Hanoch
Seeds of Peace Fellow, 2015
IMPACT: SOCIAL
Creating an arts education curriculum that explores identity, history, dreams, community, and the “other.”
How have you impacted your community?
In my art and in my workshops, I use everyday objects to spark the imagination and to stimulate new ways to look at the world beyond the status quo. I create colorful collage portraits that have appeared in several major American publications, such as Time Magazine, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, as well as in many European publications, including The Times of London. In Israel, I’m known for my collaboration with Ha’aretz newspaper, my children’s books, and my program on Israeli Educational TV.
I am working to create an arts education curriculum and teacher training course based on the artistic method I developed and on the experience I gained over the years conducting workshops around the world. Themes that will be explored and expressed include composed identity, history, dreams, community, and the “other.”
The curriculum ideally will be a guide for educators to engage children with art and encourage them to use this creative visual language to communicate both internally and with their respective communities. I plan to accompany the implementation of this curriculum project with a series of workshops for Jewish-Israeli, Palestinian-Israeli and Palestinian educators throughout the region, during which I will train them to use this method with their own students.
These educators will then produce documentation of their use of the creative method and I will showcase the products of this work on a dedicated webpage. Thus, a collection of self-portraits of children from diverse backgrounds and across lines of conflict will slowly emerge. In the future, my vision is to create a traveling art center to reach children, families, teachers, and whole communities.
AWARDS
• Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York and a Parents’ Choice Gold Award for his Faces iMake app.
• 10 Best Children’s Books by Time Magazine for What Presidents Are Made Of.
IN THE PRESS
• Living in a Playful Collage: Hanoch Piven at TEDxJerusalem
• Israeli artist Hanoch Piven’s collages capture personalities (SFGate)
“My work is about reconstructing what we are so used to seeing in one preconceived way, and discovering it in a fresh way. Play is a way to trick our brain into a fresh situation, which allows us to do that. Sometimes my work is playing and teaching; sometimes it is encouraging and allowing others to do that as well.”