ADVENTURES IN ART

Rochester Institute of Technology honored Paula Grcevic of West Henrietta with her second Eisenhart Outstanding Teaching Award. The decision of a committee of students and faculty peers was announced recently at the Annual Eisenhart Celebration reception.

Said Eisenhart Committee Co-Chair and RIT faculty member Lorna Mittleman: "Professor Grcevic employs tremendous attention to detail and seamlessly manages lessons, masterfully interweaving a wide variety of media. She focuses considerable attention on ways to teach art to deaf students with greatly varied modes of communication."

Grcevic's methods include exercises involving the senses. Rather than simply looking at and painting still-life compositions, Grcevic has her students touch and smell the natural materials, transforming resulting ideas and memories into art pieces. “I guide the students through their artistic experience, moving them beyond English language and environmental barriers, the frustrations of heavy academic workloads, and the learned responses of judging and critiquing their work,” said Grcevic, Assistant Professor of Arts and Imagining Studies for NTID.

Grcevic's involvement and service to community also contributed to her selection for this coveted award, endowed in honor of the late RIT trustee M. Herbert and wife Elsa Bausch Eisenhart. When she is not teaching or creating her own art, she is cofounder and consultant of the Deaf Artists Web (www.rit.edu/deafartists), co-director and artistic design director of Rochester Deaf Film festival, and a guest curator for various exhibits at the NTID Joseph F. and Helen C. Dyer Arts Center.

Dateline: July 31, 2006