PROFESSIONALdevelopment Retrospective Art Exhibitions Cim Thomakos, Jeff Bear CIM THOMAKOS earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Skidmore College. She received graduate credits in Art from Texas Tech University, the Aegean School of the Arts, the University of the Arts, and in the Teaching of Writing from the University of California, Berkley. She received a Teacher Fellowship for graduate work in the Summer Six Program at Skidmore College. On four occasions she received grants to support her work as a Resident Artist at the Vermont Studio Center. Cim designed and constructed puppets for the Children’s Theater Group of Athens. She worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for Research for Better Schools in Philadelphis, PA, and apprenticed as a Master Potter in Jackson Hole, WY. Cim has been teaching Visual Arts at ACS Athens since 1979. She held the position of Fine and Performing Arts Department Chair from 2004-2006. As a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Cim conducts classroom based research on learning and the creative process and has led teacher training workshops on integrating the writing process across the curriculum. In 1998 Cim created Boxes and Other Possibilities, a research study investigating the potential of poetic thinking and collaborative creative enterprise. In 2002 she initiated the ACS Ball Project, a community activity whereby students build sitespecific art installations comprised of hundreds of used, found, and recycled balls. (http://ballproject.awardspace.com). See related article in this issue. In 1977, following a major solo exhibition of her work in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cim Thomakos came to Greece in search of new directions. Her work reflects a diverse aesthetic and cultural inquiry into her adopted homeland. The drawings, paintings, etchings, monoprints, handmade books and boxes in this exhibition were selected from an extensive body of work that the artist created over the last thirty years.
JEFF BEAR discovered two things at Faulkner Street Elementary School in New Smyrna Beach, Florida: he was an artist and he wanted to teach art. At the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, he found that he had a talent for caricature and cartooning and he also learned to write. During four years at Wesleyan University in the 1960’s, he discovered that sculpture and welding were fun. For three years Jeff taught and exhibited in Florida before moving to New England. For the decade that he taught in the greater Boston area, he became more interested in photography and painting as he discovered that sculpture was neither portable nor profitable. Portability became even more relevant when he took his first teaching post outside the USA in 1981. During work and residence in Indonesia, England, Spain and Jordan, his personal artwork was mostly photography and drawing. Upon a return to Greece, and ACS, he entered what he thinks of as his “doodle period.” These drawings featured high contrast patterns and whimsical, intricate subjects. Most recently, besides writing poetry, Jeff has discovered his computer scanner as an art medium. Jeff enjoys playing with words and images and savors the serendipitous epiphany of the “little aha!” that the creative process provides. His philosophy of art is simple: If you enjoy the process of creation, perhaps you will produce something others might enjoy.
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