C · A · R · E

83rd Annual Kutztown University Art Education Conference
Friday, November 18, 2022  |  Schaeffer Auditorium
CARE postcard

In what ways does care and caring reside in our schools and art settings?

How might the cultivation of caring and empathy start with us?

What could we do, say, and offer in challenging situations that call for care?

In what ways might art practices relate to and support us as

Compassionate • Aware • Responsive • Empathetic?

The 83rd Annual Art Education Conference will support artists and educators who want to consider how we might employ care to and for others through therapeutic practices in art, social emotional learning, restorative practices, and safe places. Caring in, with, and through the arts can be intentional, planned, purposeful, and foundational.

The conference will offer three keynote speakers, hands-on workshops, and most importantly a caring space for connecting with your peers. In addition, the Marlin and Regina Miller Art Gallery will be featuring “These Ones Are Going to Grow Big Someday”, current works by artist in residence Eric Anthony Berdis https://ericanthonyberdis.com. The Sharadin Atrium Gallery will be featuring “Unsheltered Perspectives”, expressions from youths at the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center facilitated by Lyndsay Rose Tingler of A Frame of Mind https://aframeofmindart.com/. The conference will close at the galleries with Berdis and Rose-Tingler.

REGISTRATION IS CLOSED

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

CAMPUS MAP

PARKING PASS

KEYNOTE SPEAKER – Frida C. Rundell Phd, Med (Psy), LPC   

A 21st Century Search for Meaning: A Narrative Lens for Restoring Compassion, Awareness, Responsiveness and Empathy for Future Generations 

In searching for meaning in a world that has placed so much emphasis on digital technology and evidence-based findings, the challenge is how to retain a sense of agency and integrity that motivates everyday living. To move beyond top-down cognitive approaches it is particularly critical to retain a sense of self and others where relationships matter. 

Incorporating relational neuroscience into our practice helps us understand those transitional stressors. Inviting in the arts builds a resilience. Resilience is embodied within the developmental stages of life.  Understanding how we may use art, music, sculpting, design and forms of artistic endeavors will allow focus and mindful engagement that balances the brain. This sense of purpose allows flexibility for growth in compassion, awareness, responsiveness, and empathy. Connecting with our environment and others generates new ideas and experiences. 

The arts provide that ability to expand and rejuvenate the right brain thinking. Introducing the Relational Care Ladder will provide a guide on where to bring right brain thinking into focus. Narrative opportunities for play, art, storytelling initiate oxytocin in the brain that lead to human connection in many ways. Learning to combine right-brain and left-brain approaches that align with the cellular neural pathways in the human brain works. 

This is a win-win celebration for self, family and community. The realization that we are creating a future for our children's children where creativity is not lost, but found.

  • Frida C. Rundell Biography

    Dr. Frida Rundell is a founding International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) faculty member and professor. A committed teacher and practitioner, she brings extensive experience in Narrative and Solution-Focused Therapies to restorative practices and supports her students in mastering competencies related to life-space crisis intervention, adversity, and trauma. Professor Rundell works directly with young people and their families, together with training and workshops for teachers and counselors in the IIRP model programs. Her current work involves using somatic experience to help traumatized children and families.

    Professor Rundell has more than 50 years of experience working with children and families facing adversity, from youth with learning difficulties to those who are homeless, disabled, delinquent or suffering from AIDS. She initiated and developed an undergraduate degree program for child and youth-care professionals at Durban University of Technology, South Africa. She has also worked with IIRP community-based programs.

    Professor Rundell is committed to empowering people and helping them achieve their potential. She has presented her work at seminars, workshops, and international conferences in over 10 countries. She earned her M.Ed. Psychology from the University of Natal, South Africa, and her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from the University of Zululand, South Africa. She is a licensed professional counselor in the USA.

