Staff Artists Rebekah Mei and Leslie Foster are headed back to school, this time as educators. They’ve both been part of Level Ground from the very beginning (in 2013) and 5 years ago they became our first volunteers to transition to paid part-time staff. In the last year, they’ve both started full-time jobs in education and are leaving the Level Ground staff team – but not our community!

To mark this transition, we wanted to share a little more about their journeys back to the classroom.

Leslie finished his MFA in UCLA’s Design Media Arts program in Spring 2022 and very quickly was hired as an assistant professor of time-based media (a tenure track position!) at Cal State San Marcos. This month he’s starting his second year where teaches students about creating experimental film and video and video-based installations. Basically, he gets to teach his art practice!

As our inaugural resident artist—who Level Ground then hired to build out our full residency program—Leslie says his experience as residency director was the first time he considered teaching in a more academic setting a realistic possibility. Leslie’s favorite part of his job is getting to see the beautiful, weird, thoughtful work his students create.

Check out some of that student work below. And Leslie is also generously sharing his “Introduction to video art practice and theory” syllabus with us too!

Rebekah studied K-12 education in undergrad and for the last 3 years has been working part-time through Angels Gate to teach art in LAUSD schools as a contractor. During that time she’s also been working towards a self-directed MFA in Matriarchal Art Practice. Now that her own kid is 4 years old, she’s ready to go back to work full-time and as of last month is the visual art teacher at an LAUSD middle school in South Central LA (where students call her Ms. Rebekah!). She teaches general art to 7th graders and folk art to 8th graders and gets to welcome students into the world of art and creative problem solving, or help them along the way if they’ve already begun that journey—as many of us did by the time we were young teenagers! She says the best part of her job is getting to see what other people make.

She says: “My years of finding my own personhood and artistic voice was immensely influenced by my work and volunteering with Level Ground! It has been the community of artists and content that has driven me to grow in ways I never could have imagined. And now I’m full circle, back in a middle school art room, where I first found that love of self expression.”

As she transitions to teaching full-time in the classroom, Rebekah reflects:

The opportunity to get to know students on a regular basis leads to seeing the ways in which we all have the capacity to grow within our outlook and practice of challenging aspects of life. It’s fun to hear ‘Ms. Rebekah, check this out! This is gonna be so fire when I’m done!’ from a student that a day prior was saying ‘What’s the point of this? Nothing I make is ever gonna look good.’

The saying I repeat to my students often is ‘the most important tool you have as an artist is your perspective.’ On the first day of classes we talked about how the life experiences we bring into the art room impact the type of creative work we make. My perspective and life experience is pretty different from the students I share space with, and while the transition to adjusting to that has been challenging at times, I am so grateful to get to see what they create each day. 

To Leslie and Rebekah,

We couldn’t love, or be more proud of you both. You will always be integral to Level Ground and we’re very grateful that this new chapter of your careers won’t take you too far away from our community 😘