Jaanika Peerna : Eleven Abstract and Digital Compositions

  
Jaanika Peerna is an Estonian artist and art educator now living in New York.

For the past several years, she has worked at the Dia Art Foundation's renowned Dia:Beacon museum in New York as teaching artist ,introducing its collection to elementary and high school students.

When still living in Estonia she ran the art program at the Vanalinna Hariduskolleegium (Old Town School), and she worked with the Visual Thinking Strategies program of the Soros Foundation. She has also served as adjunct faculty in drawing, video, and design at the State University of New York (SUNY) in New Paltz, where she completed the Master of Fine Arts program in the Visual Research Laboratory in May 2005.

This program stresses a blend of art, design, and technology with a focus on new media. Her own artwork blends digital photography, drawing, and video art into a multifaceted approach.

"Art does not progress over time the way technology does," says Ms. Peerna. "Rather, the significance of an artwork depends more on whether or not it changes the way we see."

She has had solo exhibitions in Beacon, N.Y., New York City, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz, and in her native country of Estonia, where she received an MA in art education from Tallinn Pedagogical University in 1995.

Jaanika Peerna's approach in teaching art has always been interdisciplinary. Her current special interest is using movement in the process of learning about visual art. She has led workshops on this approach in Lisbon, Helsinki, and Riga.
  

For more information, visit Jaanika Peerna's website at www.jaanikapeerna.net.