Just who is Art Coach Bruce?

I am currently the Beverley Taylor Sorenson (BTS) Arts Learning Program Visual
Arts Specialist at HMK Elementary School in Moab, UT. I’ve served that program for
10 years, since it’s beginning. I’m known to the kids and parents in my school
community and throughout the Four Corners area as Art Coach! The story about
how I came to be called Art Coach is below. Here’s a bit of my serendipitous history.
Born in Montana. Raised in Salt Lake City. No, I’m not.
I attended Highland High School and graduated in 1972. I attended the University of
Utah majoring in Business Management (helpful in organizing the flow of an art
room!). I put myself through college by learning the drywall profession. After
graduation I continued with drywall because I just couldn’t see myself in the
business community.

Since high school I’d had an interest in landscape photography and dreamed of
being a photographer with the National Park Service. Been there. Done that. I
produced interpretive slide shows for Organ Pipe Cactus NM and Arches NP as well
as wilderness preservation slide shows for the Utah Wilderness Coalition, SUWA
and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. The Canyon’s Edge is an 8-projector, 40-
minute, 400-image slide show that I produced for Canyonlands Field Institute with
photographer Tom Till and author Terry Tempest Williams.

As a photographer I have had my work published exclusively in 11 trade books plus
dozens of calendars, articles and greeting cards. I am the owner/director of the
Moab Photography Symposium, an annual educational gathering of landscape
photography people who gather for presentations and workshops. 2018 is our 15 th
year. I sell fine art color and B&W prints. That is one thread.
The art thread begins with photography. In the mid-late 70s friends and I had
secured funding from the Polaroid Corp in the form of One-Step instant cameras and
crates of film to explore teaching photography and visual thinking to kids. This
became the Polaroid Education Program and the Children’s Photographic
Workshop. In 1978, I was assigned to lead a workshop for the Utah Arts Council at
Montezuma Creek Elementary School, San Juan County, Utah portion of the Navajo
Reservation. I was 24 years young and had been looking for a way out of SLC. At the
end of the workshop I asked the principal if he knew of any jobs in the area. He said,
“the kids like you, you seem to like them, the kindergarten teacher needs an aide.
Do you want the job?” For the first time in my life I listened to the voice of
serendipity and accepted. I spent my first 3 years as Vicki Joe’s aide and the next 7
as a full-time artist-in- residence with the Utah Arts Council. In that decade the
school received a 1984 Rockefeller Bros. Fund Award for Excellence in Arts
Education. I was invited to attend a conference of 30 art educators from around the
country and was summarily invited to review schools across the nation for the
award. I had also accumulated a large portfolio of Navajo children’s art.
In 1988 I presented the work to the director of the Wheelwright Museum of the
American Indian in Santa Fe. He loved it and within one year we had a major exhibit

in Santa Fe. We funded a trip for 42 students to Santa Fe. I was invited to apply for
the position of museum educator and accepted it. I worked for the museum for two
years and was then lured away to become the art teacher for the Eight Northern
Pueblos Day Schools. During that time two books of mine were published; Where
There Is No Name For Art: the art of Tewa Pueblo Children, School of American
Research Press. This book received the 1998 Southwest Book Award and the 1997
Carey McWiliams Award from Multicultural Review as the best new book on the US
experience of cultural diversity. The second was A Rainbow at Night: the World in
Words and Pictures by Navajo Children, Chronicle Books. It received several awards
including a Parent’s Choice Notable Book Award.

I moved home to Moab in 1999. From there I conducted Utah school residencies for
the Utah Arts Council. I also initiated the Voices of Youth photo and radio
documentary project at the Western Folklife Center, home of the National Cowboy
Poetry Gathering. A few years back in Moab I started teaching photography and
radio production at out high school during one trimester. In 2008 Red Rock
Elementary in Moab applied for a received one of the first BTS grants. I’d helped
write the grant and was asked to be their selected full-time artist. That’s the “cliff’s
notes” version. I feel fortunate to have followed the voice of serendipity.