Daemen College : Alumni : Alumni Profiles : Adam Rivers
Adam Rivers
Art Education, 2006
Why did you choose to come to Daemen?
The reason that I choose Daemen was that I knew that the college had an excellent art program and I wanted to take advantage of the small class sizes.
What did you like best about the program?
While I attended Daemen the professors made a lasting memory on me educationally and in the classroom. Professors Hatchett, Barraclough, Allen and Appler all made me into the art educator I am today.
Where do you work now? What are some of your responsibilities?
In high school, I knew I wanted to teach, so when I graduated from Daemen I got a job two months later at Community Charter School in Buffalo, and I love my job. The students are always eager to learn and the school provides me with something different. I do not have a classroom so I am “art on a cart,” in which I go from room to room with my materials. This limits the art we can create, but it helps me with my classroom flexibility, because I have to adapt to that particular classroom behavior and management plan.
Your work is appearing in this year’s Academic Festival calendar. Can you tell me a little bit about it? Was this a piece you worked on while you were at Daemen? Do you frequently work with mixed media?
“Bulls-eye,” the artwork I created for the Academic Festival, was done in my freshman year in Professor Barraclough’s design class. It is a mixed media piece, containing acrylic matte board and magazine. I don’t work in mixed media anymore, right know I paint acrylic and canvas and my criteria is typography.
What was your favorite experience at Daemen?
The experience I had at Daemen that was most memorable was when I went to Tanzania. I went with seven students from Daemen, and while we were there we helped out at orphanages and hospitals, camped in the Ngorongoro Crater, took a safari in the Serengeti, and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. This experience, and the relationships that I made with the friends I went with, I will never forget, ever.