Art is Power. Art can express dreams, incite action, quell chaos, preserve history, and bring visual meaning to the intangible. Art can also manipulate, and in our current world we are too often negatively influenced by media’s messages which can be harmful, demeaning, and flat out wrong. My life goal is to be an honest illustrator and educator, ever conscious of and judicious with my work’s effects on viewers and students. I have the power to manipulate people through the art I create and the lessons I teach, but I choose to use this power to instead carefully educate and to tell truths. I have made it my personal and professional duty to share with as many people as possible that art and creativity are fluid and automatic: that they make your life richer, more productive, and more deeply connected to others’ lives around us.

 

         When I was little, my mother would come home from errands with craft after craft– from carpet looming to melted wax sculpture pins – and I would be thrilled at the prospect of making something new with her. I grew to cherish these times, and I now realize it was not because of what we made but how it made me feel to create with her. She constantly encouraged me, even when my fabric paint exploded on my sweatshirt creation or when my beaded curtain string broke and sent hours of work clattering across our kitchen floor. While I was reduced to tears, she would lovingly clean up the mess with me and show me how to fix it; often this required some snappy creative thinking on her part. There was not a single piece I created with her that I felt was silly or “didn’t turn out.” She (and the rest of my family) drowned me in encouragement and exemplified creative thinking to the point where taking risks and testing my own creative ideas were constant and effortless endeavors for me. Until later in life, I did not realize how invaluable (and sadly, how uncommon) this perspective on raising a child can sometimes be. My family raised me to grow into an autonomous, artistically prolific, free-thinking woman: all starting with what was at its heart simply fun “Craft Time With Mom.”

 

           Beyond crafting with my mother, I pursued my own artistic interests and visions in art lessons, both private and public, throughout elementary and high school. When I was a budding and bustling senior at Tully, NY Junior/Senior High, I was told I had “talent” to place alongside my lifelong love for art. I considered – as I’m sure about 99.9% of art students do – being an artist for profit. I thought I might venture outside being “just” a fine artist, by looking into illustration and printed media. This seemed like a reasonable career choice at the time that my engineering father also happened to be proud of.

 

           If you asked me in high school if I ever thought I would be an art teacher, I would have responded, “No; I just want to have a career making art. I don’t think I would be able to teach someone how to make art.” I was under the misconception that good art teachers actually tell their students how to make “good” art. Of course I also felt that good teachers were encouraging and patient, among other things; however, I figured these were tools you needed to have in order to get any person under 19 years old to create something “worthwhile” anyway. I went through undergraduate school with this mentality; even when my ideas of what constitutes “good” art were shaken and ultimately blown away, I still held the firm conviction that I would not make a good fulltime art teacher. Maybe it would be something I could do here and there, as an afterschool gig to stay current in upcoming art trends and movements, and to make a little extra money. Working in an art museum doing something similar did cross my mind, but this idea had not yet stuck.

 

            If you asked me in undergraduate school if I ever thought I would be a children’s book illustrator, I would have responded, “No; I have more complex ideas than that. I don’t want my work to be commercial. I want to really make an impact.” I created many works I was proud of in my Illustration BFA: some allegorical works that were witty or even – do I dare claim it? – bold. I imagined myself to someday be some grand artistic profit, bearing her paintbrush for the sake of reaching the masses with her wise and painterly ideas. “ARTISTS ARE HERE TO DISTURB THE PEACE” was my favorite bumper sticker on my dormitory wall at the time. I emulated my peers as they created wonky or weird imagery with edgy styles, seemingly destined for modern video games and animated movies. When I presented my final portfolio at the end of my Senior Prep course, I was devastated to receive the feedback that I “really should consider children’s book illustration, because style-wise I seem to have that market cornered.”

 

            Children’s books? Like for kids, right? They couldn’t mean that I should create art for children because my style was childish and meant for immature minds? How could I make a true impact with children’s books? My reality was shaken. I had worked hard and long to be destined for those edgy and pervasive print and animated markets that my friends and peers seemed born for: from top-notch advertisement illustration to video background, UI, and character production. That was the world I felt I should be meant for, but it seemed that the harder I tried to make my palettes and subjects bleak or alien, the more they became airy and appealing. Heading into graduation, I decided to embrace (yet keep at an arm’s distance) both the edgy and conventional seemingly conflicting parts of my artist mind; I applied for a Museum Education internship at The Norman Rockwell Museum. Little did I know how perfectly this place and the work I did there would suit and balance me.

