The Students of the Program
The student body exemplifies a diverse mix of ages, races, backgrounds, and experiences. Most students entering the Program in Art Education bring with them high-level professional experience gained from work in the United States and overseas.
Many students have been teachers, museum educators, or school or university administrators; other students have had careers in studio practice or advertising, media, and technology while others have worked in government, community or social service, and the corporate sector. The diversity in background, experience, and expertise adds richness and range to everyone's course of study. Not infrequently, students act as conduits to new career openings and jobs.
Ayelet Danielle Aldouby is a public art and social practice curator working at the intersection of art, education, and wellness. She has curated with the International Artists’ Museum at the 51st & 52nd Venice Biennales as well as the “Re: Construction” public art projects, commissioned by Alliance for Downtown NY. She currently serves as a curatorial consultant at the international artists’ Residency Unlimited (RU), NYC, where she oversees educational artistic projects in middle schools. Before coming to TC she was the lead curator for IDEAS xLab - cultivating artists as agents of change in underserved communities in Louisville, KY, Natchez, MS, and other locations in the South. Her interests include environmental injustice in educational programs and exploring sustainability within the artistic process during community engagements. Ayelet serves on the executive committee of the Community Art Caucus ( CAC) of the National Art Education Association (NAEA). She is an avid photographer who enjoys hiking and traveling with her family and is a devoted Yogi who has been teaching yoga and pranayama for over 20 years.
Minne Atairu is an interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student at Columbia University. Minne's research emerges at the intersection of Machine Learning, Art Education, and Hip-Hop Pedagogy. Through the use of Artificial Intelligence (StyleGAN, GPT-3), Minne recombines historical fragments, sculptures, texts, images, and sounds to generate synthetic Benin Bronzes, which often hinge on questions of repatriation and post-repatriation. Minne has exhibited and performed at The Harvard Art Museums, Boston (2022); Markk Museum, Hamburg (2021 – ); SOAS Brunei Gallery University of London (2022); Microscope Gallery, New York (2022) and Fleming Museum of Art, Vermont (2021). She received the 2021 Lumen Prize for Art and Technology (Global South Award).
Nina Bellisio is an Associate Professor of Visual Communications at St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York. She joined the faculty there in 2011 after teaching art and design for 10 years at the Art Institute of California-San Francisco. In her multiple roles at St. Thomas Aquinas College: faculty member, Innovation Coordinator, and Assistant Dean of Curriculum, she works to integrate technology into learning and to incorporate design thinking practices into the interdisciplinary curriculum. She has presented her research in these areas at CAA, SECAC, FATE, and AIGA Design Educators conferences. In addition to her teaching, she is the VP for Outreach for Integrative Teaching International and assists in the planning and implementation of ThinkTank and ThinkCatalyst.
Nina holds a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a doctoral student of Creative Technologies at Columbia University Teachers College where her area of research is gender bias in the designed environment.
Kristina Bivona is a woman who finally adopted her mother’s maiden name. Her mother was a good woman who never left but probably should have. Kristina is the eldest of three girls who always saved the generic USDA canned pork until the end of the month. She prefers using dollar store lotion for her stencil prints and it weeps when left on the wall. She confronts a society that has no problem objectifying women but criminalizes women who profit from their objectification. She examines these power dynamics from the perspective of the female body which knows a white woman can exist simultaneously complicit and resistant to acts of violence.
She has worked with her hands since childhood and has applied her body in a variety of ways. This includes but is not limited to pro-domme-work, scholarship, riding freight, squatting, mothering politics, and art. Through language, text, and materials, she manipulates issues of sex work, feminism, modernism, activism, and counterculture. Bivona brings the essence of punk to fine art, pushed there by inhospitable environments of racism, classism, and sexism. Her art is a form of resistance, always exposing and breaking down obstacles created by harmful social norms.
