Alumni
An Art Educator's Mission: Celebrating Art in Everyday Life
As an art educator, it’s not surprising that Mary Stokrocki (’81 D.Ed. Art Ed.) spends a lot of time in the classroom. But in addition to teaching, she has spent innumerable hours observing in schools around the world, documenting how art is taught and how students respond to lessons and projects.
Her qualitative research focuses on multicultural teaching in inner-city Cleveland, on Navajo reservations in Arizona, and in international cities such as Ankara, Turkey, and Barcelona, Spain. Her first experience with participant observation was in Ken Beittel’s pottery class at Penn State. Stokrocki had taught ceramics for 10 years before coming to the University for her doctorate, and she says her experience in Beittel’s class inspired her to pursue more ethnographic research.
Her teaching, research and publications over the past 35 years have earned her many prestigious honors, most recently the National Art Education Association’s (NAEA) Viktor Lowenfeld Award and the June King McFee Award, from the NAEA Women’s Caucus. She is currently a professor of art at Arizona State University and previously taught at Cleveland State University, in addition to serving as a visiting instructor at universities in Spain, Brazil, Croatia, the Netherlands and several U.S. schools.
While a professor at Cleveland State University in the 1980s, she was one of the first to document art teachers in the inner city. “I completed eight cross-site studies that revealed teachers were not acknowledging that art deals with thinking—not just making. Students were not asked their opinions.”
Since that early experience in Cleveland, Stokrocki has made it a point to investigate what students think and feel, even if it means taking risks. For example, while serving as a curriculum consultant for pre-service art teachers in Ankara, Turkey, in 1995–96, she secretly tried out her curriculum in the schools. “Things were very authoritarian in Turkey at the time, and it was unheard of for educators to actually observe in the classroom,” Stokrocki says. So she and her teammate, who were working for the World Bank-funded Higher Education Council Project, actually sneaked out the back door so they could test-drive the curriculum at a nearby institution. Nearly 10 years later, in 2004, she presented a major paper on her work in Turkey at the first conference of the National Higher Education Development Project, one of the organizations involved in her consultancy.
Stokrocki also pushed boundaries during her 2005 sabbatical, when she was a visiting instructor at the University of Barcelona. She spent time in a classroom of third- and fourth-graders and asked them to draw their perceptions of the Holy Communion rite. “That was something education would not normally touch,” Stokrocki says, adding many of the drawings featured cartoon characteristics from popular culture, despite the religious nature of the subject matter.
Stokrocki applies her research in her classes at Arizona State, encouraging students to fight the misconceptions that art education is just about drawing and painting. She urges them to be vocal in their communities and demonstrate the benefits of learning about art. “We need to show people that art education also involves history, archaeology, sociology and so many other subject areas,” she notes.
Stokrocki’s recent research has focused on visual culture and alternative learning contexts. As recipient of the Lowenfeld Award in 2005, she presented a lecture, “Searching for Meaning: Visual Culture from an Anthropological Perspective,” at that year’s NAEA convention in Boston. It was later published in the January 2006 issue of the journal Art Education.
In addition to being actively involved in NAEA, Stokrocki has been vice president (through 2007) and World Councilor of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA). She says her involvement in InSEA has led to many of her international research projects. In addition, she was president of and continues to serve as Webmaster for the U.S. Society for Education through Art (USSEA), which was established in 1977 as an affiliate of both NAEA and InSEA.
Despite her many successes, Stokrocki claims women still have to work harder than men to be successful in academia. She says qualities such as persistence, resiliency and adaptability are essential for anyone pursuing a career in art education. “I tell my students to be ready for anything, because you never know where you’ll end up,” she notes.
Stokrocki’s research among diverse populations has also shown her that art education must extend into the community and that “ordinary” people’s opinions need to be included. “It’s important to celebrate art in everyday life. Art is not just for the rich.” –AMM
McIntyre's Graphic designs Star on Big and Small Screens
Unlike many people who move to Southern California, Pennsylvania native Michael McIntyre (’90 B.A. Art) did not have dreams of a career in the entertainment industry. But after some mediocre jobs, he snagged a position as a graphic designer for the movie trailer company Cimarron, Bacon and O’Brien (CBO), and realized he had found his niche. Today McIntyre is founder and president of mOcean, a leading entertainment marketing agency with clients across the United States and abroad.
