Member Spotlight: Andrew (AndyT) Thompson
Andy (AndyT) Thompson
Ann Arbor
Stamps School of Art & Design
What is your area of specialty?
Fine Art: Sculpture, Installation Art, & Conceptual Art. I work a lot with recycled and repurposed materials, and do a fair amount of digital imaging, video, and 3D modeling as part of my practice. I'm always interested in different forms of collaboration!
Links to professional websites:
What are you proud of related to your role as a lecturer?
I'm proud of my work towards creating inclusive classroom environments and engaging the students in actively building our classroom community & maintaining our classroom culture. In art & design studio courses, there are a lot of opportunities for people to get to know each other and for students to steer the assignments towards their own interests.
Also, I'm proud to still be teaching after 20 years of relentless adjuncting at 7 different schools in Southeast Michigan! I feel like I'm finally starting to get pretty good at teaching and would love to continue just having one job to cover my bases!
What is something you are proud of outside your role as a lecturer?
I'm proud of the different creative communities that I'm a part of in the Detroit art scenes and within LEO! I've won some recognition for my creative/artistic work, but it is the amazing community of people around me that keeps me going and wanting to continue to do the labor organizing and artmaking that I do!
Fun Fact: What is something people might not know about you?
I worked at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival for SEVEN YEARS, then turned away from my nerdiest impulses for 20 years, and during the pandemic began playing DnD for the first time in my life. I am loving having an activity that has nothing to do with obligations to my teaching, my art career, or my union organizing. Though I will note that there were two other union members in my last DnD campaign!