ALEX JOKICH
Staff Writer
Qualified. Credible. Creative. And the list doesn’t end there. Fine Arts professor Joe Piasentin leaves an invaluable impression on every student and colleague he encounters.
One of the original faculty members to teach on Pepperdine’s Malibu campus, Piasentin boasts not only a Stanford diploma, but also international acclaim. Always engulfed in a whirlwind of exhibitions, this professor still prioritizes his students and teaching career.
“Art is integral to a liberal arts education,” maintains Piasentin. “You learn to keep your eyes open and take on new thoughts. You learn how to think, instead of what to think.”
Upon meeting former university president Bill Banowsky, Piasentin began at Pepperdine in 1979, just seven years after the campus moved from Los Angeles to Malibu. Previously, he taught at Pomona Graduate School as a painting professor.
Piasentin now teaches courses at Pepperdine in painting and drawing, which are open to art and non-art majors and have enhanced the Fine Arts Division on many levels. “Without Joe,” voices art student Tiffany Brannon, “Pepperdine would be a far grayer place.”
Although enjoying global success, Piasentin likes to keep insulation between his work and his students. He even owns a separate studio in Ojai, close to his current home, where he creates and stores much of his own work.
“I don’t want my students to interpret my critiques with pictures in their head of my work,” said Piasentin. “I want them to search for their own meanings.”
His personal search for meaning began in high school with his first art class. Using oil paints for the first time, Piasentin recognized the immense potential for art in his life. Although he had been dabbling in painting since childhood, his art classes in high school were crucial to molding him into the artist he is today.
“Where I struggled to express myself verbally,” he recalls, “I then found I could express myself through artwork.”
Now, on the other side of the classroom, Piasentin attempts to recreate the same sort of working environment for his students. He constantly tries to remove his students from their comfort zones, challenging them to possess a greater understanding of their own visions.
“Painting reveals things about yourself to you,” states Piasentin. “Perhaps you’re frightened of taking chances? Maybe you’ll be forced to encounter new realities. What is strange to you can become familiar and what you think you’re familiar with can even become strange.”
As a pupil of “Joe’s” almost every semester at Pepperdine, art student Kristin John confirms Piasentin is true to his word. “He has challenged me to push my art in new and sometimes scary ways. But, as a result, those moments have made me a better artist.”
Student Dominique Ovalle adds: “The cool thing about Joe is that he is very honest in his speech and, therefore, trustworthy in his opinion.”
Although just two of hundreds of art students Piasentin has had since he started at Pepperdine, John, Ovalle and others like them are the reason Piasentin continues teaching. He believes the wave after wave of fresh faces serve as a confirmation to the nature of art and its significance in society, culture and history.
In order to explore the significance of art even further, Piasentin travels every other summer to Florence, Italy. While in Florence, he serves as faculty for the Studio Art Centers International (SACI) program. One of the most respected programs of its kind, the SACI program caters to English-speaking students interested in the arts.
Besides Italy, Piasentin travels internationally for exhibitions of his work to destinations such as Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. He believes that, because he is a practicing artist, his teaching becomes more effective.
“It’s not something you do,” exclaimed Piasentin. “It’s who you are.”
Not only has Professor Piasentin exhibited work in Asia, he also holds the title of “Inaugural Artist” of the Julia and David White Art Colony in Costa Rica.
For Piasentin, these opportunities are not qualifications or resume items, they are blessings. He also deeply values the other huge blessing in his life – his family.
His family, which consists of his wife Rebecca and two sons Zachary and Nick, spent 18 years living on the Malibu campus. Raising a family on a college campus came with its own challenges and perks, but overall Piasentin asserts that it was a positive environment.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Piasentin family is the intertwining of Joe and Rebecca’s careers. Rebecca, who has her master of Family Therapy degree from Pepperdine’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology, now runs her own practice in Ventura.
Piasentin is proud of his wife’s work and often finds himself using her psychological perspectives in his teaching career. “I look at the issues within each painting from a student. They are personal and intimate and contain unique meaning drawn from the student’s personal experience.”
With such so much on his shoulders every day, how does Piasentin get away?
“I paint.” he affirms. But what about for fun? He smiles. “For fun, I paint.”
04-17-2008
