A Jack of Art Trades
By Mary Tamer
Upon his graduation from the Rhode Island School of Design
in 1992, illustrator (and frequent Ed. art contributor) Jeff Hopkins,
Ed.M.’05, came to New York City with nothing but the
daunting task of finding a job in the competitive world of art.
Faced with few options, he chose a security post with the Whitney Museum of American Art, standing on his feet eight hours a day, as he vividly recalls, and “wondering what I was doing.” As luck would have it, he was already on the right path.
“I met people in the education department and talked with them about projects,” says Hopkins. “Eventually, they took me under their wings and gave me a chance to run some of them, so it was fortuitous, but also part of a long struggle.”
Today, as a busy museum educator, performance artist, and children’s book illustrator (The Only One Club), Hopkins says he has been able to create one career with three distinct parts to it, all of which feed his own diversity of interests.
“It makes one very busy career, but somehow I make it all fit,” says Hopkins, who resides in Brooklyn. “Even 15 years later, I still remember those days of just standing on my feet in those galleries, thinking about how I could contribute to the arts world, and I think I’ve been really lucky to find a way to do that.”
His students, who call him Mr. Jeff, are lucky as well. Through the various programs and museums that sponsor his work primarily via grants, Hopkins takes on regular projects in the New York City public schools — from elementary to high school — where he works closely with teachers to complement ongoing curricula with art. Last spring, Hopkins spent weeks working with a group of sixth-graders on an innovative stop-motion animation film project utilizing animation and claymation, which was later exhibited at the Guggenheim Museums in both New York and Bilbao, Spain.
“Part of the Guggenheim’s mission is trying to figure out what is the effect of the arts on these kids,” says Hopkins, “but for those of us that work in this and see it firsthand, there’s a really obvious thing that happens. The kids get excited, they focus, and they learn, sometimes, when they don’t even realize they’re learning.
“When an artist comes in on behalf of a museum, the kids get to see and experience something that is outside of their normal realm of experience. The kids don’t have to be great drawers or sculptors, but they have to explore their story, focus on the writing, and explore their materials. Sixth grade is right around the age when kids decide they can’t draw, so this stop-motion animation project gave them time to experiment. Our goal was to get them to feel as if they are experts in their subject matter through their exploration, and their films are stunning, beautiful, and powerful. I’m most happy that our kids’ work will be seen by so many people.”
This is the same case with Hopkins. His own exploration into the world of arts education and performance art has continued — including a recent off-Broadway one-man show and a gig with Stacey Mahan, Ed.M.’04, at the American Ballet Theatre — thanks in no small part to his experience in the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Arts in Education Program, where he found the direction he was lacking in those early New York City days.
“That’s where the Ed School comes in,” says Hopkins. “I had been an educator for museums, but because I originally came in the back door as a security guard and artist, I felt like I had a lot of blanks to fill in, and I had so many questions to answer about my teaching practice. When I arrived in Cambridge, I knew I was in the right place . . . and since I left, everything has exploded in a good way. Everything has really tied together.”
— Mary Tamer is a freelance writer whose last piece for Ed. was a Q&A with Neal Baer, Ed.M.’79.
For more information about Jeff Hopkins’ work, visit his website at www.picturescometolife.com.
Illustration by Jeff Hopkins
About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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