Statement on Inclusive Excellence

I feel fortunate to have been exposed to aspects of inclusivity from an early age. When I was ten years old my cousin broke his neck and became a quadriplegic. In the many years since that time, he has gone on to found an organization that I’m proud to be intimately associated with. Life Rolls On is a charity that provides events and experiences to improve the quality of life for people living with various disabilities. Spinal cord injury and neurological disease do not discriminate. The mix of participants, and the volunteers for that matter, include children, adults, men, women, paraplegics, quadriplegics, people with spina bifida or multiple sclerosis, individuals from both LGBTQ and straight communities, as well as affluent and disadvantaged circumstances. The diversity of not only the injuries of the participants but also their ethnicities, lifestyles, and backgrounds are why these events are so truly inspiring and transformative.

The experiences created by Life Rolls On are done so through the lens of action sports and are mainly surf and skate events. That being said, surfing and skating are activities that are challenging even for able-bodied individuals. So, to see a nine-year-old girl in a wheelchair drop into a twelve-foot bowl or watch a double-amputee veteran ride a wave on his stomach is to know that everyone is capable of exceptional things. It is with this knowing of adaptability and universal excellence that I endeavored into my graduate program and the beginning of my relationship with teaching.

During my time as a graduate teaching assistant I have been fortunate enough to work with students across the entire spectrum of backgrounds and circumstances similar to those of the Life Rolls On community. It has been comforting, stimulating, and extremely rewarding to find myself in this wondrous type of environment once again. In one quarter, in a relatively small class, I had the privilege to lead a project where students were assembled into groups of three and tasked with ideating and prototyping a new technology-based system. Over the course of this project, I taught a quiet female student from China how to solder, supervised the discovery of material options with a group of student athletes, and helped an affluent student to develop more universally critical ideation at each step of his creative process. Most if not all of the interactions that took place throughout this project provided an opportunity where I was not only teaching a diverse group of individuals usable skills, but also continuously learning to see topics and situations from the tremendous continuum of perspectives energizing the next generation.

I also consider myself lucky because my experience as a teaching assistant is in a creative course of study. For the most part, the courses are project based and built on fostering creativity and collaboration. In both the studio and cultural classes I assisted, students were encouraged to share their unique perspectives and to learn from each other. I was continuously amazed at the students’ willingness to be vulnerable and open to others in their classes, often autonomously co-creating the exact environment of inclusivity I strive to convey. Furthermore, the ever-evolving landscape of New Media tools and technologies has the immense potential, if implemented responsibly, to increase digital democracy. Thus, encouraging people who would otherwise not have the means to access and create through these mediums to do just that, and to have their work seen by diverse audiences all over the world.

As a grandchild of two Holocaust survivors, I have repeatedly heard first-person accounts of the harrowing discrimination and atrocities of the past. The trauma created by this event, and many others like it, is so large that many research projects have been undertaken to show that it has even been inherited by multiple generations. I believe that the large-scale disbursement of trauma is an extraordinary function of the human species and is necessary for something so emotionally and energetically devastating to be healed. It is unfortunate however, that even just one event like this isn’t enough for us to realize we are all in it together. Showing that there are still structural and philosophical dysfunctions at play in our social, economic, and political systems. That being said, I find that through both art and education that we can move from reactive behavior that results in “melancholic memorialization” to a proactive demeanor of “positive action” and begin to collectively ideate and initiate the changes that need to occur.

Personally, I feel that my own creative practice is informed by and made to transform my own experiences as well as those of my ancestors. Resulting in works that are created in part to foster more inclusivity for all those that live on this planet. For a few years now, I have been creating installations that explore ideas of biosemiotics and emotional energy, life-force elements that are truly shared by all beings regardless of race, religion, sexual preference, or lifestyle. It is through this lens of biological inclusiveness that I feel issues, experiences, and ideas can be addressed at their most fundamental level. A level that can be a platform on which students and educators–and everyone else for that matter–can come together to better understand one another. And with the shifting manifestations of global interaction, business, and new technologies, I believe it is important now more than ever that we stand on this platform and learn to function as effective communicators in the beautiful rainbow of environments that exist across our shared global setting.