Meet The Prof, with Shane & Spence

MTP 12: Robbie Quinn on finding mentors, taking risks to broaden friendships, new opportunities.

• shane hartley • Episode 12

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Robbie Quinn, quinnr@ecu.edu, is an Associate Professor of Art Education of East Carolina University. He shares the importance of finding mentors, how art can be a reflection of God's beauty and creativity, the influential platform and future of art education, his experience writing a textbook, and his experience of stepping out of his comfort zones in college and the positive impact it had on his life. 

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I'm Micah and I'm a Junior in the Software Engineering program at UNCW. And I'm here to ask the question, how do you see God in the subject you study? Specifically, how do you see him interacting, working, or any of it? Thank you.

Robbie Quinn (00:18)
I think there've been some people who have written recently that really through art, sort of the beauty of Christ is and can be proclaimed pretty clearly and we have an opportunity as artists to beautify our world. And that's a reflection of maybe,

even though folks might not be Christians, when they beautify the world, it's a way in which they're sort of, you know, drawing attention to the beauty of our Creator.

Shane (00:51)
Well, Robbie, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today?

Robbie Quinn (00:56)
Hey, doing great, Shane. Thanks, how are you?

Shane (00:59)
I'm good. I'm good. I'm so excited about this time to get to talk to

So I have an immediate question that came from your profile on meettheprof.com. You said in there that you at one point lived underground. Please tell more. What in the world are you talking about?

Robbie Quinn (01:17)
Yeah, I know it probably conjures up images of Bilbo Baggins at Bag End or something, but it wasn't exactly like that.

When my parents purchased the piece of property on which we built our house, they kind of went in phases. So they built the basement on this property, which had a front that was exposed and sides that were entirely underground.

And the vision was at some point in time in the near future, that would be the basement. And then they would build the upper levels on top of that. So I ended up living underground essentially.

Spence Hackney (01:58)
Your parents didn't have to worry about you sneaking out either, right? Since there's no doors and windows, there's just the one way in. So you can keep that guarded and your children stayed in the house. That's beautiful. I might move to an underground bunker. That sounds like a great idea.

Shane (01:58)
Wow.

Robbie Quinn (02:09)
That's beautiful. I love that.

Shane (02:12)
That was probably their real concern. They really had no desire for a basement. They didn't trust you for three years.

Robbie Quinn (02:19)
Just a nice contained children.

Shane (02:24)
to us some about your journey when you were a college student with deciding the direction you would go in life. I think that's one of the main questions a lot of students are asking these days. How do they decide on a career or direction?

What was that like for you?

Robbie Quinn (02:44)
I think that when I...

was a high school student, I was in just about every art class our high school offered and I loved it.

And when I got into Young Harris College and started taking art classes there, I found that

I was a little bit sort of ill-prepared for some of the things that I experienced there.

And so I kind of felt really

kind of supercharged about being an art teacher at that point in time.

To think back about how I built myself as an artist. And then sort of take...

what pieces I felt were missing from going into art classes in college and see where it might be that I could try to formulate an art teaching, an art classroom, an art teaching experience that would be rewarding for my future students.

And at that point in time, I had a chance to teach an art class in college at the place I was getting my masters. And I was just like, oh, this is it, man. I was hooked, you know?

Spence Hackney (03:45)
Hmm.

Shane (03:46)
I'm curious, like, at what point you would say you began really owning your Christian faith  yourself? And even specifically, if there were any major turning points or key points of

a spiritual transformation for you.

Robbie Quinn (04:06)
I had such incredible godly men who mentored me.

When I was having trouble

with a...

a lady friend who I had become enamored with, whose faith was not orthodox Christian in any respect.

And they invited me to, you know, inspect the truths of the scripture for myself and see how, see why I believe what I believe.

Spence Hackney (04:22)
Yeah.

Robbie Quinn (04:32)
Certainly that's continued in my life as an adult believer, you know, making sure that I have men who are older and wiser and have been believers for longer than me who would provide me with good counsel. That's a really important piece of being in Christian community and it's been so incredible to see how God has used that to shape and fashion me into his image in some small way.

Spence Hackney (04:56)
Yeah.

