Ohio State Blog Introduction

Hello, everyone. My name is Joy Mistovich, and I’m humbled and privileged to be a part of the Ohio State University Art Education community. I decided to enroll in this prestigious university program due to the impressive wealth of knowledge the Art Education Department professors offer, and their wide range of interests aligns with my various areas of interest as well. I’m deeply passionate about writing and research topics in Assistive Technology, Disability Studies, acquiring more information regarding the disability community, and Creative Writing. I’m also a technologist and fluent in Spanish. My favorite genre in Creative Writing is Poetry, and I’ve written and published two books on Amazon.

My appreciation and curiosity for the visual arts began at a very young age and stemmed from my parents who were both former Art Educators. Walking into an Art museum was a world of color, light, and I could decipher objects in a less complex work. However, if there was a plethora of detail, I was unable to grasp the specific qualities. My parents would offer a general description of the work with a few key details for each, but I yearned for the day when I could explore these locales on my own and internalize the various concepts of the visual and the artistic. Years later after graduating from Youngstown State University with my Bachelors in English and Spanish and a Masters in English, as well as attending an intensive ten-month blindness training program in Baltimore, I came to embrace an incredible and life-changing technology. This technology acronym, Aira, (Artificial intelligence remote assistance) provides on-demand access to information via a smartphone camera and highly trained professional Agents who can describe the world around me like never before. From simple tasks, such as identifying objects, to complex tasks, such as traveling through new spaces, assisting with proofreading and editing my book manuscripts and complex documents, to exploring the myriad of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and drawings at a museum, anything is possible!!!

My current position is the Education Department Assistant/ Digital User Experience Accessibility Specialist at The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio where I assist the Education Director with research, composing various types of education-related materials, working with docents and staff members from various backgrounds, and enhancing the lives of all museum visitors regardless of ability. The Online Masters Program is best suited for me because I’m able to pursue my fields of interest and gain the necessary principles and pedagogy of Art Education while expanding my worldview of the visual arts. I now have the capacity to expand my research interests and also gain answers to major questions. How has Art Education, Art History, and creating Art shaped the disability community and beyond, since Art is traditionally viewed through a visual lens. How does this impact the blind, as well as other disability groups. Recently, the modern teaching of Art Education to all students regardless of ability has shaped the lives of countless individuals. However, are individuals with disabilities sometimes turned away from the arts, since persons who may not be familiar with their needs and accommodations believe we are not capable and cannot find enough role-models, whether they are Art Educators, artists, or museum employees with disabilities? How has technology melded with the arts– both assistive technology and specifically using ordinary technology to create art to enhanced lives of persons with and without disabilities?