    Recent publications:

    Rundell, F. C. (2022). Systemic racism: A transgenerational trauma haunting the soul of South Africa. Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, & Justice. https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/SystemicRacism_SA_0.pdf

    Rundell, F. C. (2021, Summer). Processing trauma using the Relational Care Ladder. IIRP Presidential Paper Series, 4, 1-20. https://www.iirp.edu/images/pdf/Processing_Trauma_Using_the_Relational_Care_Ladder.pdf

    Rundell, F., Sheety, A., & Negrea, V. (2018). Managing trauma: A restorative process. In E. Sengupta & P. Blessinger (Eds.), Refugee education: Integration and acceptance of refugees in mainstream society (pp. 17-31). Bingley, England: Emerald Publishing.

    https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/SystemicRacism_SA_0.pdf

    https://www.iirp.edu/images/pdf/Processing_Trauma_Using_the_Relational_Care_Ladder.pdf

KEYNOTE SPEAKER – Andrea Beck MFA, MA, BFA 

Social Emotional Prompts in the Art Room with Examples You Can Use

Andrea Beck is a National Board Art Educator who integrates Social Emotional Learning (SEL) strategies and creative writing to connect students to their latent ability to create with confidence and communicate their experience.  Like many educators, she has observed growing student disengagement and has sought to learn from research the reasons we see higher rates of anxiety, hopelessness and crisis in students.  She believes educators need to use strategies encouraging communication, connection and creative expression in all classes to link student experience to what they are learning. 

Social-emotional skill development has been proven to be an important strategy with students who have been impacted by trauma, social disadvantages and mental health struggles. As we navigate change and adjust to a new normal with our learners, SEL approaches help to develop empathy, connect learners to their own emotions, stimulate stamina and invite positive learning outcomes.

  • Andrea Beck Biography

    Andrea Beck brings to the conference her experience of teaching multiple art classes from beginner and advanced students including International Baccalaureate® (IB) Art and Advance Placement (AP) Art. She has seen over and over when students experience art as a way they can process and heal the past, process current difficulties and communicate their unique perspectives, art becomes a metacognitive platform that allows students to ‘see’ themselves and value their own unique voice. 

    Andrea Beck has a BFA from the University of Hawaii and MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She also has a MA in education from the University of Phoenix and MFA in theater arts from the University of Minnesota. She has worked as an educator in Los Angeles, CA as well as Federal Way, WA and currently Central Kitsap School District in Silverdale, WA.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER – Lyndsay Rose Tingler MA, BSED 

The ‘Shoulds’ That Shaped My Career: Effective Teaching Through Self-Awareness and Authenticity 

In an ever-challenging profession known as education, being emotionally literate has never been so critical for teacher effectiveness and wellbeing. 

Lyndsay Rose Tingler shares her adventures in her relationship with education. From being a student who loved learning from a young age to dropping out of high school a month before graduation, she will discuss her emotional illiteracy and the role education played in her separation from her passion. Journey through her societal expectations, triumphs, epics fails, self-realizations, and the key value that transformed her from being a high school dropout to a doctoral candidate in special education.

  • Lyndsay Rose Tingler Biography

    Lyndsay Rose Tingler is first and foremost a mother to her three wonderful children. She is married to her best friend Matt and loves being a homebody at her country home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She is a doctoral candidate in the University of Pittsburgh’s Doctor of Special Education program and holds a Masters Art Education with an Emphasis in Special Populations from Moore College of Art & Design.  Her Master's thesis is titled “Social Emotional Learning Visual Art Curriculum to Foster Positive Self-esteem in Girls”. Most of Lyndsay Rose Tingler’s work has been dedicated to teaching under-sourced communities including adjudicated youth and students with emotional disabilities. She founded and runs a nonprofit organization, A Frame of Mind, with a mission to teach students emotional literacy and wellness through visual art and creative movement.

WORKSHOPS

A 21st Century Search for Meaning: A Narrative Lens for Restoring Compassion, Awareness, Responsiveness and Empathy for Future Generations

Frida Rundell, PHD, MED, LPC
Founding Faculty Member and Professor, International Institute for Restorative Practices

Frida Rundell

This workshop builds on the Relational Care Ladder. We will explore practice circles that may be used before and after creative and artistic experiences have been engaged in. Narrative storytelling and being vulnerable requires professionals to introduce structure that makes an experience safe. At the same time, acknowledging participants self-worth with judgement allows exploration of the participants potential. Structure and nurture create the foundation for creative expression. Engagement and challenge follow with ease once the basic rungs of the Relational Care Ladder are in place. 

Two restorative circles will be explored in this session. Participants will experience in small group settings, a listening circle process where structure and nurture are addressed; and a compassionate witnessing circle where structure, nurture and engagement are invited. Each circle provides a practice where meaning making allows self-expression.

