Jon Pearson

Thursday, February 21st, 7:00 – 9:30pm

PRESENTS:

Drawing on the Inventive Mind

In The Duncan Anderson Design Department Gallery at California State University, Long Beach

Cartoonist, writer, storyteller, and creative thinking consultant, Jon Pearson, will demonstrate some “off-road” drawing techniques that show how drawing may be the most powerful ideation tool ever invented. You will discover some fun, simple, revolutionary ways to use drawing to think more richly, rapidly, and deeply about anything. You will see how to use drawing to say unsayable things in unforgettable ways.

Jon is an internationally known speaker, learning skills consultant, and author. He has worked with more than one million students, teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States and around the world. As a keynote speaker for business and schools he has addressed many state and national conferences. He received, from the U.S. Patent Model Foundation’s national “Creativity Conference for Educators”, the highest workshop ratings in its history.

Jon was a winner of the Professional Artists in Schools Award and was selected to present the closing session on arts in education to the 2002 California State PTA Convention. He has been a speaker at the National Association for Gifted Conference and a featured speaker for the California Association for Gifted Conference. He has presented staff workshops on creative learning techniques in nearly every state in the United States. He has also been a keynote speaker at the Creative Problem Solving Institute in New York, the National Innovation Convergence, and the National Humor Project.

Jon lives in Los Angeles and, in addition to consulting, has taught courses in multiple intelligences and gifted education at the University of California at Riverside.

Jon received a BA in philosophy from the University of California, an MA in the creative arts interdisciplinary from California State University in San Francisco, and a multiple subject teaching credential from California State University in Los Angeles. He has also studied at the New England School of Art and Design, the Atlanta College of Art, and the San Francisco Academy of Art. He received an honorary degree from Universidad Catolica De Santa Maria Arequipa, Peru.

In addition to the nearly thousand schools with which Jon has worked, he has worked with corporations: Clorox, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Novell, General Motors, S.C. Johnson, the US Navy, and others — developing creative thinking programs. Still, Jon has never forgotten the joys of being a child and believes now, as he did as a classroom teacher, that for learning to be lasting and meaningful it must be creative and personal.