The Value of an Education
I’m speaking at the Spencer Museum of Art on the University of Kansas’ campus 3:00pm today! If you’re around and want to join please come, I hope to have a recording of the talk to share with those who can’t make it.
Want to support my artist hustle and can’t buy a painting at this time? The next best thing is to join my Art of KCF Ko-Fi Klub as a monthly member. Special deal, make a one time (annual) contribution of $30 or more and I’ll give you access to the special BTS content I only share there!
____ ok… back to the Value of an Education ____
I had the privilege of growing up in a family that really (REALLY) pushed the idea that an education was the most important foundation for future success.
While this came with a side of extreme pressure to educationally attain and achieve, and the ensuing panic I’m still reckoning with to this day, I remain grateful for the value of education instilled in me as a young person.
It was this influence that put me on the path to attaining a PhD before 30, and devoting more than the first third of my life to educational pursuits. This culminated in my dream of becoming a University Professor.
My Mexican American mama told me many stories of how she struggled with education, as the only Mexican American family in her small rural Kansas town. She faced white teachers and college guidance counselors that did not believe she was worthy of continuing on with her education.
While in a different part of Kansas my white dad was being shaped to go to the same public university his dad attended. To follow in his dad’s footsteps and ultimately pursue graduate study in Electrical Engineering.
I share these snippets of my experience and family origins because I am in Kansas, back on the college campus at which I thrived because of the investment my parents and grandparents made in me for the expressed purpose of valuing education.
I’m here to give an artist talk, in conversation with another Chicanx scholar - Lena Mose-Vargas- about my two paintings from my Roots series today Friday April 18, 2025 at the Spencer Museum of Art 3:00-4:00pm CT.
The paintings on display as part of the Bold Women exhibition were made to honor the hard-won fight Mexican people in Kansas led to require the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad (the Santa Fe or the ATSF) to educate their children across Kansas.
When I was working on my languishing (nay abandoned) academic book project I used newspaper analysis to trace the presence of women and children through articles like this one while patronizing in tone at least verified that women were there!
And not just that, but they were advocating for their children to have educational opportunities like any other kids in Kansas at the time.
There are so many stories like this that I drew on to bring narrative elements into these paintings.
It’s diptych pair focuses on the various elements of learning that were organized by women in Topeka, for not only kids but also adults.
What’s been your experience with education? I think about this a lot - as a pedagogue who mostly finds myself in teaching opportunities differently than how I once did.
It turns out I’m still a teacher. Even without my fancy tenured title of Associate Professor.
But more importantly, despite all the challenges and the hardships, the expectations and anxiety, the failures of systems built by imperfect humans— I am still eager to learn.
And I’m grateful for all the ways education, critical thinking, and reading comprehension have served me.
I hope to see you at the Spencer Museum of Art - and beam in joy with me at the tag noting the acquisition of Eager to Learn in the permanent collection.
Both paintings are on view as part of the Bold Women+ Exhibition up through July 6, 2025.
For the learners,
KCF