What is the vision behind TICA?
PHILIP BARANOWSKI: I recognized early on in my career in education that, unlike students in music and theater, to have high school students and teachers know contemporary practitioners is difficult. Our mission is to have high school teachers work alongside contemporary [visual art] practitioners–both established and emerging–so they can get as much knowledge of the contemporary landscape as possible. At the same time, we want to have teachers reconnect with their own artmaking process, which is the fundamental reason they got involved in the first place. The thing about teaching art in high schools is that it’s a really difficult job, time consuming and demanding, yet teachers are very dedicated to their field and students. What’s difficult for every one of them is finding time to deal with their own art practice. What makes them such a great population is that they’re always thinking of the students first. Their art practice is put off to the side, neglected, “I’ll get to it tomorr
