Thursday, November 29, 2018, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Mary Harris Auditorium
Learn more about RMCAD’s amazing faculty at this ongoing series. This week’s presenters are Julie Puma (Foundations) and Sherry Jones (Game Art).
And there will be free lunch!
ABOUT JULIE PUMA
Brought as a baby to England by well-traveled parents, Julie Puma spent her first fourteen years there with summers spent in her native Brooklyn. Her earliest memory of art is at age five when her mother gave her a set of oil paints which she used to paint a flower on a Styrofoam meat package. Only a year later her mother would pass away from breast cancer. Her father remarried and his work with IBM moved Julie, her sister, and the new family back to the United States where they settled in the Chicago area. An interest in art wasn’t apparent in high school, but after graduating from Western Illinois State University, Julie went on to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago to achieve a Masters of Art in Art Therapy. Her passion for painting was kindled as she practiced art therapy while experiencing its healing powers for herself and deepening her own creative talent.
Julie made her way to Colorado to care for her sister who was also afflicted with breast cancer. Here she met her husband, gave birth to a daughter, and continued to refine and cultivate her artistic growth. Fueled by her family tragedies, Julie’s painting and art evolved as a means for greater communication and exploration of social and political themes. She earned a second Master’s degree in Fine Art in Visual Art with the Vermont College of Fine Art. Currently, Julie is a full-time Faculty Member in Foundations at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver. Julie’s work has been exhibited nationally and locally in several solo and collaborative shows since 1997. Prized by collectors, her drawings and paintings are personal and powerful, resonant and relevant contemporary realism.
ABOUT SHERRY JONES
Sherry Jones is a philosophy and game studies subject matter expert and instructor at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, where she develops courses on the philosophy and psychology of game design, and on the use of digital games in education. She also serves as the chair-elect for the International Society for Technology in Education Games and Simulations Professional Learning Network; she offers members game studies video learning series that are published open access on The Metagame Book Club website; in her 2018 Ethics and Games series, Jones uses digital games as thought experiments for exploring western and eastern ethical theories by philosophers such as Nietzsche, Spinoza, Sartre, and Lao Tzu. In 2013, she created Rhetoric and Composition: The Persuasive Power of Video Games as Paratexts MOOC to teach rhetoric studies with digital games. In 2016, Jones designed the “Survive the Ethics” mixed reality escape room game exhibit showcased in the Computer History Museum for the Intentional Play Summit, and designed Ethics AI: Don’t Freeze Edition, a digital game exhibit installation. Her publications include: “Composition on a New Scale: Game Studies and Massive Open Online Composition” (2014); “Games as Logic Machines” (2016); “Designing Seamless Learning Through Role-Playing Experiences” (2017); “Life is Strange as a Thought Experiment: Understanding Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence Theory as Virtue Ethics Through Game-Playing (2019 pending publication).”
ABOUT THE FACULTY FOCUS SERIES
The Faculty Focus Series provides an opportunity to highlight and celebrate RMCAD faculty’s work and accomplishments as artists, researchers, and practitioners. Throughout this exciting and ongoing series, faculty members provide insight into their creative endeavors outside of the classroom and how those activities influence and energize their expertise and leadership within the RMCAD community.
