I have been teaching here as an art instructor at Southwest Virginia Community College for fifteen years now, and the single, most clear perspective that I have gained as an educator, is how interconnected academic disciplines are to each other and to the life experiences of the students we serve. Art education encompasses not only that first experience of a person making a mark on a cave wall to pronounce “I exist,” but just as importantly, it encompasses the pleasure of telling a story through Grandma Moses’ depictions of her childhood, equated with Pablo Picasso’s need to visually blare out the injustice of violence upon the Basque village of Guernica. These creative expressions and all the others produced by human beings throughout our existence are “words” of a language that is interwoven with all the other expressions of knowledge that emerge from science and philosophy, from poverty and struggle, and from wisdom and grace. I am fortunate to be teaching in an institution that allows me to teach my students not only in the classroom, but in diverse ways and places, and through diverse experiences. A few highlights and aspects of my teaching experiences here at SVCC, past and current, that are examples of my holistic belief in education reaching beyond the classroom, as well as the inter-relationship of varied disciplines are as follows:

• Arts Across the Curriculum
• SVCC Community Center Art Gallery
• Art Club and Art Student Field Trips
• Service Learning, Shadowing, and Student Internships
• Community Murals Program
• SVCC Series & Festival of the Arts