Category: Teaching Artists

Arts Corps’ New Program at the Youth Detention Center

Posted on Friday, November 1st, 2024 at 5:45 pm
Written by Arts Corps

 

                A black-and-white picture of Maria, a Latina woman with long curly hair, in front of a bookshelf with lamp     

For the last few years, Arts Corps has brought arts education into the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center to engage the students at Alder Academy, located inside. Alder is one of five sites that Arts Corps serves in our collaboration with Interagency, a network of alternative high schools that are part of the Seattle Public Schools District and that supports students who have not found success at traditional schools due to a wide range of factors related to systemic oppression. The students at interagency are farthest from educational justice, and at Alder our youth are facing the justice system. Arts Corps classes help provide these students with safe, consistent space for creative expression, social-emotional development, and arts-based strategies for engagement in school.

Through our time at Alder, we see the meaningful and transformative impact that arts have on these students’ lives. We wanted this impact to go even further and to reach more of the youth who need art as a right to healing and self-expression. So we decided that our classes within the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center needed to serve not just Interagency students, but incarcerated youth as well. After months of working with the Department of Adults and Juvenile Detention, we are now starting a new program to bring visual arts, movement, and spoken word to youth in detention.

Two of the programs’ teaching artists, Heather Harris and Maria Guillen Valdovinos, shared with us a little more about this new initiative.

What is each of you teaching in this new program?
 
H: I am excited to begin teaching the art of movement at the youth detention center.
 
M: I will be teaching visual arts, graphic design, illustration and collective muralism. 
 
What is the importance of having art within spaces like the Youth Detention Center and of offering these different mediums? 
 
H: The dance class will give the participants an opportunity to create movement, share stories and expression, as well as working on strength building, stretching and learning a variety of lyrical and jazz-based dance steps.
 
M: As a creative abolitionist I believe the arts, movement and expression should be accessible to everyone, especially youth incarcerated. There are so many ways to process lived experiences and at any stage in life anyone can be an artist. The arts ignite creative thought process, challenge dominant narratives, how we communicate and help us build collective ideas. These spaces are needed for youth to express themselves and be able to develop creative skills with community teaching artists. 
 
What are some challenges of the program? What are some areas of opportunities? 
 
H: Some of the challenges have been just getting clearance of paperwork before entering the facility, but we are making our way through the process and will be starting soon.
 
M: Some of the challenges are materials & tools becoming a liability, which is also a great opportunity to learn about different mediums & methods. Developing skills with technology and learning the process of both hand-drawn & digital drawing is something I always appreciate teaching youth. There are so many ways to be a creative person, and I think it is great as an arts community we can provide these resources to people experiencing incarceration. 
                                                                                            
You were approached for the program due to your experience as teaching artists. What is one lesson you’ve learned through time that you are bringing into the program?
 
M: Over the years I’ve learned as an artist & educator invested in community to be flexible and respect others autonomy. 
 
What is the role of art in social justice and in conversations of social issues such as youth incarceration?
 
H: I believe that Art is a wonderful tool to release emotions, tap into creativity and to meet each person exactly where they are at in their journey. 
 
M: The arts are inherently political and necessary for social revolutions; helping us shift our knowledge and find new ways to exist. Youth who experience incarceration deserve to be treated with dignity and have access to arts education. The arts create opportunities for understanding, knowledge, solidarity, and plays a vital role in shaping all aspects of societies.

Read More

Faculty Spotlight: Yaz Williams

Posted on Saturday, September 28th, 2024 at 12:31 am
Written by Arts Corps

A selfie of Yaz, a black person in their 20s on a sidewalk, wearing white sunglasses and their shaped in 5 points

Yaz joined Arts Corps last winter as a Classroom Assistant and this year they are stepping up as a Teaching Artist. Recently, they were kind enough to share some of their thoughts, experiences, and practices of being a teaching artist.

“Being a teaching artist to me is being able to have influence and be influenced by the youth without being necessarily in a traditional educational setting”.

Yaz had always wanted to be a professional creative but they never expected to be an educator. To them, traditional educational settings place teachers in a loop, bound by a list of requisites they need to teach in a set amount of time. In their mind, this seemed taxing and problematic, because it often leads to difficult conversation being dismissed in the classroom due to a lack of time.