Kelly Cave is a working artist and educator from New Jersey. She received her BFA from Syracuse University with a degree in Fiber and Material Studies and completed her MFA at the University of Cincinnati in Sculpture. She has served as Professor and/or Sculpture Shop Technician at multiple institutions including, Northwest Missouri State University, Arcadia University, and Princeton University. Cave has attended residencies and created public artworks at Salem Art Works, Franconia Sculpture Park, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Gilbertsville Expressive Movement, Arcadia Public Art Project, and participated in the 2020 Nashua International Sculpture Symposium.
In her time at Teachers College, Cave hopes to explore art education through the lens of sculpture. She is incredibly passionate about sculpture in all of its forms and believes in its power to help students evolve as learners and human beings. You can find her in the TC ThingSpace covered in metal dust or walking her dog, Ginny, all around the city.
Filippa Christofalou is an interdisciplinary educator and a performance artist. Her practice is situated in museum spaces and centers participants' body-mind-spirit, in and outside the galleries. As a doctoral student in a Museum Education concentration, Filippa researches body-based encounters with art that disrupt institutional hierarchies. Filippa holds a Bachelor of Science, a Master’s degree in Science Education, and diplomas in History of Art, Theatre, Theatre in Education, and Drama & Education. Filippa has worked in different capacities in institutions, museums, and galleries, including the Saatchi Gallery, London National Maritime Museum, Chicago Art Institute, Whitney Museum, and National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Filippa is the founder of The Drama Science Lab, a series of evolving projects that use the body as a medium to explore the boundaries between art and science.
Aimee Ehrman’s research examines the intersection of embodied learning and ceramics and how the embodied practices of ceramics can be explored in higher education. She is also interested in how particular educational settings can influence art-making practices and how that influence lasts over time. As an active artist and educator, she brings her movement and ceramics practices to the classroom, where she challenges students to experiment with the material and considers the role of the body as a tool. Aimee is a 4th-year doctoral student pursuing an Ed.D.C.T. in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, where she also earned an Ed.M. She is the ceramic studio fellow and a ceramic instructor for the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College. She received an M.F.A. from SUNY New Paltz and a B.A. from Baldwin Wallace University.
Candy Alexandra González is a Little Havana-born and raised, NYC and Philadelphia-based, multidisciplinary visual artist, poet, activist, and trauma-informed art educator.
Candy received their MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts in 2017. Since graduating, they have been a 40th Street Artist-in-Residence in West Philadelphia, a West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné in Brooklyn, NY, Leeway Art and Change Grant Recipient, and the 2021 Linda Lee Alter Fellow for the DaVinci Art Alliance.
As a doctoral student, I hope to do research at the intersection of art education and trauma-informed care.
One fun fact about me is that I have an extensive collection of earrings. At this point, I probably have over 60 pairs!
Jennifer Ruth Hoyden is a doctoral student at Teachers College in the Art Education program; I earned an MA in Cognitive Science with a concentration in creativity, also from Teachers College. I am never not knitting. It helps me think. My scholarship focuses on the ways the body and material produce, together, the negotiation that is thought. I explore the porosity between rational and physical knowing, mediated by material engagement; the ways we collaborate with materials. I love considering either fine-detailed micro-mechanisms or large abstract challenges.
Ligel Lambert is a Haïtian-born American interdisciplinary artist, adjunct professor, graphic & web designer, instructional designer, and entrepreneur who has lived and worked in Japan, South Korea, China, and the United States. He primarily works in painting, collage, printmaking, assemblage, and sculpture. He is a web fellow in the Art & Art Education Program and a doctoral student. Ligel is pursuing an Ed.D.CT. in Art & Art Education at Teachers College Columbia University.
Ligel graduated with a master’s in Fine Art (MFA) in 2013. He earned a second master’s degree in Education focusing on Curriculum & Instruction for Secondary Education with courses in Instructional Design in 2021. He also acquired a Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) in Graphic Design with courses in Web Design in 2011.