A meta-discussion at the end will explore the applicability of these circles in the life space of the artist. The circles’ major purpose is to promote compassion, awareness, responsiveness, and empathy.

Emotional Landscapes and the Mandals

Andrea Beck, MFA, MA, BFA
National Board Certified Teacher High School Art Educator, Central Kitsap School District, Silverdale, WA

Andrea Beck

Social Emotional Learning is not just a one-time lesson plan or activity you do, but rather an intentional approach and classroom environment that creates a safe space and empowers students to develop trust and self-mastery. Educators struggle to meet the needs of students with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, especially now when anxiety and depression trends have been growing. Students often carry with them trauma and stress impacting how they learn, where they are unable to switch out of 'fight or flight' thinking and regulate their choices. Art provides a process to channel and document feelings and anxiety.  This workshop facilitates teachers use of SEL frameworks in art activities to build self-esteem, increase awareness and foster interpersonal skills. 

Empathetic Perspectives 

Lyndsay Rose Tingler, MA, BSED
Executive Director, A Frame of Mind, https://aframeofmindart.com

Lyndsay Rose Tingler

This workshop offers insight and empathy into adjudicated youth residing in confined locations. Through the lens of aesthetics and identity, participants will step into the shoes of the students at the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center literally and figuratively.

The workshop will begin in the galleries as we delve into discord around the students’ artworks and powerful statements; emphasizing students’ beliefs, self-esteem, and life stories.

Next, we focus on the duality of being a teacher and student in a delicate environment structured for confinement and subordination through art making. Participants will create art under extreme restrictions similar to the students to gain empathy and insight into what the students are experiencing residing in an incarcerated space. Then, the focus will turn to the dynamics of the teacher/student relationship and how the vulnerability and self-awareness of the educator can have the power to empower their students. 

Championing Young Artists to Play

Eric Anthony Berdis, MFA, BFA
Kutztown University Resident Artist
https://www.teachingartistpodcast.com/episode-88-eric-anthony-berdis/

Eric Anthony Berdis

Artists are creative problems-solvers bringing to light personal and systematic issues in the world today. They are critical thinkers exploring interests to ask their audience to stop, reflect and appreciate what they made. Often young artists' opportunities to create in the classroom are reduced to copying and following rules. This workshop aims to compare experiences between mimic activities vs play-based art experience. Participants are invited to play, create, and be artists along with Kutztown University Miller Art Gallery’s Artist-in-Residence, Eric Anthony Berdis.  

  • Eric Anthony Berdis Biography

    Eric Anthony Berdis (Erie, PA) is an artist and educator whose practice strives to celebrate DIY collectivity and play for both themselves and his students. All while reflecting on the ghost of queer history and activism. Eric Berdis is excited to be the Marlin and Regina Miller Art Gallery Artist in Residence this fall at Kutztown University. Other solo exhibitions include the University Galleries of Illinois State University, Project 1612 (Peoria, IL), Practice Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Bunker Project (Pittsburgh, PA), Iridian Gallery (Richmond, VA), Stay Home Gallery (Paris, TN), Oklahomo (Chicago), Erie Art Museum, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Eric Berdis received his BFA from Slippery Rock University and MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Works have been published on Teaching Artist Podcast, Emergency Index Annual Performance Publication, and New American Painting.

C.A.R.E. + S.T.E.A.M. + S.E.L. = The Chromatic Data Project!

Ann Lemon, MFA, MSED, MA (in progress), BS
Executive Director, The Amos Lemon Burkhart Foundation, https://www.amoslemon.org/

Ann Lemon photo

Recognizing a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, school systems and communities have been challenged to respond to our pandemic-scarred, screen-wired and news-cycle-traumatized “Generation Z”. Perhaps we can divert some of the attention and funds devoted to last-decade’s buzzword, the so-called “hard science” “S.T.E.M.” skills; insert an A for ART, center a lesson around mental health, and have a win-win-win for the art room. 

