Teaching Studio Art to Non-Majors // Susan Altman // Erika Mahr // Steve Rossi

CAA Conversations

Susan Altman, Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College, Erika Mahr an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College, and Steve Rossi an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University discuss their shared experiences related to the many benefits and challenges of teaching studio art to non-majors. Susan Altman is a Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College where she teaches courses in drawing, painting and printmaking to both majors and non-majors. In addition to her studio teaching, she is the Director of The Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching and where her research interest is in the pedagogy of teaching studio art, as well as improving teaching across the disciplines. As a practicing artist, her work is focused on drawing and printmaking. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a NYFA Artist Fellowship. She lives and works in New York City. Erika Mahr is an artist and educator based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College and is currently serving as the Department Chair for the Art + Design and Performing Arts Department. Her studio practice explores drawing with an expanded sensibility and is invested in the act of mediation, reducing, and repeating to locate where the ephemeral and concrete intersect, become blurred, and create tension. She earned a BFA from the University of Florida and MFA from Hunter College and is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Drawing. Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.