http://israelhannah.wixsite.com/professionalpractice/about1-c178uMy teaching philosophy is strongly linked with my artistic experiences and understanding of the world around me. I believe that sharing my experience and knowledge enables me to address an intellectual relationship with students, which creates an understanding of art.

 

As an artist, I am interested in sharing the introspective moments of everyday life with viewers. My work explores the internal dialogue and duality of the complex relationship between how we perceive our public and private space. The relationship focuses on how art can reflect the personal life experiences that we usually don't share with anyone else. Art, then, can become a vehicle to rescue this profound insight from the deepest recesses of our memory.

 

In teaching, practice, and exhibition, my approach is to maintain enough space for the students to be able to develop insight into confidence and intellectual understanding to find solutions to their problems. The development of digital technologies enables us to educate students to have a broader and more prospective vision of humanity. Thus, studying art leads to studying your own culture. Art must be an alternative process finding a way to perceive our everyday life.

 

This process is unlike that approach to teaching in which everything has an expected answer. Our questions have no specific or right answers. Rather, there are many answers and even perhaps no right or correct ones. Teaching in this approach is not an easy task because the process involves a lot of invisible, conceptual and time- consuming work. This teaching is unlike introducing the technical practice to students where repetition alone leads to proficiency. Here the student and the teacher are involved in a thinking process that propels us to take steps. If either one stops this process, it is over. The highest priority is for students to learn how to educate themselves as artists.

 

My assignments are usually very tight and restricted at the start, but eventually, they become open-ended. Students are encouraged to think and to find their own direction using the assignment as a guideline. This allows students to explore their imagination and allows me to teach them how to clarify their own ideas and to practice conceptual building skills. Students are then able to search among a variety of solutions to one assignment. I eventually get many different types of work that respond to the assignment.

In a group critique, before an artist is allowed to talk about his/her own work, we examine that piece and how it has come to its present form. This helps us in two ways. First, we are able to talk about what we are looking at without any prejudice or bias from the artist. Second, we can train the eye to look at art and to articulate and discuss it in depth. In turn, the artist is able to learn both what the artwork communicates and how other people perceive the artwork.

 

It is important to expose students to contemporary art and art theories that lead them to learn and develop their own artistic vocabulary in the context of the current critical art world. In my classes, I introduce alternative ways of thinking through research projects, reading and writing assignments, student presentations and group discussion. Additionally, I encourage students to apply for artistic opportunities outside of school, by giving them information and by helping them edit their statements and proposals. A logical thought leads to clear communication, and an intuitive leap allows one to explore an unknown path. Both of these steps are important. The physical process of making art can be one of the most enjoyable activities. I believe that a great piece always maintains a fine balance among intellectual, intuitive, and physical processes.

 

 

 

 

Bio

 

Hannah Israel is a Professor of Art and the Gallery Director for the Norman Shannon and Emmy Lou P. Illges Gallery at Columbus State University Department of Art.  Professor Israel received her Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her Bachelors Degree in Art History at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Prior to her position at CSU, Professor Israel worked at The International Studio and Curatorial Program and James Cohan Gallery in New York City. She has curated several group exhibitions, exhibited her own work nationally and internationally.  Hannah Israel received The Elizabeth Art Foundation Studio Arts Grant, The Daedalus Art Foundation Grant, and The Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship. She has received the Banff Artist in Residency award and the Blue Heron Nature Preserve AIR award for 2019.  She will have two solo exhibitions in the fall of 2019 at the Kentler International Drawing Space in NYC and the Heron Gallery in Atlanta.

 

Hannah Israel artistic work examines collective mythology, imaginable margins, and accessibility of experience.  By creating a path or determining and finding connections, a new source of outcome comes to play.  

 

 

She lives and work with her husband, Orion Wertz and her sone Oskar at Columbus, GA

 

 

hannahisrael.net

israel_hannah@columbusstate.edu