Kori with Peregrina Garcia, a member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo
In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the Foundation has reserved $35,000 for professional development for the MLWGS faculty. Kori Mosley recently returned from a workshop called “Tres Culturas: Exploring the Artistic Spirit of Santa Fe & Albuquerque.” Kori teaches Art I, Art II, and Art III, and is the sponsor for Art Club and for the National Art Honor Society.
Kori reports that the workshop, “allowed me to explore the history, diversity, and artistic heritage of New Mexico’s Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures.” During her time there, she visited museums like the New Mexico Capitol Art Collection, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, the Museum of International Folk Art, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. She toured the living history site El Rancho de las Golondrinas and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.
The Petroglyph National Monument showcased “awe-inspiring connections to an ancient past,” and she described the immersive art installation “Meow Wolf” as “beyond words.” She visited the studio of abstract artist Carol Miraben and the Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery, experiences which added to her understanding of the depth, meaning, and metaphor in the work of Native artists. Kori also visited both the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Georgia O’Keeffe house in Abiquiu. “I’ve always loved her work,” Kori says, “And this museum helped me to learn even more about this very strong and influential woman.”
“Through this experience, I was able to better understand the ways in which these cultures are forever intertwined (the good, along with the bad and the ugly…) and how the art produced then and now is a reflection of these relationships and circumstances,” Kori writes. “This experience supports the general approach that I take when teaching art, which is to ask students to consider culture as a driving force for artists; it is through contextual understanding of time and place that we can better know why art is the way that it is at any point in history. Further, this type of cultural exploration encourages tolerance and discourages prejudice, helping to deepen awareness of self and of the human condition (which art documents).”
Kori plans to organize the information and resources she collected on this trip on a page on her website over the course of the coming school year, and she has already started to plan start-of-the-year classroom activities inspired by the experience.
The Foundation is proud to support remarkable teachers like Kori as they seek to broaden the knowledge and depth they bring to their instruction. Help us keep doing that and more by donating to the 2017-18 Annual Fund today.