Mid-Hudson Teacher and Artist Showcase
November 18, 2022 | 5:30 pm-7:30pm | FREE to attend
Hudson River Maritime Museum | 50 Rondout Landing, Kingston, NY
Experience important local artforms and learn what happened when educators included guest artists in their classrooms this fall. The Maritime Museum Director of Education will open the museum to participants following the program and share more about the resources of this site.
Teachers: Learn from experienced educators in Elementary, Middle School, and High School. Earn CTLEs, gain new ideas for building culturally engaged lessons, and connect with the growing network of teachers!
Meet the Artists
Andrea Del Cid I was born in 1980 in Guatemala City in the country of Guatemala, located in Central America. I came to live in New York when I was 10 years old. I have always enjoyed art, from painting to sculpting, writing and anything, really, as long as there is a chance for creativity. My love for art started when I was about 8 years old and would go visit my grandma Julia. She lived in a very small town. They did not have toys for us and definitely no video games. What was a child supposed to do? Well, we made our own. We made kites, paper boats, and dolls, among other things. I fell in love with the idea that I could create using my imagination and whatever I had available to work with.
Vitalia Deriabina The magic of paints and brushes always fascinated my imagination as a child. When not reading a book, one could always spot me drawing. My parents, who are far from the art world professionally, kept saying that my grandfather passed his artistic genes to me. He was a self-taught artist and a beekeeper in a rural village of Ukraine, who admired life and its beauty and presented it to the community. When I was a child, I used to spend summers at my grandparents’ old traditional clay house with a straw roof filled with big paintings on the walls which created a feeling of being in the arts gallery.
Marielena Ferrer The arts have been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up in an artistic household where instead of buying gifts we would make traditional crafts and wrap them in the most creative ways possible, using newspaper, burlap, cloth, or anything at hand. Being the daughter of a folklorist also made me very aware of the rich and very diverse cultures of my natal Venezuela. One of the most traditional crafts I learned at an early age was making “devil masks.”
Maia Martinez My name is Maia Martinez. I was born in a small town in Argentina. I grew up on a farm with six siblings. I am a dancer, an instructor, a performer, a groover, and a mover. I grew up around music and dance. Both my mother and father danced. My father was a farmer and a folklore instructor. My mother was a community leader and an educator. Although I was the only one who pursued dance as a career, all my siblings play guitar, dance, and sing. You may ask, Why dance? Dance gives me the opportunity to express and to connect with myself and others. I find that it is the shortcut to happiness.
John Mylod My name is John Mylod. I am the last active commercial fisherman in the Poughkeepsie reach of the Hudson River and one of only a few on the entire tidewater limits of the Hudson. I am a native of Poughkeepsie and continue to live in the house where I grew up. Originally, I started fishing for shad in the early 1970s, and with a friend, Bud Tschudin, formed the M/T Net Fishing Co. However, in 2010, due to overfishing offshore, power plants fish kills, and destruction of habitat, government regulations prevent me from fishing for shad. So now I can only fish for river herring and blue crabs.
Karen Pillsworth My name is Karen Sangaline Pillsworth and I am a storyteller and story practitioner. My home now is Kingston, New York but at one point in my life I moved 13 times in 13 years! Moving around was exciting and challenging and ALWAYS made for good stories. I am pretty sure that I always wanted to be a storyteller, but I didn’t know it. As a child I was very shy, but I loved to listen to stories. I loved the kinds of stories that were written down in books, however, what I REALLY liked, was listening around the kitchen table or sitting on the front porch as the grown-ups shared their stories.
Jing Shuai My name is Jing Shuai. My last name, Shuai, means the most powerful position in the military. My first name, Jing, means tranquil. When I was young, I didn’t quite understand the meaning of the combination of these two words. It wasn’t until my Tai Chi instructor exam in Mainland China that I realized that my name represents Yin and Yang, two opposing energies in life. The essence of Tai Chi is to seek simplicity through nature, and this guides my teaching and creative aesthetic. I hope to share the cultural origins of Tai Chi with people who love art, nature, and wellness.
Thank you for Attending the Culture, Community, and the Classroom showcase! This program happens because of the support of many important funders and individuals like yourself. Please consider donating to support these programs.
About the project
Seven artists and three teachers in school districts around the region participated in a summer workshop at Arts Mid-Hudson with nationally recognized faculty from Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education. Learn from these local teachers and traditional artists who participated in this national initiative to incorporate diverse cultural arts and knowledge into classrooms.
Thank you to these funders who made it possible to offer this as a free professional development opportunity for teachers and artists: The National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and individual donors to Local Learning.
We are grateful to our Mid-Hudson local colleagues Tamarah Fernandez-Bridgewater, Kofi Donkor, and Elinor Levy for their help in planning this professional development series. We want to acknowledge the support of Ellen McHale and New York Folklore, Arts Mid-Hudson, the Hudson River Maritime Museum, and JoAnn Murphy-Genter at the MidHudson Teacher Center.
