Janice Frame (Contributing Educator – Immigration and Imagination Through Images and co-coordinator of pilot program) holds a B.F.A. from Fisk University in Fiber and Textiles and Art Education, and a M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from Cambridge College.
She has been, for the past 35 years, an art educator K -12 on Martha’s Vineyard. Prior to becoming a part of the island community, she taught art in Westfield, MA and in Dekalb County public schools in Atlanta, GA. She also taught weaving as an adjunct professor at Morris Brown College in Atlanta.
Janice has been an integral part of the island art community both in the visual arts and theater arts. She managed the Field Gallery in West Tisbury for four seasons. She is the artistic director of the book Borders to Bridges: Arts-Based Curriculum for Social Justice, and co-coordinator of the pilot program in the Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools. Link to artwork website. Link to Style article.
Borders to Bridges is designed to promote dialogue in schools and communities by engendering deeper understanding and discussion to counter the myths, bullying, and fears that negatively affect our learning institutions.
The Guidebook contains practical lessons plans, narratives, poetry, mixed media artwork and resources for K-12 educators, and after-school, refugee, counseling, prison, adult, university, teacher training education programs. Borders to Bridges enriches learning and engages students with issues that touch their lives and communities. Contributors include world-renowned educators, poets, artists, and writers from 38 countries and 20 states of the U.S.
The book is GORGEOUS and wonderful. Congratulations! What a triumph. Bursting with pride to be part of your wonderful work. This book is already busting boundaries and crossing bridges…it’s a beautiful production, a complete wow
Borders to Bridges arrived in all of its splendor and glory!... I am impressed with its bold artfulness, its comprehensiveness and detail, its welcoming and generous words and images, its efforts to reveal the values, philosophy, even the politics that shape the curricular projects. What a huge and ambitious piece of work...a long lifetime of work...a soulful and amazing contribution to the discourse at a time when it is most needed.
The study of critical issues through artistic media–poetry, collage, drama, writing, clay work, dance, song, and the graphic arts–has the power to open minds and broaden horizons, allowing people to voice their experience. The depth and breadth of the activities in Borders to Bridges help us to further tap the wellspring of kinship and compassionate understanding in the human heart.
Tina Medina, artist, educator, and curator earned her BFA degree at Texas Tech University and MFA degree at the University of North Texas. Since 2006, Medina has served as a full-time professor of art at the Mountain View campus of Dallas College. As part of Nuestra Artist Collective, she is curating and collaborating on a traveling exhibit that features women artists who make art about the border. Through an exploration of fibers, painting, video, and audio, Medina’s art reflects U.S. American history from the point of view of the underrepresented voices in our communities such as people of color, farm and domestic workers, the undocumented and women and children.
Website: www.tinamedina.com
Instagram: @tinamedina_art
Artist Tina Medina - They Didn't Know We Were Seeds "Las semillitas," 2021, paper, watercolor, fabric, 10 inches x 8 inches, collection of Ofelia Faz-Garza, photo courtesy of artist.
"Many of my works contemplate the contributions of families, especially indigenous families to the cultivation of the lands, economies, and culture of the United States. The expression, "They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds", mostly used as an activist cry, expresses the feelings of black and brown families whose physical hard labor of the past and today continues to be overlooked as the roots of the success of our country."