Catherine Lan is a multi-disciplinary artist with a specialization in mixed media art, installation, painting, sculpture, and video. She is the recipient of the Queens Council on the Arts Individual Artist Award, Yale University Andrea Frank Foundation Sanyu Scholarship Award, Teachers College Columbia University Myers Art Prize, and Arthur Zankel Urban Fellowship. She recently performed at the 50th Anniversary NYC Central Park Performance Art Event; exhibited at the NYFA Art Space, Queens Museum, and El Museo de Los Sures in New York. She also exhibited at the Future of Today Art Museum in Beijing, Hexiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, China.
She has been a teaching artist at the Center for Arts Education since 2011, and an art instructor for the Creative Technologies Summer Bootcamp for professional development at Teachers College since 2017. Since 2019, she established Lan Art Studio in Bayside and teaches all levels from K-12 to Adults.
Her recent pilot study is titled, Interior Art Learning Spaces: Where Inspiration Meets Creation: An Art Professional Leaders’ Survey, a paper she presented at AMPS Architecture Media Politics Society Conference at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, and accepted for publication in 2020. Her doctoral research focuses on the flexible concept of “cutting” as an artistic, metacognitive process, and aesthetic inquiry.
Lan obtained her MFA at Yale School of Art, Artist Diploma at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and BFA at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Charles Moore is an art historian, writer, and curator based in New York and the author of the book The Black Market: A Guide to Art Collecting and The Brilliance of the Color Black through the eyes of art collectors. As a curator, his exhibitions tackle subjects of social justice, color theory, and abstract expressionism. He is currently a doctoral student at Columbia University Teachers College, researching the life and career of abstract painter Ed Clark. He is the winner of Harvard University’s Titus & Venus Legacy award, the recipient of the Artis curatorial residency, a 2022 Tracksmith artist fellow, and a participant in numerous writing residencies. His books have been translated into over 10 languages.
Nisha Nair is the Founder & Executive Director of ArtSparks Foundation, an educational nonprofit in India that uses visual art & design to support the development of 21st-century learning and life skills in underprivileged children. ArtSparks also works to support teacher professional development. Nisha’s work in education spans over 15 years in varied settings, in the US and India. She has served as a teacher, researcher, curriculum specialist, teacher trainer, and prior to ArtSparks, program director for STUDIO in a School, bringing quality visual arts programming to 78 public schools across NYC, 13,000 students, and 600+ teachers. Prior to education, Nisha worked in the field of Marketing Communications Design, and, over her 8-year tenure, won numerous national and international design awards for her work for diverse clients such as the Smithsonian, NASA, etc.
Nisha is pursuing an Ed.D. in Art & Art Education at Teachers College, where she teaches a course on community-based art education. She is a recipient of the Teachers College Doctoral Fellowship (2019-2022). She previously earned an M.A. in Art & Art Education from Teachers College and a BFA in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art & Design.
Jason Watson is a mixed-media artist and educator whose studio practice combines interests in the figure, found objects, architecture, and text as visual materials that reveal and conceal elusive layers of meaning. He received an MFA from Purchase College (SUNY) and is pursuing a Doctorate in Art Education at TC.
Watson exhibits at universities and non-profit galleries and is active in artist residencies, including the Newark Museum of Art, the Cooper Union Emerging Artist Residency Program, the Lower East Side Printshop, the Elsewhere Living Museum, and the Ragdale Foundation. He is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Summer Education Forum and the Goodyear Artist Collaborative.
Watson was awarded the first Wesley Mancini Artist Residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art + Innovation in 2013. He has presented papers and projects at national academic conferences, including “Creating in the Queer Diaspora,” a study of LGBTQ creative production in non-urban areas, and “Exploring Safe/Brave Space through Embodied Inquiry” at the Collaborative World Building Symposium in Vienna. As an art educator, Watson has taught various drawing, painting, printmaking, and mixed media classes and workshops over the past two decades at community colleges and universities. He served as the Director of Visual Art Programs for Arts+, a non-profit in Charlotte, NC, that provides art education to underserved populations. Watson is the co-editor of the upcoming publication “Turning Points: Responsive Pedagogies in Studio Art Education” with Dr. Richard Jochum and Dr. Judith M. Burton.