However, Yaz realized there are alternative routes to be an educator, giving them the opportunity to be someone who can have these difficult conversations, “We all come from different backgrounds. I’m not going to shy away from the experience of your background in comparison to mine. We come from different backgrounds, and sometimes we have stigmas against people with certain backgrounds. We’re gonna talk about that.”

Yaz’s practice centers the power of voice, the power of choice, and teaching responsibility through action. When they set rules, they explain the reasons behind the rule by discussing how each action is a choice and how each choice has consequences for ourselves and others. “I’m not gonna be like, oh, you did this wrong. I’m gonna say we don’t do these things because of this. We should not do that because these are the consequences of that action.”

This also leads to teaching youth how to advocate for themselves and respect others’ boundaries, “I want [them] to be learning how to ask for help. I want [them] to learn to say ‘I’m not okay with that, I’m not comfortable with that, you made me feel this way’”.

Yaz uses art as a way for students to practice their power. When Yaz presents an activity they say, “I’m gonna show you how I do it. I’m gonna give you the tools for that. But then it’s up to you how you wanna achieve that goal. And you might not even want to achieve the same physical goal that I would.”

The most challenging thing about using art as a medium is that a lot of people, regardless of age, view art as a skill or as a privilege.

“Art is a right”, Yaz says, “Everybody has the right to create…[But] a lot of times kids will not pick up a paintbrush, pick up an activity because of that inherent, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna be good at it’. I’m not asking to be good. I’m asking you to try.”

So the focus of their art lessons is not just about improving certain skills, but also about pushing through the fear of failure, the fear of success, the “taking yourself too seriously”.

“In my space I want you to participate, and participation is success. Working through your frustrations is success. I like anything you give me. But I’m gonna defy some things because I want you to see your own progress.”

Challenging what art or success might look like allows Yaz to approach learning as a process rather than a product, recognizing students as individuals with their own needs and skills. For example, Yaz might say, “I wanted you to try tracing it, because this is teaching you how to hold a pencil. I’m looking at how you’re holding your pencil, so I can see if I can correct the way that you do it. Even still, if you hold your paintbrush up here, that doesn’t mean you’re better than someone that holds your paintbrush down here. It’s that you have different versions of control, of how you use your paintbrush.”

For this upcoming year, Yaz wants to lean into the sense of limitlessness that art as a whole has to offer and so for their for first curriculum as a teaching artist they choose the topic of world-building.

“I’m really, really excited to see what comes out of this entire course because I might have painters, I might have story writers, I might have people that build a little tribe of dolls because they have that skill set. I’m just excited to see a new generation of artists that have the freedom of being whoever they want to be, because they were taught the techniques of something, the definitions of something, rather than how you should create with it.”

Something else they’re excited about being a new Arts Corps Teaching Artist?

“At the excuse being a sap, I’ve literally waited my entire life to be this person. It was never a dream that I thought was accomplishable. So like, I’m giddy just imagining being in a space as this version of myself and being ready to be with kids. And I’m just really, really excited to see how my students receive me, and my excitement. I’m excited for it all”. 

Yaz Williams is a multi-disciplinary artist from Raleigh, North Carolina who is Black, AFAB, and queer and as such, their work is centered in Black and Afro-centric standpoints. Some of their practices are graphic novels, storytelling, prints, and stickers. Yaz moved to Seattle in 2022 as a Montessori school teacher and has since worked with South End Stories and LAUNCH. They got a BA in Child Adolescent Psychology from the HBCU, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in order to learn what techniques were historically created as marginalization tools, how to move away from them, and how to better serve BIPOC students. As an artist and a person, they are interested in sustainability, third spaces such as libraries and tool workshops, learning different communication styles, and cultural education. They want to increase their own cultural knowledge and that of others in order to help build a better sense of community. They enjoy visiting new places and sitting in parks.

Read More

Faculty Spotlight: Cecelia DeLeon

Posted on Friday, April 26th, 2024 at 6:00 pm
Written by Arts Corps

Headshot of Cecelia DeLeon, a Chicana woman with curly black hair wearing heart-shaped sunglasses

Earlier this month, we hosted our paid Art 4 Life Digital internship. It was a great week, and one of the people responsible for this was the program’s co-Teaching Artist Cecelia DeLeon! We thought you should get to know a little more about her. 