C.A.R.E. + S.T.E.A.M. + S.E.L. = The Chromatic Data Project! postcard

In this workshop participants will experience a curriculum project that foregrounds students’ interior worlds and allows them to compare insides instead of comparing outsides – the opposite of Instagram. This project was conceived by Ann Lemon, founder of The Amos Lemon Burkhart Foundation, with then high school art intern Giavanna Lisa as part of the Against the Wind installation, which engages visitors with hands-on, evidence-based activities on the topics of creativity, addiction and mental health.  When the final project is displayed, students engage empathetically by identifying shared issues with their peers and have a window into the emotional worldview of others. The resulting artwork/ dataset allows students, teachers and faculty to widen their viewpoint and assess the mental health of the community, identifying opportunities for positive intervention. Against the Wind has been hosted by the Goggleworks Center for the Arts in Reading, PA, the Richmond Art Museum in Richmond, Indiana, and this fall will be traveling to the WordPlay Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  • Ann Lemon Biography

    Ann Lemon is the Executive Director of the Amos Lemon Burkhart Foundation and “Amos’s mom.” Amos “Lemon” Burkhart was a talented young artist who also struggled with mental illness and substance abuse, and accidentally drowned under the influence of Xanax, alcohol and pot, in 2018. The 501c3 Foundation’s mission is to continue to promote his work, and to inspire teens to “stay alive and make art”. The organization creates exhibitions, workshops, and media campaigns to create a new conversation about creativity and mental health, and to help young artists resist threats to their wellbeing like addiction, self-harm, racism and gender discrimination. The construction of a community art gallery and Commons in Mohnton, PA is underway and will begin renovation in 2023. 

    Ann Lemon’s first career was as an internationally awarded Art Director and eventually, Creative Director, in the fast-paced world of New York ad agencies and Fortune 500 clients. She taught advertising, design, and design history for ten years, as a tenured Associate Professor in Communication Design at Kutztown University retiring in 2021. She is currently enrolled as a graduate student in the Counseling Department at Kutztown University, pursuing certification as an addictions counselor, and is grateful for 30 continuous years of sobriety and ongoing work with the recovering community.

SoulCollage®: A Rewarding Inroad for Exploring and Cultivating Caring for Self and Others

Mindy Jacobson-Levy, MCAT, ATR-BC, LPC, HLM PAATA
Board Certified, Registered Art Psychotherapist
President-Elect, Pennsylvania Art Therapy Association
SoulCollage® Trained Facilitator
https://arttherapy.org/blog-pandemic-visual-journal/

Mindy Jacobson-Levy

SoulCollage® is a 2-step expressive arts process that entails the creation of numerous 5” x 8” cards combined with journaling for soul discovery (Frost, 2010). Each card has one energy that is a guide, helper, or opponent that has meaning solely for the person who created it. Collectively, one’s personal SoulCollage® deck has no limits in terms of usage and may expand over time to hundreds of cards. The card-creator may speak with the voice of the card to explore elements related to one’s committee (self), community, universal archetypes, and chakras. One may also gain insight related to a feeling or topic, or for guiding answers to a personal question. This takes place through written dialogue with the card, which speaks to the creator through self-responses to sequentially posed questions. While the process may sound complex, SoulCollage® is a user-friendly method that readily yields introspection, illumination, and balance.

Mindy Jacobson-Levy artwork

I’m Unafraid

In this workshop, participants will be invited to explore the exciting realm of SoulCollage® from a personal perspective “in community.” In this hands-on workshop we will create several cards related to self/other care that may be applied to schools and art settings. Through art making, journaling, and discussion in small groups and collectively, participants will experience this methodology as an applicable tool for understanding how one’s role as a caring professional may be identified and cultivated through the arts. The benefits of facilitator training will also be highlighted.

  • Mindy Jacobson-Levy Biography

    Mindy Jacobson-Levy, MCAT, ATR-BC, LPC, HLM PAATA is a board certified, registered art psychotherapist, SoulCollage® trained facilitator, and licensed professional counselor in PA and NJ. She specializes in complex trauma and eating disorders, and has been in private practice since 1980. Mindy is the President-Elect of the Pennsylvania Art Therapy Association and on the faculty of the Expressive Therapies Summit. She offers professional supervision and consultations for art therapists and other mental health professionals nationally and internationally, and is a workshop facilitator on a multitude of topics. She formerly taught and supervised graduate students at Drexel University for forty years.

