My name is Jessi Rogawski and I am a San Diego based artist and educator from Chicago, IL who currently works with students from southeast San Diego and Baja California, Mexico.

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My practice as an artist explores the connections between art and revolution. The portals I create, often made collaboratively, stand simultaneously as symbols of my own journey of self-healing as well as the collective healing needed to change the world. I aim to answer the question... what life lessons can we learn as individuals and as a society from the metaphor of a portal? How can we embrace liminality as a tool of resistance in a binary world? How is imagination a form of resistance? 

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My approach to art education centerizes student voice and well-being through dialogue and community, challenging the expectations of and hierarchies within the classroom. I invite my art students to consider their inner and outer landscapes through mindfulness practices and self-exploration in addition to observing and interpreting contemporary art and culture. The students are encouraged to critically examine the social and historical realities/systems that impact them as individuals as well as their communities, including the institution of school itself. I am invested in co-creating expressive art experiences with students to question and investigate personal culture as well as society through art and action. Now more than ever, we need students to be able to creatively and critically think about solutions for our world and to act on them.

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