Dennis Paul

While I was pursuing graduate studies in psychology at The City University of New York, I began to work at the Pratt Graphic Arts Center in Manhattan. During this period I began to utilize both still and early video cameras in my study of nonverbal communications, group process and the intergenerational transmission of body language. These tools quickly became my brushes and infused my early teaching career for the NYC Board of Education in the South Bronx. I created innovative pilot programs for Hispanic children that encompassed art and technology and obtained the necessary support through federal ESEA Title III funds and a material grant from the Polaroid Corporation. Utilizing a 1-inch, closed-circuit television station, art and photographic processes, my nascent program, Language Arts Through Visual Arts, became the seed that the urban educator, Dr. Edythe Gaines utilized to birth the national models now known as RITA - Reading Improvement Through the Arts and AGE - Art in General Education. In addition to my artistic endeavors, I have worked as an educator, arts administrator and continue to do so as an organizational development consultant in the nonprofit and private sectors. In the late 1970s, I established the Development Office at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs under Commissioner Henry Geldzahler. In 1980, I also created the Development and Fundraising curriculum for the Post-Graduate Program of Museum Studies at New York University, teaching until 1985. At present I am involved in a number of projects, both individual and collaborative - the regeneration of two series from the 1970s, Love Canal and the Cosmic Mass, the multimedia projects: Voice of the Landscape and Coastal Uplift, as well as a world-wide environmental confessional project StrangeLove, Earthly Sins. In the mid-1970s, as Fashion Metamorphosis, involved in the NYC fashion industry where we incorporated various art techniques into the design of women's apparel. This undertaking represented the earliest of our collaborations and carried over into the creation of a third artist, which we birthed during our 1978 joint-residency fellowships in painting and photography at Yaddo, a creative community in Saratoga Springs, NY. This third artist, which we exhibit under the moniker, CoLabART - D. PAUL/SMALL, represents a fusion of painting, photography, mixed and new media, incorporating digital processes. In the fall of 2003, we again received joint-residency fellowships to