Antonio Gonzalez-Walker, PhD

Affiliated Faculty

Gonzalez-Walker is an artist and teacher who sees learning as an art, a multidimensional experience that draws on multiple intelligences, neuroplasticity, kinetic pedagogy, low-tech and high-tech approaches, left-right brain techniques. In addition to his teaching at Goddard College, Dr. Gonzalez-Walker teaches at the University of Puerto Rico’s Fine Arts Department. In addition to teaching, he is the Director of Habitats Creativos, a non-profit creative and design organization; has worked with the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico as Department of Production, Technologies and Media Director and Special Project Director; and an Eco-Cultures Organizer for the Commission on Development of National Culture. Over the years he has worked with several initiatives, in both urban and rural settings, involving large scale art projects and site-specific interventions. Recent significant projects are: Cayey para el Mundo (a community based environmental action group), Santurce es Ley (a downtown art fest), and Eco-Cultures.

Education

PhD, Technology, Multidisciplinary Arts, Cultural Studies, Cornell University
MA, Comparative Literature, Cornell University
BA, Philosophy, Economics, Cornell University

Areas of Expertise

  • Arts
  • Arts Education
  • Environmental and Urban Activism
  • Visual Culture
  • Digital Art
  • 2D Design
  • Video
  • Multi-Media Installation
  • Web Design
  • Humanities
  • EcoCulture

Personal Statement

What is living art today? How much of life must we consider to be part of our work, of our investigations? I choose to see human well-being and nature interconnected, as an integral part of our social construct. This fundamental belief shapes today my politics, my aesthetics, the meaning of learning and creation.

For many years my research and aesthetics interests were informed by the concept and practice ars.poetica, a total art view of life and the meaning of creation. In the early moons of my youth, a summer in Cambridge gave me my first opening into Astronomy, Philosophy and Creative Writing my first major interests—to look at the mystery of the heavens, the how and why in all and how to put in words. Now I look towards Earth–create poems, movements, and photographs from these earthly views and sensations; I also look for my country to be able to feed itself, to grow healthy food and enjoy the freedom and safety of food sovereignty. In projects like ANAMU an agro-wellness community, agroSanturce we created our first initiative within San Juan Puerto Rico, studying and organizing alternatives for food production and consumption in urban areas.

Now my philosophy is closer to deep ecology, the inclusion of all living systems into the equations of human endeavors and thus seeking the application of whole systems networks in artistic, educational and cultural projects. Now wellness and sustainability become my art and practice. Less drama, more healing! In an age so close to a chronic stage of tranapocalipsia nothing short of a major paradigm shift in modes of creation and understanding are needed. Now I work with Habitats Creativos and multiVERSIA, two design projects focused on the development of creative educational platforms and alternative economies. This summer we created Quien Soy?:microComics y Grandes Historias de Desarrollo Personal (Who am I? microComics and Great Stories)—a creative personal development workshop for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico and for inner-city youth of the Santurce area. Exploring the language of the times, we modeled our workshop using comics, movement, visualization and narrative for the creation of short comics and power cards.

More to say, even more so to do; looking forward to meeting and creating with the Goddard Community.

antonio.gonzalezwalker@goddard.edu

Affiliation BA Education
BFA Socially Engaged Art
Goddard Graduate Institute
Individualized Bachelor of Arts
Individualized Master of Arts
MA Education
MA Health Arts & Sciences
MA Social Innovation & Sustainability
Teacher Licensure
Undergraduate Studies Program