 

             My mind was blown open by Rockwell’s masterful work: not only due to his expert subject observation and painting techniques, but also due to his mastery over human communication and desires (or, as he once put it, “I showed the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed”). There my brain hungrily swallowed as much information as possible about how visitors’ brains processed imagery and visual messages. In turn, both the artist and educator within me were deeply inspired to create my own visual messages and to share my love and intense respect for art’s power. The more I read and inquired, the better my docent and school-group tours became. After my NRM internship, I began my MEd in Community Arts at Lesley University to learn even more about art education for human minds (and particularly children’s minds). As soon as I had a grasp on revelations like Multiple Intelligences, I began using various education tactics within my children’s museum programs, and even lead a community photo project for families about our own Rockwell interpretations (“Norman Rockwell PhotoVoice”- see my website for further project details and blog). When it came time for a graduate-level internship, I discovered IS183 Art School of The Berkshires nearby, and strengthened my art education career with a summer pre-practicum internship, afterschool art programs, summer camp programs, and ultimately a spot on their staff creating and running these programs. My students during this time ranged from Pre-K to Elementary through adult age, and I worked with many types of school-aged students: considered both “mainstream” and non. I was – and still continue to be – fascinated with discovering as many ways as possible for art to unlock the layers of a people’s brains to better my understanding of and ability to teach them.

 

             I was hooked on teaching art. Rather, I was blissful to realize I had been mostly right in high school: that you cannot “teach” someone how to make their own art. However, you can lead someone to discover it if you teach them about the world of Art, creativity, and creative thought. My time at NRM proved that I liked teaching all ages; however, I noted the invaluable potency of early intervention with art education and inspiration. The “writing on the wall” had been there, and my life so far had echoed it: starting with “Craft Time With Mom,” through art lessons and inner battles with my own artistic style, to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences outlining it all so simply (and visually as well, which was key for my brain); I was meant to teach as well as make art. My daily life is continuously building and refining me as an art educator.

 

             It is my duty to share this epiphany with as many people as I can, and the younger they are the better. As an art educator, it is my duty to instill (in children) that learning about our own creativities through art is a powerful tool in both school and life beyond. Not only is history steeped in art, but plucking art from history gives us irreplaceable windows into pieces of our world and times we can only dream of traveling to (all the while reminding us that humans everywhere and in every time are never too dissimilar from ourselves). Art, as I so naturally learned from Norman Rockwell, are simply stories of PEOPLE. Visual communication has the power to break boundaries that verbal or written language may not; this is how we can relate to those everywhere and in every time. Art as a communication catalyst is a valuable teaching tool, particularly when working to reach as many learning types as possible. On a personal note, art can also be a method of visual self-reflection (“journaling,” if you will) where words fail, which can in turn enable communication with a wider world when shared. Many studies have also shown that creative thinking is a beyond important life skill, stemming at its most basic levels from the need to survive. We create to survive, and so art’s ability to facilitate life is boundless.

 

            I have realized that it is also my duty to share the fact that art and creativity are wholly accessible; you need only be open to them, and art and creativity will empower you. Chances are, you are already creative every day without realizing it due to societal definitions of “art” and “creativity.” It is a common misconception that you need to “master” either before you can use one to your benefit. It is perceived that creativity – and Art, as a world of its own – is reserved for a select few. The issues I have with these assumptions prompted my graduate Thesis project: my first completed children’s book titled Family Creativity. To create Family Creativity, I interviewed my family to learn how they are creative in their daily lives, created a storyline and characters with illustrations to match, added a few ending pages of related recommended family activities, and self-published the final product. This book’s purpose was to encapsulate my beliefs in a medium that children could access, enjoy, and internalize with their families. It tracked my family’s creativity and helped them realize their own individual and daily creativities that they have perhaps been denying. I also hoped it might begin to thank them for their influences on my own strong yet ever-growing, self-owned creativity.

 

             I am constantly developing as an art educator and children’s book illustrator. I have had to – and will no doubt need to continue to – shirk my assumptions about myself and my work in favor of finding my own uniquely creative ways of teaching and art-making. I have come this far by learning to live my art (of both illustration and education) on a day-to-day basis, withholding expectations or premature judgements of myself and others. I have realized my own brand of creative power can influence the young generations’ lessons and fantasies, positively impact society, and revolutionize the way we, as human beings, currently see the world and ourselves. The ways in which I have understood my world will feed others’ perspectives, and then be passed down through families in both art lesson and book form (hopefully in copious quantity and compelling quality!). It is my goal to be always vigilant regarding the power my work has, but most importantly to encourage others to be aware of and inspired by their own creative powers.