Pennisi Shares How Travel to Thailand, Ireland Informs Her Art

Alice Pennisi, associate professor and chair of the Art Education Department, has spent her life in an almost constant state of movement and travel. In the last three decades, she has lived on three continents, in four countries, and in nine cities.

She will discuss “Doing the Same Thing Differently: Teaching, Learning, and Art-Making in Thailand and Ireland” as part of the “Artists on the Road: Travel as Source of Inspiration” series on Thursday, March 9, to at 12:15 p.m. in the Science and Mathematics Complex 170.

In this presentation, Pennisi will examine three aspects of experiences that challenge ideas: doing the same thing differently; value and cultural memory; and seeing artwork as commentary, based upon taking art education graduate students to Thailand and undergraduates of all majors to Ireland.

“I have lived in Southeast Asia, so I feel at home in Thailand,” she said. “I miss the valuing of art, which is embedded in everyday life there.”

Pennisi’s arts-based research was presented in the 2016 Anne Frank Project festival exhibition, Nine American Boys, which paid tribute to nine African American youths who were falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931.

Pennisi received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, and studied painting at the New York Studio School. Pennisi holds a doctorate in art education from Teachers College, Columbia University, with master’s degrees in both art education and curriculum and teaching, specializing in early adolescence.

The third and last presenter in the “Artists on the Road” series for the spring semester will be Yola Monakhov Stockton, assistant professor of fine arts, on April 20. She will present “The Atlas of Aloha Aina: Mapping the Love of the Land” about Hawaiian identity, tourism, and photography.

The Artists on the Road Series is co-sponsored by the Design Department and the International and Exchange Programs Office. For further information, contact Carol Townsend, associate professor of design and coordinator of design foundations, (716) 878-4986.

Inset photo: Pennisi and Thai educator and puppeteer, “Pa”