MARY CATE FRUEHAN

My role as an educator is grounded in my identity as a maker. The opportunity that I find in my studio to explore, investigate, and make meaning is the impulse for my pedagogy. 

Studio classrooms provide a framework to help students engage in investigative art processes that are personally meaningful. When students engage in personally meaningful artmaking experiences, they are given a voice to communicate their perspectives, experiences and discoveries. The become contributors of knowledge, not just consumers.
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Artmaking is important for all students because because it teaches valuable ways of thinking. It empowers students as problem-solvers. It employs the body in ways that other subjects let fall by the wayside; students can think with their hands as well as their heads. It teaches technical skills that give students confidence. It demands a responsiveness to materials, experiences, ideas, and other people, and this responsiveness teaches students how to turn failure into something new and exciting. It requires self-evaluation, and it gives students tools to be critics of their own work and of the world outside of them. These modes of thinking become increasingly important in a world where creativity and innovation are inextricably linked. Art education is not supplemental, auxiliary, or bonus–it is essential.