WHAT IS A TEACHING ARTIST?
The Arizona Commission on The Arts http://www.azarts.gov/ Artists are exemplary problem-solvers and life-long learners, constantly striving to improve, deepen and refine their artistic expression. They work specifically with the skills of creativity: discovery, wonder, and recombining the stuff of the world into new knowledge. If human beings have managed to survive through the development of skills that allow us to collaborate: language pictures, gestures, movement, “it follows that the art originate deep in our intelligence,” in our ability to survive by means of creating and understanding metaphor. Education in the arts is an irreplaceable medium for developing this intelligence. Successful teaching artists help provide a tangible link between the creative process and all kinds of learning, and they make manifest in classroom and community settings the human drive to survive by making meaning our of the world. For many years, professional artists have practiced their art and made si
