Welcome! My name is Rachel and I am a visual art educator with 16 years of teaching experience, including 11 years at the secondary level. I love teaching art and connecting with students around their passions, curiosity, and creative interests. I am dedicated to fostering disciplined and joyful creative inquiry through studio practices of all kinds. I love working with students at every level as they experience art and all it can teach us.
I am also a practicing artist who loves to paint, but with extensive experience in many media including ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, and mixed media.
I design rigorous, student-centered curricula that balance technical mastery, conceptual development, art historical study, and contemporary perspectives. I am committed to cultivating inclusive, intellectually engaged studio communities and to mentoring students through critique, portfolio development, and exhibition preparation. Guided by a belief in the educational value of the creative process, I emphasize interdisciplinary connections that deepen students’ understanding of visual culture and their own artistic practice.
As I move through my 2nd decade of teaching, I am more dedicated than ever to a practice that leads to awareness, achievement and change. I believe that my students deserve an education that is fun, challenging, meaningful, and empowering. Lately, I have been creating curriculum for my students that aims to draw them into the transformative processes of artistic and intellectual investigation. I am a learner too! I am always refining what I do and seeking new ways to make myself more engaging and impactful. As the times change, so do we! I enjoy piloting new curriculum and keeping the artistic spirit of creative discovery alive in my work.
"Through art, we open ourselves to pleasure, beauty, and harmony, to suffering and tragedy, and also to the odd and the edgy. Through art, we recognize that which we know to be important and true; through art, we encounter that which is not yet known, yet hovers on the edges of consciousness" -Olivia Gude
Why I teach...
Art in the Real World
Through the lens of art, I look to contextualize my curriculum within greater societal issues, history, or world events. Artists are always busy witnessing, engaging, and reenvisioning our world. In the classroom, we can imagine ourselves, through practice, as artists who seek connections between our observations, our struggles, our creative goals, and our aesthetic choices. My teaching aim is to interrogate the boundaries of my students’ assumptions-- to expand our collective understanding and sense of responsibility for ourselves and our world-- and to invite that to be an inspiration in our art-making alongside the development of technique and disciplined practice. It is a privilege to work with young people as, together, we create opportunities to explore the arts, find creative voice, and grow into expressive, conscientious members of our communities.
