Peggy Bang
Personal Statement
How excited and honored I feel to be recognized by my peers for this honor! My Art Education began at ISU with Dennis Dake as my Professor and Marion Skartvedt as my student teaching cooperating instructor. In December of this year I will celebrate 35 years as an art educator. I have taught people from the ages of 18 months through 80 years. My favorite part about being an art educator is interacting with my students. They help keep me young and abreast of the current times. It is very rewarding to know that I have helped educate people who are professional art educators, designers and artists.
During the first part of my career I taught elementary art and was very active in AEI. One of my favorite accomplishments was being the first statewide Youth Art Month coordinator. It is satisfying to see how that annual event has grown and flourished. Locally I have helped get an annual YAM exhibition started at the Mac Nider Art Museum for which one of my community college art majors now interns as the organizer of the juried show.
After receiving my MS from Bank Street College in cooperation with Parsons School of Design in New York, I switched to teaching the Visual Arts at North Iowa Area Community College. Believing strongly that architecture is art, I found myself becoming an advocate for preserving our built environment. When the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Stockman House of Mason City was nearly demolished, I volunteered to help restore it.After doing research on Marion Mahony Griffin my husband and I purchased the 1912 Melson House, drawn by her and designed by her husband Walter Burley Griffin. We restored the home to its original architectural Prairie School purity. Perhaps some of you toured our home at the AEI Fall Conference held in Clear Lake several years ago. We give tours as requested to interested students, architects and scholars from as faraway as Australia. Our home has received recognition by the Iowa AIA as one of the fifty most significant structures built in the 20th century in Iowa.
My newest advocacy is working with a local group to restore the Wright designed Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank. If all goes as planned the hotel will reopen in 2010 on its centennial. You must come for a visit.
