studio, studying still-life installations and live models. They learn a variety of techniques to solve formal drawing problems with strong emphasis on measurement, accuracy, line quality, space, movement and objectivity.
I am also very much motivated as a first generation Latinx professor to address diversity in my courses. It is important for me to model the excellence we wish students to become in the classroom by ensuring that students are studying a curriculum of contemporary artists that is as vast as the student body. You cannot expect students to copy that which they have never seen. It’s what drives me to affectionately describe my classes as a form of cultural spackle:
“I aim to fill the cracks in students’ education.”
This makes me very popular on campus, with many students thanking me for showing them artists that look and sound like them in my lectures and across the disciplines I teach.
Student Work Samples
