Hello

I'm a pre-service art educator, watercolor artist, former K-12 art teacher, and former dance teacher living and working in Rochester, NY

Bio

Dr. Samantha Nolte-Yupari received her Master’s and Ph. D. in Art Education from Virginia Commonwealth University and The Pennsylvania State University respectively. Her interests include embodied learning, place, and teacher education which she considers using visual ethnographic and arts-based methods. Samantha was awarded Fellowships at both institutions and received the Hoffa Dissertation Award (Penn State University); and a National Dissertation Award, Arts and Learning SIG (American Education Research Association). In 2023 she won the Region 2 Art Educator of the Year Award from the New York State Art Teachers Association. Her artistic practice as a watercolorist and book artist focus on Wanderings (moments discovered while walking) and Discover-ings (abstracted and thematic works created through emergent and bottom-up processes) grounded in walking and the mundane. She is currently Associate Professor and Program Director of Art Education, Nazareth University Rochester, NY. ORCID: 0000-0002-8691-6305

Artist
Statement

I create Wanderings (moments discovered while walking) and Discover-ings (abstracted, sensory, and thematic works created in emergent and bottom-up processes) grounded in walking and the mundane. I document and respond to affinities I experience while walking or moving in my every day. Humans have been historically nomadic. Walking has been a way of survival, knowing, and engagement. Today, to walk, to be peripatetic takes effort, it is a choice. Yet the power of walking is not to be underestimated. Jean Jacques Rousseau once said, “I can only meditate when I am walking…my mind only works with my legs” (cited in Solnit, 2000, p. 14). “A lone walker is both present and detached from the world around, more than an audience, less than a participant” (Solnit, 2000, p. 24). Making creates the same experience. Our bodies are deeply emplaced and engaged as we move through the world, so too when we make in response to it. I tune in. And so, painting becomes embodied thinking.

In Tibetan a shul is a trace line of something that used to be there (Solnit, 2005). That something may be an impression, a track, or a series of footprint. Watercolor and collage carry qualities of shul in that they are a palimpsest of all of the seeing and thinking of the creator on the page. Layers build and are visible, a shul of the eye and body moving over the landscape. And in the case of transparent watercolor, the shul can’t be erased. The mark making, even imperfect mark making reveals the shul of the walker-mover-thinker-maker.

Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: A history of walking. Penguin Books.

Solnit, R. (2005). A field guide to getting lost. Penguin Books.