8 Inspirational Teachers (& 9 Mystery Artists) at AFS Gallery
While We Teach We Learn: Eight Artists Inspired by Their Students opens at the AFS Gallery with a reception on Friday, April 26th from 5:00-7:00 pm. This exhibition features eight inspirational artist-teachers who have dedicated much of their lives to art discovery in the classroom.
Five of the artists in the show, Katie Acheson, Magda Barnes, Angela Lang, Sophie Friedman and Carissa Moline are educators with Santa Barbara’s Incredible Children’s Art Network (iCAN).
Betsy Gallery will be exhibiting a series of small mosaics based on her collection of pictures drawn by children. All but one are based on nine children’s drawings of animals that Betsy bought twenty five years ago at a local thrift store. Betsy has tried to find the artists who inspired her mosaics, but so far has had no luck. The child artists’ names are: Valentino, Lynn, Brooke, Carmen, Peter, Alexie, Amy, Kristen and Nicole Barrett. The original artists must now be in their late twenties or early thirties. Betsy asks the public’s help in finding them and their teacher.
Betsy Gallery
Another artist in the show, Patti Post has taught art for 41 years with over 30 years at Ventura High School. Patti credits her students for inspiring her to make assemblage art. “We did a lot of dumpster diving when I was teaching, and we also made many trips to Art from Scrap to find materials. My students loved creating narratives out of the stuff of everyday life.”
Dug Uyesaka an art teacher at Laguna Blanca leads a teen mentorship program in printmaking through the Arts Fund. He is exhibiting collages he made which incorporate scraps of students’ abandoned work from his classroom.
Dug Uyesaka
Save the date! While We Teach We Learn: Seven Artists Inspired by Their Students opens on Friday, April 26th from 5:00-7:00 pm and hangs in the AFS Gallery through May 25th, 2013.
Josh was born and raised in Santa Barbara, where his passion and curiosity for the environment began and has continued to grow. During his undergraduate studies, Josh pursued this interest at the University of California at Santa Cruz, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies.
Melissa Dodos developed her passion for creative reuse as a mother of four and elementary educator over the past 25 years. She loves to inspire creativity by connecting people with resources and ideas.
Veronica grew up in San Diego and spent four years in San Luis Obispo studying Animal Science at Cal Poly. As an undergrad she learned lots about livestock, agriculture, and wildlife.
Stephanie began her journey as an educator over twenty years ago working as a preschool teacher in Washington state for a cooperative preschool program affiliated with Whatcom Community College. She loved observing the wonder and curiosity of the children and bringing them out into nature to explore the natural world. She continued her love for learning and got her teaching license and then her Montessori certification and worked as an elementary teacher in Tribal, Public, and Montessori schools. She collaborated to create a school garden and her students loved it so much that it became a special place where they could garden, read, explore, play, and it provided a safe sanctuary for students to calm down and reset when they were having difficult moments.
Morgan’s mermaid soul is always seeking adventure—swimming a relay across the Santa Barbara Channel and taking the first photo of a newborn orca off Anacapa Island being standout experiences close to home.
Lindsay Johnson