Vanessa is an artist, educator and researcher.  She received her Master of Arts in Art Education (MAEA) under the mentorship and leadership of Dr. Sharon Johnson and Dr. Karen Carroll from MICA and her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in art history from Purchase College, State University of New York.  Vanessa has been nationally recognized as the 2021 NAEA Eastern Region Higher Education Art Educator, the 2019 Maryland Art Education Association Higher Education Art Educator of the Year, through her service on the writing team for the National Core Arts Standards in Visual Arts, and in her role on the National Art Education Association Task Force for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. 

Vanessa has served on the editorial review board for the Art Education Journal, the College Board AP Art and Design Curriculum Working Group,  the Baltimore Arts Initiative Advisory Committee, and the United States-Mexico Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (COMEXUS) – Fulbright-García Robles Arts Panel. She is on the Steering Committee of crea+e (Coalition on Racial Equity in the Arts and Education). She regularly presents at state, national and international conferences and has exhibited throughout the east coast. 

Vanessa contemplates and writes about race, urban education, the body and art. As an art educator, she makes sense of the world through aesthetic engagements and as such utilize a critical arts-based practice in work.  Her visual artwork is created alongside/within her scholarly research and writing. In researching, making art, and writing, each practice informs the other. Her musing can be found in the pages of Moleskin journals,  Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy and the Art Education Journal. 

She makes things that grow and die.

www.vanessalopez.art