RHed Talks Presents: Art in Education

Join us for an evening celebrating the joy and profound impact of art in today’s education and culture. Rocky Hill School’s Rachel Armentano, winner of the 2015 Rhode Island Middle School Art Educator award, will be joined by Dr. Lucy Spelman, former director of the National Zoo, exotic medicine veterinary specialist, and instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design. The two art educators will describe their own passions and thoughts on the importance of art education in today’s world.

Guests are invited to walk through the All-School Art Show prior to the event. A recent drawing project in the Upper School featuring a study on extinction will also be on display in the Flynn Academic Center.

Click here to RSVP

Part 1: Art Education and Contemporary Culture
Presented by Rachel Armentano

Art education is much more than learning how to mix paint colors or draw realistically. In this talk Rachel reveals how her teaching process enables students to interpret and influence the highly visual world around and ahead of them. Find out how the art room is an incubator for inquiry, analysis, and problem solving.

Part 2: Art Can Save a Panda
Presented by Dr. Lucy Spelman

Dr. Lucy Spelman will demonstrate the need for greater public engagement in animal conservation through the arts. New, more collaborative and creative approaches to saving animal species are urgent. People live together in an increasingly urban world, disconnected from nature, unaware that wild animals are rapidly going extinct and that our health depends on their health. Using examples, including work by her students at the Rhode Island School of Design, Lucy will show how it is possible to combine the arts and sciences to make the problems facing the animal kingdom, which includes humans, more meaningful, relevant, and accessible.

About the Presenters

Rachel Armentano

Rachel teaches art for grades 6, 7, 8, and 9 at Rocky Hill School. She was recently awarded 2015 Rhode Island Middle School Art Educator of the year by Rhode Island Art Education Association. Her previous K-8 teaching experience includes the Framingham Public Schools and Edward Brooke Charter School in Boston. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from Skidmore College and a Master’s degree in Art Education from Tufts University in association with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. In addition to teaching in schools Rachel has worked as a museum educator, visiting artist, and family programs facilitator at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Danforth Museum. She has been a guest speaker and panelist for Tufts University and Curry College.

Dr. Lucy Spelman

Dr. Spelman has worked as a zoo veterinarian, zoo director, wildlife veterinarian, media consultant, writer, public speaker, and educator. She is the author of various scientific articles, the National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia, and co-editor of The Rhino with Glue-on Shoes. She currently practices at Ocean State Veterinary Specialists and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2015 she gave a TEDx talk, “Art Can Save a Panda,” and founded Creature Conserve. She also serves on the boards of Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Rhode Island, Art of Conservation in Tulum, Mexico, and Karanambu Trust in Guyana, SA.

Free and open to the public.

Click here to RSVP