Delilah Montoya
dmontoya@hampshire.edu    (505) 256-9290

 

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Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy runs parallel with my commitment to art-making. As a Chicana artist, my work positioned as an alternative to the mainstream, kindles issues of cultural identity. In pursuit of spiritual, emotional, political and cultural symbols, I aspire to compose my voice. As an Educator, I realize the classroom thrives when the ambiance for self-invention is kindled. Students learn best by doing. The idea is to sustain their artistic sensibilities. These sensibilities are paramount in the creation of tangible artistic expressions.

Not only must students learn formal concerns but must be introduced to an ever-expanding world vision. The incipient artist develops an intimate expression by understanding styles, ideology and the sagacity of symbols as well as metaphors. The art history discourse is a potent source for this kind of awareness. Because image interpretation endows the artist’s vision, concepts should be used as a creative springboard in the pedagogy.

My commitment in encouraging young artists to develop their vision is found with El Sagrado Corazon/ the Sacred Heart series. The series sprang from an historical investigation of the symbol and evolved into collaboration with young aerosol artists. In order to depict the Sacred Heart as a cultural icon, I involved the community in the production. Local aerosol artists painted murals on my studio walls that were utilized as backdrops for the Sacred Heart/ Sagrado Corazon portraits. This collaborative experience not only gave the young artists a safe space to work; I was equally inspired by their creative growth.

I believe photography majors should understand the camera's capability for indexing suggest that the medium provides "contiguous imprints" of the tangible world. These imprints realize time based visual memories, which are distinct from objective based reality. The construction and interpretation of the photographic image arises as a joint project between the photographer's and observer's interpretation of the image. My position is the viewpoint of the photographer as the photograph’s author and its interpretation by the viewer is a mix of insight and blindness, reach and limitation. Impartiality and bias together do not achieve omniscience or the unified master narrative of "reality." Rather, the photograph spoors complex understandings of an ever-changing multifaceted existence. Since culture shapes reality or perhaps it is reality shaping culture, we must recognize that the photographic representation is bracketed by the artist's and viewer’s own perceptions.

Photography shares an interdisciplinary approach with printmaking and the electronic media. In many ways photography and the electronic media is the outgrowth of the print industry. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the media one needs to explore its multimedia capacities. As a photographic printmaker, I am aware that an inter-disciplinary approach joins disciplines like computer graphics, photography, video and mark-making into an aesthetic experience. This handling of the medium allows for the interactive experience as well as multiple expressions and ideas. Equally important students should understand the nature of the tactile surface; for this reason the latent and mark-making processes should be explored. Photographic lithography is an ideal way to introduced photographic based imagery to an inked surface; which in turn demands the student use the computer to create halftones and the four- color separation. The computer is a dynamic environment that promises to be instrumental in interfacing traditional art forms and the one-off print media to a multimedia experience. This experience is readily available by constructing on and interacting with the World Wide Web.

The digital/ electronic media has undoubtedly affected photographic space - its structural surface, malleability and ability to interface with other media types. What remains to be seen is how all this will frame our cultural experience concerning the photographic image. Will we began to understand the photograph as an image similar in construction and intellect to that of a drawing or will our desire for the "contiguous imprint" keep photographic veracity intact? Certainly, it is our generation of students who will provide the answers to this concern.

My present achievements as a digital/ chemical photographer, teacher, and printmaker allow me to bring to your institution a long and successful involvement in the art community. It has always been my desire to teach and it is an honor to be part of this profession.