For 20 years, Deborah Rockman has been teaching and creating art. Today, she’s marking that double decade with a double splash.
A retrospective exhibit of Rockman’s drawings is at Kendall College of Art and Design, where she teaches, through March 16. Concurrent with the exhibit, Rockman’s book “The Art of Teaching Art,” recently published by Oxford University Press, is available at bookstores nationwide and through Amazon.com.
“My teaching career and my artistic career have been parallel,” Rockman says. The one has influenced the other—no surprise—and both have benefitted from exchanges.
The book derives from Rockman’s experience teaching introductory drawing, which she describes as the backbone of the visual arts. Included in her illustrated 337-page tome are guidelines for teaching composition, anatomy, perspective and other essential skills, plus instruction in establishing a constructive classroom environment and preparing students for the professional art world.
Previous literature fails to treat these issues in any depth, Rockman says, with the result that teachers often are ill-equipped to teach art.
“Teachers are hired based on their expertise in their area,” says Rockman, whose formidable drafting skills account for her Kendall College post. But, often, technical facility is all a teacher has to recommend him or her. “And that has absolutely no connection to one’s ability to teach, to convey information clearly, intelligently, enthusiastically and accessibility to students,” Rockman says.
Rockman sees her book as timely and needed—a view shared by many veteran teachers of art, as evidenced in the book’s jacket.
“In thirty-six years of teaching…, I have labored my way by trial and error (oh so many errors!) to conclusions Deborah Rockman outlines so very clearly in “The Art of Teaching Art,” writes R. Richard Gayton of the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. “(The book) may well become a handbook for professionals working in this arena of the visual arts,” writes Thomas Cornell of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
According to Rockman, sales from the book’s initial print run of 2,500 have been brisk.
“Changing My Mind,” the title of Rockman’s retrospective exhibit, refers to the intellectual changes she has undergone as an art teacher. In particular, Kendall College’s emphasis on critical theory—that is, on making philosophical issues, ancient to postmodern, central to art—has influenced her studio goals.
“A lot of me doesn’t like it.” Rockman says about critical theory. “I fear that there’s a tendency right now to over-intellectualize works of art and to rely more on speaking and writing about art than on actually looking at it.” Yet “intellectual” is the impression viewers may have of Rockman’s drawing, which frequently balances cerebral concerns with seeming, machine-prefect technique.
The earliest drawings are landscapes and figures, including self-portraits, in pencil, charcoal and oil pastel. What these mostly back-and-white pictures have in common is highly convincing truth to life, especially as suggested by highlights and shadows.
In Rockman’s more recent works, flawless technique supports critical theory, in particular deconstructionism—the postmodern intellectual strategy aimed at breaking apart language to reveal hidden meaning. Rockman’s “Animal Series” comprises images of farm and domestic beasts, lettered by name.
“I am looking at the way language has been subverted to place women in the realm of animals,” Rockman explains.
The drawings focus attention on the secondary meanings often assigned to animal names—among them “cow,” “dog” and “pet”—and how they’re contemptuously applied to women.
Besides drawings, Rockman has on view two recent sculptures, comprising grids of stones imprinted with images or alphabet letters.
“The Weight of Words: Letters to Myself” consists of 30 stones, each marked with a large and a small letter. Incorporating hidden messages, the lettered stones evidence the elusiveness of language.
“Language is not the precise conveyor of meaning we’d like it to be,” Rockman says. “Language is slippery.”
Oddly, slipperiness promises to continue as Rockman’s subject for years—oddly because in all other respects, her drawing and writing are unambiguous to a fault. They make their points directly, starkly, in black and white.
They also commemorate 20 years’ devotion to art. Rockman’s achievement is impressive, and her intellectual probing challenges us all.

“Roger Green on art,” reprinted with permission from the Grand Rapids Press of Sunday, Feb. 18, 2001.