Connected Scholars

Dr. Andrea Allen is an interdisciplinary artist-educator and scholar specializing in social justice art teaching, identity development, and decolonial methodologies in visual arts education and research. Her scholarship has been published in leading art education journals, including Studies in Art Education and the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. She has presented her work at numerous state and national conferences and currently serves as Program Chair for the Inquiry in Visual and Performing Arts Education Special Interest Group within the American Educational Research Association.

 Dr. Allen's Seeds of Practice is a series of embroidered prints that explore building relationships with the past through artmaking and the intergenerational transmission of practices and knowledge that sustain cultures and ecologies. The prints were created during a workshop on native plants in Mid-Michigan, and depict monoprints made with coneflowers, milkweed leaves, and maple leaves, among other native materials. All plant matter was harvested with the consent of the landowner, who led the workshop and guided participants not only in the artmaking process but also in learning about native plants and local wildlife.

The prints were washed with brown chalk pastel to evoke the appearance of soil. On this surface, stitches resembling farm plots, flowers, and seeds, physically and metaphorically weave together the knowledge gained through the workshop, artmaking, and historical practices of sowing and living in reciprocal relationship with the land.