MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program
Yet, introductions provide a starting place. My reservations aside, here is a beginning: I am an inter-disciplinary artist, teacher, and social activist working in Providence, Rhode Island. My work is primarily concerned with narrative and the construction of identity within the context of contemporary social and political life. Through activism, painting, writing, photography and digital performance, I explore the interstices and banalities of my identity in a search for connective, reparative and shared meaning. As a teacher, I am committed to the dignity and intrinsic value of each of us as learners. I believe that we rarely know what we truly know. More often, we don't value what we know, instead relying on facts, figures and experts who tell us that they know more. The process through which we come to understand ourselves as theoreticians, meaning makers, and actors-in-the-world is sacred to me. I am committed to understanding how we "own" knowledge and to articulating the ways that we best convey our knowledge to others. I believe artists hold a special trust to develop voices as makers of new meaning, translators of ideas, theoreticians, and seers. My theoretical preoccupations include the American Transcendentalists and American history; queer theory and history; post-structural theory; phenomenology; the public engagement of artists; and documentary practice. I love comic books. I am Director of the Office of Public Engagement at the Rhode Island School of Design. For almost eighteen years, I was affiliated with the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University -- acting as its Director and as an Associate Dean of the College. I have also participated in a variety of activist and public interest projects, including work with children with learning differences, education programs for immigrants and refugees, HIV / AIDS activism and service, sustainable urban agriculture, community arts programs, national service, fair and open government, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer rights, pubic education, and community health access. I am a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Illustration and of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College. In addition I was trained in leadership for social change and progressive education pedagogy at the Highlander Center for Education and Social Research.
Educational Background: MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College; BFA in Illustration, Rhode Island School of Art and Design.
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Peter Hocking, MFA