     Mindy received the Delaware Valley Art Therapy Association (now PAATA) Honorary Life Member award (1996) and the Innovative Applications of Art Therapy Award (2015). Among her publications are Creative Destruction and Transformation in Art and Therapy: Reframing, Reforming, Reclaiming (Jacobson-Levy & Miller, Art Therapy Journal, 2022), Finding Your Voice through Creativity: The Art and Journaling Workbook for Disordered Eating (Gϋrze Books, 2010), Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults (ISST-D, 2005 & 2011), Abreacting and Assimilating Traumatic Dissociated Memories of MPD Patients Through Art Therapy (Art Therapy Journal, 1994), and Group Art Therapy with Multiple Personality Disorder Patients: A Viable Alternative to Isolation (in Kluft, E., 1993). She also has several conference audiotapes published, related to dissociation and art therapy. 

EXHIBITIONS

Marlin and Regina Miller Art Gallery
These Ones Are Going to Grow Big Someday
Eric Anthony Berdis

Eric Anthony Berdis artwork
  • Artist Statement

    My work embraces a maximalist aesthetic of archival research, personal secrets, and pubescent gay boy glamour. In periods of instability, insecurity, and oppression, I, as a queer maker, continuously find ways to imagine and embody joy through my practice. Happiness, play, and pleasure are not only sought after during difficult times but are arguably necessary components of survival. For queer artists like myself, joy is an act of resilience—a critical method of subverting hegemonic narratives of suffering. Queer joy in my work is found through forms of exuberance such as world-building, committing to materials, and escaping into new types of processes. Inspired in part by Jack Halberstam’s “The Queer Art of Failure”, the studio becomes experimental, joyful, and playful during uncertain or fearful times. 

    I seek to create a stimulating yet jarring experience while aiming to create a familiar and inherently strange world for the viewer. Using imagery of superheroes, abandoned fish sculptures in my hometown, and queer historical icons, I seek to build a world and share that place through drawing, installations, objects, and costumes. My practice engages childhood idealism, mythology, and historic events, to subvert ideas of place, language, and imagery that are often considered neutral in a hetero-normative society. 

    In my work, thrift store castoffs and hobbyist craft supplies are reassembled into a cast of characters that blur the lines between ghost, creature, and friend. These discarded materials are imbued in perspective and care that, with fresh eyes can be magical. None of these materials cover the body or hide uncomfortable truths of failure or becoming; the AIDS epidemic; or navigating inclusive conversations and spaces. Slapdash construction conveys the enormity and messiness of feeling in the face of a political structure that confines queer bodies. For this reason, I draw from activist processes. Appliqué cloth and safety pins together reference the San Francisco Flower Power performance troupe, the Cockettes, who, through their pageantry, changed notions of dress, gender, community, and the ACT UP movement that demanded change in the healthcare industry.

Sharadin Atrium Gallery
Unsheltered Perspectives
Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center

Unsheltered Perspectives artwork
  • Artist Statement

    The girls (cis/trans/nonbinary gender) at the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center were asked to delve deep into their own perspectives– on their lives, their identity, and their choices to gain an understanding of their unique view of the world. With the guidance and knowledge of teaching artist Lindsey Rose Tingler, the residents at the center found healing and empowerment while gaining a new point of you using art, creativity, and self-awareness. 

    The youth residents responded by creating pieces through identity themed essential questions. The prompts were aimed at diving deep into the core of who they are as individuals, how their choices in life stories contribute to their identity, and how their environment has a huge impact on their mental health. They found meaning in their identity through photographs, mixed media collages, paintings, and writings centered around the core of their mental well-being. 

    The Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center opened in 2012 to provide temporary safe and secure care for alleged delinquent juveniles and dependent juveniles, males and females between the ages of 10 and 18 years of age in Lancaster County. The Center offers a wide range of helpful services that support juveniles’ physical, emotional, and social development. 

    A Frame of Mind, a 501(c)3 organization, established in 2019, is dedicated to providing visual art programming to children and teens who endure depression, anxiety, and stress. The organization's mission is to provide support, guidance, a safe place, and an outlet for creativity. The purpose of the visual art programming is to develop appropriate interpersonal skills, healthy coping mechanisms, and social responsibility to foster lifelong success focusing on self-care and positive mental health through the arts.