Art for Life: Authentic Instruction in Art
Tom Andersona native of Montana and longtime Florida resident, is professor and former chair in the Department of Art Education at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He also has worked as a public school art teacher in Oregon and as a commercial artist in Chicago. He has written more than seventy articles, reviews, and book chapters and is the author of one other book, Real Lives: Art Teachers and the Cultures of School. He was cofounder, in 1995, and is still a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Children's Guernica Peace Mural Project. His international teaching and service includes stints in Italy, Spain, Kuwait, and Japan; talks to international audiences in Taiwan, Korea, Canada, and Australia; and service in the International Baccalaureate Program in Wales, Italy, Canada, and the United States. Over the course of his career, Dr. Anderson has been particularly interested in the social foundations of art and education, as well as art criticism and aesthetic inquiry, especially in art for life. He is married to Mary Beth McBride and has two adult daughters, Carrie and Amelia.Melody K. Milbrandtis an associate professor and coordinator of art education at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She taught art in public schools (K-12) for eighteen years before moving to higher education in 1996. Throughout her teaching career she has been active in state and national art education association, providing approximately, fifty workshops and presentations at professional meetings. These presentations have addressed her long-standing interests in creativity, cognitive abilities, and social issues in the art classroom. Her dissertation,An Authentic Instructional Model for Fifth Grade Art using Postmodern Content, was awarded a J. Paul Getty Fellowship in 1995. Since then she has written a number of articles, reviews, and book chapters on a variety of topics related to contemporary issues in art education. Her current teaching and research interests include the role of art criticism and aesthetics in a multicultural setting. Dr. Milbrandt is a past president of the Kansas Art Education Association and was honored as Elementary Art Educator of the Year in Both Kansas and Georgia. She is active in the Georgia Art Education Association and received the Southeastern Region Higher Education Award for 2004. She and her husband, Dr. Lanny Milbrandt, have four adult children and five grandchildren. Her studio interest is mixed-media painting.