Art of the Classroom

Teaching art provides me with a constant source of creative inspiration for my own art making. Some of these artworks take the form of traditional instructional aides and exemplars that are part and parcel of an art teacher's toolkit. Others are my personal responses to interactions on form and/or content that come from working in a collaborative studio environment with the inspiring student artists and faculty at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, my teaching home. Sometimes I simply find art in the debris left from the productive energy and experimentation that swirls around me every day in my role as an art educator. This visual journal is a way for me to capture, reflect on and share some of the intersections between my personal art, my teaching and art of the classroom.

Neglected Drain

Digital Photograph. A studio sink left uncleaned following an unscheduled fire drill

"Hey! Can I Get Some Help Around Here?!"

Spray Paint on Paper, 4'x6'. Prepared as a project exemplar for my portfolio development class, I did it in a big hurry in my home studio on a day I was feeling ambushed by personal and professional chores. Stenciled images of dishrags, brooms and dust scoops, spray bottles shooting soap bombs, all tumbling in chaos above heads -- my heads I think, yelling in frustration and exasperation. I was feeling the title the whole time I was making it!

Cross Contour Drawing

Pen and Colored Pencil on Construction Paper, 9"x12"

I included a few "mistakes" in this exemplar done for my beginning drawing class as discussion points, and my astute students found many more than I'd planned. This deepens the class conversation: we had more technical points to consider in terms of drawing, and my status as a learner is more apparent to my empathetic students.

Interior Exterior: Self Portrait

Paper & Found Object Collage on Cedar Box. 4"x8"x6"

Illustration for "Halloween Hollow"

Blown ink, charcoal and pastel on paper. 12"x8".

Twenty-One Triangles

Torn, folded and sewn 300 lb BFK

Life Dreaming

Charcoal, ashes from personal journal, and pastel on colored paper, 12"x12"

This piece is the result of a collaboration with two colleagues, Liz Kiingi and Evan Morgan, master teachers both, for an English course they taught. Dealing with metaphors from The Great Gatsby, students were asked to first write down a list of personal dreams and aspirations. Students then burned the paper on which this assignment was printed. They used the ashes of these "goals" to create unexpected new visual representations of what might come out of such an experience, interpreting themes from The Great Gatsby, visual motifs arising from their art, and finally in written reflections of how such challenges might be met in their own lives.