teaching artist
I’ve worked in city and county school all over Maryland. As a teaching artist, I work with students by developing a 3-8 week experience where I partner with teachers and staff in their school to develop a guiding question that relates to core curriculum students are learning. In a handmade tile and mosaic mural visual arts residency, students participate in planning and designing mural content, creating handmade tile from raw clay, cutting and shaping fired tile, tile layout, cementing and grouting. All projects are custom-designed for your students or school groups. I’m driven by connecting with students to help them see their own potential and success. I see myself as a facilitator, helping students create their own collaborative public art piece.
students in action
the process
Students research the theme of the mural, and participants self select the part of the mural they will design and draw. Their original drawings are used as patterns to cut the clay slabs which are carved and painted. Once the tiles are fired, the layout of the tiles tells the story of the mural. Students use thin-set mortar to attach the tile to underlayment, and the panels are grouted and polished.
Step 1: Define the Guiding Question - Students define the mural’s main message.
Step 2: Self Select - Students choose a project element focus.
Step 3: Research & Drawing - Print and digital media are referenced for designs.
Step 5: Layout Composition & Grout - Fired tiles are cemented and grouted.
Step 4: Make & Underglaze Tiles -Soft clay slabs are cut, carved and painted.
Step 6: Recognize Your Accomplishments - Hang public work and celebrate.
and there’s more…
In addition to clay tile mural residencies, I offer more opportunities for students to work with clay in the classroom. My specialty is developing arts integration programming based on classroom content. In a first grade math class, we built coil pots to reinforce math fundamentals: measuring to a whole number, finding halves and skip counting.
making connections
In a fourth grade language arts class I worked with students to make pinch pots. We explored the story of Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave to honor black history month. The clay workshop encouraged students to connect to their heritage by physically engaging in the story and work of real life artist David Drake.
social emotional learning
A bird sculpture project came out of a request to work with ESL students to connect to themselves in a new place through SEL, studying habitat and migration with a focus on birds native to home country and where students live now.
language arts integration
I developed a residency with a first grade language arts teacher. Students read and studied a story called The Buffalo are Back. We used clay in the classroom to enable students to find other ways to learn. These students increased engagement in the text by illustrating what they learned using clay.
Young Audiences of Maryland’s 2021 Teaching Artist Cohort.