So if you're an 18 year old college student and you're hungry for people like that in your life, you're hungry for mentors, how do you go finding them? What would you say?

Robbie Quinn (05:09)
Um, you know, what we're kind of having a conversation about here with MeetTheProf is a really important thing, um, that I would draw any student to. Um, I try to include the link to my MeetTheProf profile in my emails. I put it in my syllabus. So, um,

you know, students can always click on that. Other professors can pass that along to their students in whatever way they feel is appropriate.

Spence Hackney (05:34)
Mm-hmm.

Robbie Quinn (05:37)
You know, I would just certainly encourage young students who are going off to college to get involved in a local church to seek out opportunities to be mentored by folks at those local churches.

And then certainly the on-campus campus ministries have sort of connection points for students to get connected to mentors, either the campus ministers themselves or some additional folks who those campus ministers might recommend

Spence Hackney (06:14)
Good stuff. Thanks for that advice for sure.

Shane (06:15)
I think that's really

How have you seen evidence for God in your own

Robbie Quinn (06:24)
I think there've been some people who have written recently that really through art, sort of the beauty of Christ is and can be proclaimed pretty clearly and we have an opportunity as artists to beautify our world. And that's a reflection of maybe,

even though folks might not be Christians, when they beautify the world, it's a way in which they're sort of, you know, drawing attention to the beauty of our Creator.

Shane (06:56)
Hmm.

Robbie Quinn (06:57)
been really encouraged by the field of Art Education.

There's a wide variety of sort of interest groups in our national organization for art educators. And one of those is the Caucus for the Spiritual in Art.

This is kind of a little bit of a nebulous concept in terms of

religion or a relationship with Christ. Just kind of the fact that the door is open there and there's interest from folks in our field about exploring issues of spirituality. I just take that as an incredible opportunity.

Folks like me

have a way to speak into and share with others who might have different perspectives about spirituality.

It's really an encouragement to me.

And then kind of more personally to me, perhaps, in terms of my scholarly research, I was able to, over the course of many years, I was able to write a

sort of designed for introduction to art classes, Art Appreciation is how they might be called at most colleges. In that particular textbook, I was able to weave all kinds of stories about biblical art, which are just, there is a plethora of those throughout the millennia. And man, it was just really a neat opportunity for, I could just...

Shane (08:20)
Hmm.

Robbie Quinn (08:29)
basically explain the story of the gospel, you know, and sort of detailing what informed a particular artist's portrayal of a biblical story or a biblical figure. So I was really thankful about that.

Shane (08:45)
So are there any students, you don't have to name names, but are there any students that have stood out to you that were particularly memorable to you?

Robbie Quinn (08:57)
One of them is a student who, after going out and teaching art in the public schools for a while, came back and did her doctorate with us. Sorry, her master's with us. And it was really, really special to be able to sort of see that growth in her and then to be able to see her conduct her research and be able to write so well and articulate her

philosophy and theory of art education in such succinct ways and to see her working with our undergraduate students. So those kinds of students have come across in several instances. And I think those are the ones that really stand out to me as folks who, you know, you sort of see like as bad as I did, there was something that stuck, you know, and now they're taking that

And they're having their own influence on art educators of the future. So I think those are some of the most kind of rewarding experiences that I can recall with

Shane (10:07)
Well, I bet.

Robbie Quinn (10:08)
Yeah.

Shane (10:08)
And how do you feel about the future of art education? And maybe specifically, what kind of advice do you give for future art educators?

Robbie Quinn (10:21)
Art teachers

for multiple reasons that we probably won't get into here today, just have a kind of a platform or a venue in which they can make some really interesting and cool relationships with their students and have profound impact for good or for ill. But I think I wanna encourage my students to be aware of that and recognize that, you know

Spence Hackney (10:36)
Mm.

Robbie Quinn (10:53)
in the art classroom, a lot of times they're dealing with feelings and emotions and identity, which is a huge topic right now.

And so the art teacher as a mentor and as a sort of a creator of a safe space for a student to do that

is kind of a magical person in a way. That

Shane (11:15)
Hmm.

Robbie Quinn (11:16)
can sort of be portrayed sort of on a Hollywood level as like the sort of eccentric art teacher who, you're not really sure what that person's been up to before they go into the classroom. But it's just an opportunity for an art teacher to recognize some of the

the burden and the beauty of the field.

