Contemporary Issues in Art Education

Conference postcard that reads "84th Annual Art Education Conference Friday November 17th, 2023: Contemporary Issues in Art Education"

The 84th Annual Art Education Conference will focus on contemporary issues in art education by offering a range of perspectives and approaches to creative expression in response to art, society and culture. 

What are contemporary issues in art education? How do artists address contemporary social issues through artmaking, and how can art teachers address contemporary issues relevant to students in the PK-12 art curriculum? 

Mark your calendars and plan to join us on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023 for an exciting day filled with studio workshops, visual presentations, and creative ideas to explore contemporary issues and art.

Keynote Speakers: 
JORGE LUCERO
Jorge Lucero

Learn about Conceptual Art & Teaching, an ongoing project that is simultaneously a hub, archive, and artwork at the increasingly active intersection where conceptual art and teaching practices meet. Stemming from the art and scholarship of artist and professor Jorge Lucero, CA&T tests the pliability of teaching as a conceptual art practice and the emergence of the teacher as a conceptual artist.

About Dr. Lucero

Artist Jorge Lucero is an Associate Professor of Art Education in the School of Art + Design. He sometimes serves as the Program Chair for Art Education at UIUC. Lucero studied at the Pennsylvania State University and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Prior to being at the University of Illinois, he happily taught art and art history at the Chicago Public School Northside College Prep. Jorge Lucero has performed, published, lectured, exhibited, and taught widely in the States and abroad.

Stacy Levy
Stacy Levy

 "Nature is my Client"

Stacy Levy collaborates with forces such as wind and tides and rain to register changes in our natural environment. 

She has been making working artworks to help solve site issues such as storm water runoff and non point source pollution. Her lecture will explore her collaborations with urban nature, and projects that meld art, engineering and ecology. 

Stacy Levy (LEAVE-vee)

Stacy’s work with rain, urban tides, and aquatic food webs gives new understanding to the life of water on sites ranging from nature centers to parking lots. Some of her works highlight the unseen life forms inhabiting local water, while other projects create a home for the rain on the site.  From puddles to watersheds. Stacy's work builds the bridge between art and science, as she collaborates with experts in many fields ranging from engineering to zoology.

Stacy has worked with urban tides in the East River and the Hudson, as well as the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.  She is currently working on a project in the  new East Midtown Greenway in New York City  to magnify the forms of common diatoms living in the East River.

A graduate of Yale University, Stacy also received her MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and attended the Architectural Association in London. She began her work as an urban forester in the Mid Atlantic region and has been working as an eco-revelatory artist in the public realm for 29 years. Stacy has been awarded the Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award and the Penn Future Award for Women in Conservation.