156 TEACHERs COLLEGE COLUmbIA UNIvERsITy
biographies
nus. Her educational background lies within art,
psychology, neuroscience and philosophy and as
such she takes an interdisciplinary approach to her
research. The broad aim of her PhD research is to
explore the psychological foundations of drawing
ability with a particular emphasis on the role of
visual perception and visual memory. She is cur-
rently working in conjunction with Swansea Met-
ropolitan University and the Royal College of Art
studying the visual processes of foundation year
and post-graduate art and design students. She is
also interested in the neuroscientific basis of artis-
tic skills and intends to pursue this using structural
and functional studies of artistic processing in
expert and novice artists.
Born in 1979, in Napoli, Italy, Ruben Coen-
Cagli holds a PhD in Physics and is currently a
Research Associate in the Laboratory of Compu-
tational Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College
of Medicine in NYC. His current research aims to
link the statistical properties of the sensory envi-
ronment (natural images), the response properties
of (visual) cortical neurons, and perception. His
approach relies mainly on probabilistic (Bayesian)
computational modeling, and, to a smaller extent,
neurophysiology. After graduating in Quantum
Physics in 2004, he completed the PhD in Physics
in 2007 at University of Napoli, Federico II. Based
on the idea that creative processes are linked to
specific sensorimotor skills, his doctoral research
exploited eye tracking experiments and Bayesian
modeling to understand visuomotor coordination
in the activity of drawing, and to develop an artifi-
cial agent with such capabilities. From 2004 to 2007
he has been a visiting scholar at the Academy of
Fine Arts of Napoli. As a visual artist, his interdisci-
plinary projects have been presented at PixelACHE
(Kiasma Museum, Helsinki), Institute Jean Nicod
(Paris), CMCA 2006 (Goldsmiths College, Lon-
don), DMS’2006 (Grand Canyon, USA), Generative
Art Conference (Milano), and in several solo and
collectives in Napoli.
James Esber has lived and worked in Brook-
lyn, NY since 1986. In January, 2011 James had a
solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art
Museum in Ridgefield, CT. In 2007 he had a ten
year survey exhibition at the Southeast Center for
Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC. He has
had one-person shows at Pierogi Brooklyn (2010,
2006 and 1997), Pierogi Leipzig in Germany (2008)
and at PPOW in New York City (2003, 2000 and
1998). He has also shown widely in group exhibi-
tions, including Wall Rockets: Contemporary Art-
ists and Ed Ruscha, Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo, NY (2009), The Land of Earthly Delights at
The Laguna Art Museum (2008), Material Pursuits
at the Fleming Museum (2007), Twice Drawn at the
Tang Museum (2006), SITE Santa Fe’s Fifth Interna-
tional Biennial: Disparities and Deformations: Our
Grotesque (2004) and Open House at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art (2004). In recent years James has
been invited to lecture as a visiting artist at several
colleges and other institutions. These include The
Aldrich Museum (2011), Middlebury College, VT
(2009), the Center for Art and Design, College of
Saint Rose, Albany NY (2007), the Tang Museum at
Skidmore College (2006), the Rhode Island School
of Design (2004), the Brooklyn Museum of Art
(2001), the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown,
MA (2001), Princeton University (2000) and Ben-
nington College (2000). James was a recipient of
an individual fellowship in painting from the New
York Foundation for the Arts in both 2008 and- In 2005 he received a grant from the Pollock-
Krasner Foundation. He has also been a resident
at the MacDowell Colony in 2001 and 1992 and at
Yaddo in 1997 and 1990.
Stephen Farthing is a painter and research pro-
fessor at the University of the Arts London. He cur-
rently divides his time between painting, writing a
book on Color with David Kastan at Yale, and the
development of a taxonomy of drawing.Michelle Fava is a research student and mem-
ber of Loughborough University Drawing Research
Group and the Drawing Research Network. Previ-
ously she taught drawing, sculpture and contextual
studies in Further and Higher Education. Her PhD
research engages with drawing and psychology of
attention, considering the educational relevance
of contemporary theories of visual attention, and
cognitive studies of drawing. This research uses
empirical observation of artists’ drawing behav-
iour to bridge these disciplines, by considering the
attentional strategies artists employ in order to draw
from observation.Jane Fine has lived and worked in Williams-
burg, Brooklyn since 1986. She received a B.A. from