McIntyre was among the first to do desktop animation for movie marketing, although he started out in print work at CBO. “When I started, I did not have an animation skill set, but I had learned the principles of time and sequence while at Penn State,” he explains, noting entry-level designers today need to have stronger computer skills to obtain jobs in animation.
While at Penn State, McIntyre also learned how to survive all-nighters, ruthless critiques and an intense working environment. “When you graduate from Penn State’s graphic design program, you feel like there’s nothing you can’t do. If you survive that boot camp experience, everything else seems easier.”
McIntyre admits he knew nothing about graphic design, let alone the rigors of Penn State’s program, until he took an introduction to design course. “I realized it was the first course at Penn State I really enjoyed and was good at. It gave me some insight into what the graphic design program was like; it was like a window into a ‘secret sect.’“
McIntyre thrived as part of that “secret sect,” and says he never became discouraged despite the challenging curriculum. He credits the graphic design program with teaching him not only how to design, but also how to succeed as a business owner. “What I learned at Penn State translated into me being able to build a company,” he explains.
McIntyre started mOcean in 2000 after stints at CBO and entertainment advertising agency Craig Murray Productions (CMP). At CMP, he was the creative director in the motion graphics area. But when he felt like he had “hit a ceiling,” he decided to launch his own company. “I wanted to take what I had learned and do it my way,” he says.
Doing it his way required him to come up with a name for his agency. While “mOcean” seems fitting for a company that does motion graphics and is located near the beach, McIntyre says the name was the result of a “serendipitous” turn of events. As a collector of unique items, one day he was browsing a yard sale and found an old saw blade that was engraved with “M. Ocean.” He already had secured a location in Venice Beach, so naming the company “mOcean” just made sense. He continued the saw connection by using a round blade as the agency’s logo.
mOcean was one of the first agencies in a new wave of entertainment marketing firms that popped up after the cost of producing trailers and movie marketing in general came down in the 1990s, leading film companies to become more demanding. McIntyre says his company is now doing more than he had ever envisioned, including commercials, network branding and print graphics, in addition to promotions for movies and television.
Although mOcean has experienced significant growth in the past seven years, McIntyre still remains involved in every job on some level. He says 50 percent of his work is serving as chief creative director. “I like the creative process too much not to be involved,” he says.
Among other projects, the company recently produced trailers for the films Ocean’s 13 and August Rush, television promotions for the films Resident Evil 3 and War, launch campaigns for FX Network’s Damages and Nip/Tuck, and the network launch (both broadcast and print) for L.A. INK on TLC. Other clients have included ABC Sports, AOL/Time Warner, Disney Studios, DreamWorks, the Food Network, Paramount Television and Paramount Pictures, and Showtime, to name a few.
McIntyre says there are now about 55 companies, mainly in Los Angeles, that specialize in entertainment marketing. “mOcean is known for coming up with creative ways to get a message out there,” he says, noting the agency excels at combining graphics with sound and vision. mOcean received the Golden Trailer Award for Best Comedy Trailer in both 2005 (Napoleon Dynamite) and 2006 (The Wedding Crashers). The agency has also received dozens of PROMAX and Telly Awards for its cable TV promotions, among other honors.
Although the hours can be long and the entertainment industry is a cut-throat one, McIntyre says he couldn’t imagine another career. He acknowledges that all-nighters sometimes come with the package, but is grateful that, for the most part, he has manageable hours that allow him to spend plenty of time with his wife Franchon, two young children, dog, cat, parrot and a couple of goldfish.
And at the end of the day, it’s still a thrill to him to work on projects seen by so many people. “It’s just amazing to think that 80 million people around the world may be watching your trailer—and, most importantly, your mom.” –AMM
