TEACHING RESUME
Shelley Cook-Contreras is an internationally exhibited artist, producing interdisciplinary performances, films, and installation artworks. Her past projects have been funded by the National Endowments for the Arts, Arizona State University’s Institute for Studies in the Arts, and the National Institute of Fine Arts, INBA, in Mexico, the National Fund for the Arts and Culture, FONCA; with the Rockefeller Foundation, and The California Arts Council. In her working philosophy, she states, “I seek to create works that enliven with communication and awareness. I approach artmaking as cultural activism. I think of artworks as "activators", to ignite a questioning of our culture and conditioning.”
As an educator she encourages students to develop an inter-cultural awareness in relationship to art, utilizing a keen observation of ones' own self and the systems in which we live. After earning her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute's New Genres Department, Shelley taught Interdisciplinary Art as a member of the Spatial Arts Faculty of San Jose State University. She has presented workshops and lectures in the US, Mexico, and abroad at such venues as Mexico's El Chopo Museum, The San Francisco Art Institute; the Worldwide Video Festival, Holland; and NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. She has developed bilingual art pieces, which have been exhibited both in Mexico, Europe, and the United States.
Shelley works with both youth and children through Artist Residencies, such as “A Living Library Media Project”, for which she designed and taught a special intermedia program. In this project the Science of ecology and gardening are integrated with art via an ongoing study of sustainable gardening practices and digital storytelling, and traditional art making. That translates into kids with cameras filming spiders and learning how to protect the earth! In another project, she guided first-graders to discover their personal "Power Animals", utilizing, painting, ceramics, music, and dance. As a long-term substitute in LA, she taught highschoolers filmmaking skills, enabling them to look more deeply into their own identity through time-based self-portraits.