Alabama Art Education Association

I would greatly appreciate if you would forward this request for participation in the jerUSAlem-usa blogart project to art teachers in Lawrence County, Alabama, where there is a place named Jerusalem. They are invited to have their students participate in the jerUSAlem-usa blogart project. In addition to Alabama, there are Jerusalems in Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont. JerUSAlem-usa is an art project that links young people from the more than twenty American Jerusalems with those in the original Jerusalem in Israel for which they are named.

For example, see the "Jerusalem, Ohio" posting of Joy Yontz's 5th graders at www.jerUSAlem-usa.com. Her students are photographing and writing about what they would most like others to learn about their lives. These images and texts will be shared with students in schools in Jerusalem, Israel, who will in turn share their photos and words with students in America's Jerusalems. High school and college students are also participating.

I have been an NAEA member for the many years that I worked in the States since earning my doctorate in art education at NYU. I was professor of art and education at Columbia University, head of the art department at Pratt Institute, dean at New World School of the Arts in Miami, and research fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. My papers have been published in four NAEA books (Inter/sections/Inter/actions: Art Education in a Digital Visual Culture, Interdisciplinary Art Education: Building Bridges to Connect Disciplines and Cultures, Semiotics of Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance, Community Connections: Intergenerational Links in Art Education) and in the NAEA journals Art Education and Studies in Art Education. I am author of The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age (2011) and Educating Artists for the Future (2008), both published by Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press. I am currently working in Jerusalem, Israel.

In appreciation,

Mel

Dr. Mel Alexenberg, Head of the School of the Arts, Emunah College, Jerusalem, Israel