Mari has over twenty years of experience in the arts. As a child she danced with Virginia Tanner’s Children’s Dance Theater, sewed and quilted, sang in choirs, and oil painted. As a teen she ballroom danced, wrote prose and poetry, and enjoyed theater activities of acting, painting make-up, and
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Mari has over twenty years of experience in the arts. As a child she danced with Virginia Tanner’s Children’s Dance Theater, sewed and quilted, sang in choirs, and oil painted. As a teen she ballroom danced, wrote prose and poetry, and enjoyed theater activities of acting, painting make-up, and improv, and as a young adult, she found tango, cycling, and began professionally performing as an Art Model for countless artists working for Disney, EA, and Universities, Institutes, and Studios. She particularly enjoyed set, costume, and lighting design for illustrators.
After nearly a decade of working closely with visual artists, she realized her real penchant was for coaching the artist through their process and began to teach. She first created a visual arts program for an all ages after-school art program in Peru where she became bilingual, then came to the Bay Area to get certified as a cognitive movement instructor, creative dance teacher, and preschool music teacher at SDIT at the CDC Center, Luna Dance Institute, and Music Together, respectively. She began teaching the arts at a bilingual after school program, and soon began teaching classroom cognitive movement, music, and classroom content as a T.A. while enjoying program management at cultural centers, and soon started to teach, create, and consult bilingual preschool programming. She began tutoring, coaching gymnastics, and teaching inclusive sexual education and spiritual development for children at a non-denominational, interfaith congregation. She volunteers as a somatic processing facilitator, and greatly enjoys creating Summer Camp sports and art programming, and continues her own weekly martial arts, dance, art, and athletic practices. She also enjoys watercolor, writing icons, writing, swimming, any outdoor activity,
Through all of her experience at schools, churches, studios, cultural centers, and recreational centers, she understands the importance of project curriculum, sees ways to improve socio-emotional (and optionally, spiritual) curriculum and practice, and notices a need and desire for the development of interdisciplinary approaches in schools. As a honors student of the renowned Hutchins School for teachers at SSU, she acquired a Liberal Arts Degree with an emphasis in Multicultural Arts, and double minored in Music and Dance/Theater, and started the Sonoma Escrima Club. As an undergrad, Mari authored a Pre-K through 12th grade Interdisciplinary Arts Program, combining PE, visual arts, dance, theater, and music, into one program. As a grad student it will be digitized, and her doctorate work will focus on using her anti-racist, multicultural, interdisciplinary, trauma-informed, cognitive and somatic program in reducing school violence in an effort to award grants for schools in need to purchase such programming.
She is very eager to provide interdisciplinary arts programming for Sonoma County and beyond.
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