I always encourage them to just remember that they're teaching people first and that they're teaching art

I think that we have challenges as a field, certainly, and I recognize that what I hear from art teachers out there in the field is that, you know, they're kind of, they feel a little bit kind of like they're fighting an uphill battle a little bit with regard to budget,

with regard to sort of being ostracized a little bit, at the end of the hall and the furthest hall away from, we don't have to hear them or smell what they're making and

deal with all that weirdness going on in the art room.

Shane (12:21)
Hmm.

Robbie Quinn (12:27)
experience that we had in the pandemic certainly showed some of the more difficult areas to do in art online. You know, my dear colleague, Hanna Jubran in sculpture was absolutely just beating his head against the wall trying to figure out how to do steel fabrication online.

Spence Hackney (12:45)
Thank you.

Robbie Quinn (12:50)
I remember my ceramics colleague, Jim Tisnado

Shane (12:49)
I bet.

Robbie Quinn (12:53)
had his students come into the front of the building at certain times, pick up a bag of clay, take it home, do something with clay at home. They didn't have wheels or anything like that, so they couldn't throw pots, but they could hand build. And then they bring those back at a given time, drop them off at the front of the school. He would fire them in the kiln. And I remember talking to him, he was like, man, this was the biggest headache I have ever had to experience.

Shane (13:18)
Wow.

Spence Hackney (13:18)
Thank you.

Robbie Quinn (13:21)
So yeah, some of those kinds of areas don't seem to play out real well online, unfortunately.

So still some strides to be made there, I

Shane (13:34)
Yeah,

Well, so we're coming to a close. This has been very rich. We appreciate you letting us into your world. So I'm interested if you were to give your 18-year-old self advice, what advice would you give yourself?

Robbie Quinn (13:44)
Yeah.

I think maybe I would give my 18 year old self the same advice I got when I was an 18 year old and I think it helped out. And I still tell folks who graduate from high school that I know this same piece of advice. And that's try to sit with somebody different at the cafe, at every meal.

that's a lot harder than I

remember it being.

The moments of awkwardness that might've, you know, been there at the beginning of each meal, quickly disappeared.

And I ended up making tons of friends that I never probably would have made otherwise.

Shane (14:39)
Hmm.

Robbie Quinn (14:40)
And I was able to experience things in college with those friends that I probably never would have done on my own. So.

That was a real easy kind of nudge for me to get out of my comfort zone. And I just really encourage folks who are going off to college, 18 year olds, to try to take that little tiny,

Spence Hackney (14:51)
Hmm.

Robbie Quinn (15:01)
step of faith.

Shane (15:03)
That's excellent. I've heard others share how they had opportunities to shrink back in fear in some situation. They decided to step out and how they can't imagine if they had not done that, what they would have missed out on because there's so many rich things come from taking risk.

Spence Hackney (15:20)
Yeah.

Shane (15:26)
Well, Robbie, thank you for this time. And I know there will be students who would love to connect with you, would love to get to know you more, ask questions. What's the best way for students to reach out to you?

Robbie Quinn (15:38)
Certainly I've tried to capture everything on my personal website, which is robbiequinn.com and in that site, I've got links to socials and information about some of my creative and research endeavors and my teaching. And

uh, my music is also on my website, robbiequinn.com. And yeah, I'm thankful that God has given me a gift of music to be able to use to encourage people to teach a little bit even. And I'm able to bring joy to people, hopefully, by the things I play.

I'm able to lead people in worship through singing at my church, which I love doing that.

Shane (16:27)
I am so grateful that you are out there in these students' lives. Thankful you're there at ECU. And thank you for this time.

Robbie Quinn (16:33)
Yeah.

I enjoyed it guys. Thanks so much for taking some time to speak with me today.

Spence Hackney (16:35)
Very much.

Shane (16:40)
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview and you can learn more as well as read about other Christian professors on our website, meettheprof.com. And you can search for professors by name or by state or even by college campus. And you can also find many helpful resources about questions that were in the interview and other ways of answering tough questions at Cru.org and that's Cru.org. And college students,

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