A brief overview:
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Laurel Hart is an artist and art educator presently in the final year of her Masters of Art in Art Education at Concordia University. At the moment Laurel lives in Montreal while attending University, although she calls Vancouver home. Laurel has a BA in Studio Arts from UBC, and a BEd in Art Education from UBC as well. In B.C., Laurel is a certified high school art teacher and is employed by the Surrey School Board.
Laurel has been an active member of many organizations, including the Canadian Society for Education through Art, the National Art Education Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the BC Art Teacher's Association. She has presented numerous lectures and workshops to diverse audiences both locally and internationally.
Her first presentation was on the topic of "Culture Jamming" and "creating 'subvert-ismenets "at the BC Art Teacher's Association conference entitled ARTworks. In 2008 she presented a participatory performance on the subject of life history research entitled "Of Roots and Synapses" alongside educator Christina Thomson at the CSEA's annual conference this November 2008. Since then she has completed her Master's degree and presented on different aspects of her thesis...
Laurel has been involved with and initiated several community art initiatives and art shows in settings from the suburbs, to churches, and universities, and continues to do so. Uniting individuals for personal well being through the arts and community betterment is one of her main life philosophies, as she believes that art is for everyone and expressing the soul through creativity brings well being. Laurel also has a strong passion for teaching arts for identity development in adolescents and young adults (emerging adulthood). Laurel has also taught art in many community settings, including summer art camps, and button and lantern making "family" day workshops for the Surrey Art Gallery, and is now working on a project entitled "Tete a Tete" with Stan Chase of Leave Out ViolencE.
The art practice of Laurel Hart is multi-faceted, as she frequently works with mixed media, acrylic painting, drawing and watercolor. Primarily she identifies herself as a photographer, with two distinctive photography practices of digital (which frequently includes photo-manipulation) and traditional darkroom photography. For the last two years, laurel has been bridging her previous installation/sculptural training at UBC with her love of photography and has been creating sculptural photo based installations. She is presently working on one such installation looking at remembering Griffintown. For more of her art please see the Gallery page above.
