Min Gu

Ph.D. in Art Education 

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As a researcher, I work with artists who have disabilities. My research problematizes conceptions that consider disability as a personal, biological deficit and explores how disability can be a creative force to produce new knowledge of art, experience, body, and material. 

 

I am an artist, mainly practicing Chinese ink paintings. In summer 2016, I was invited to the Creative Growth Art Center, a contemporary art studio for artists with disabilities in California, to hold a Chinese Ink Painting and Calligraphy Workshop for the artists there.

 

I love teaching. As an art educator, I have been working with students in different learning environments. I worked with students from the course ART 001 Introduction to Visual Arts on campus at Penn State University in 2018 and online via Penn State World Campus in 2017. In 2016, I mentored preservice teachers from the course ART ED 489 - Advanced Practicum, who taught first to fifth-grade students at Saturday Art School, a university directed art program for children at Penn State. My experience of working with children with autism and artist with disabilities made me question stereotypes and “normal” representations of art, experience, and ways of learning. It also changed my understanding of my role as an art educator. I see myself no longer an instructor but a facilitator. As I continue to explore what art can be with my students, I listen to and learn from them who challenge, shape, and better my teaching.