What made you decide to become a teaching artist? 
I dropped out of an art college, stopped doing art for years after that, and bounced job to job. Doing art always brought me back to a therapeutic place and reminded me that when I did it, I was doing something I loved. Many random jobs and unhappiness later, I was googling “art teacher seattle”, or something along the lines of that, and after looking at the results, arts corps came up. I reached out, was hired as a Classroom Assistant and the rest is history! Being a Teaching Artist is cool because I can show up authentically as myself and I can teach my youth how to bring out their inner artist.

What do you like about Art 4 Life digital in particular?
There is a huge gap in this type of digital programming for our youth and Art 4 Life is creating the bridge of access for our most marginalized population. The way digital art is taking over the art scene right now is crazy! I think it’s cool that Art 4 Life can bring young artists together so that they can learn Procreate and how to create art digitally. This internship is teaching them a skill so that they can keep up with the art trends and which is a really useful tool to have.

What was one of your favorite moments of the internship?
Besides getting to know the students and seeing their artwork, I think one of my favorite moments would be when one of our students gave me instructions on how to use the Symmetry tool. You could tell she was really enjoying the class and was paying attention because she gave me clear instructions and guided me on what I needed to select within the menu to use the tool.

What is a message that you like to impart onto your students?
Don’t be afraid to do things on your own and learn new things! Always ask questions! Get connected with other artists in your community!

What are some of your own creative practices?
Sometimes I’ll switch it up from analog to digital because I like to do it all, I enjoy painting murals and creating illustrations on Procreate. I like cutting up paper and making collages or bringing out the gouache and just going to town! 

Do you have any projects coming up that you’d like to share?
I am currently finishing up a mural for Washington Health Plan Finder that will be installed in Granger, WA and I am doing a couple of illustration commissions for clients that I am pretty excited about because I am using Procreate to do them. 

Seattle-born, White Center raised, Cecelia DeLeon is a multidisciplinary public artist working under the alias Mousy DeVilla. Often switching back from digital works using Procreate, Adobe Software to acrylic paintings, mixed media arts, and collage artworks. She draws inspiration from the neighborhoods and cities she’s lived in and continues to serve her community as a Teaching Artist. The social justice themes explored in her bold and colorful work weave in the conversation around welcoming immigrants, uplifting BIPOC communities, and paying homage to Washington where she was born, while celebrating her identity as “Chicana”, the hyphen in Mexican-American. She’s created artwork for traffic boxes around King County, a mural for Food Lifeline, and has had work shown at the Tacoma Art Museum.

 

Read More

Faculty Spotlight: Adam Collet and Arielle Labra

Posted on Friday, July 28th, 2023 at 11:27 pm
Written by Arts Corps

The Art 4 Life Summer 2023 Arts Corps team at CAM. From left to right: Program Manager Eris Eaton, Teaching Artist Arielle Labra, Teaching Artist Adam Collet. Photo courtesy of CAM.

 

In Art 4 Life Summer 2023, our youth did a lot! In the course of a week, the interns worked with professional artists at Common Area Maintenance (CAM) in Belltown, learned a variety of new visual arts skills, created 5 different pieces, and hosted a showcase event for the community. It was a whirlwind of laughter, growth, and creativity. At the heart of it all were Arts Corps teaching artists Adam Collet and Arielle Labra. Adam and Arielle were the ones to plan the curriculum, lead the classes, and stand by the youth through their challenges and celebrations. We are so thankful for their work and talent! 

Now that the program has ended, we got the opportunity to learn more about these awesome teaching artist and their thoughts on the internship. 

You both have been teaching artists for Art 4 Life in the past. What made you decide to become a teaching artist? What do you like about this program in particular?

ADAM: I came to teaching late in life,  I never thought I would be a teacher, I guess I resisted the call for a long time. When my own children began school I started to see a real need for quality, relevant art education. That was the beginning for me.

What do I like about Art 4 Life? It’s a chance for students with an interest in art, that might not otherwise have access to higher level art opportunities, to work together intensively and produce a new body of work. This latest iteration of Art 4 Life was great, we were at CAM (Common Area Maintenance) for a week. We worked on book binding, zine making, poster making, collage, printmaking, stencil work, photography, and sign painting. There were probably a couple more things in there too. In the end we had an art show/book binding event to showcase all the awesome student work. Big shoutout to Arielle , my co-teacher, and Timothy and Robert at CAM, and all the CAM artists that pitched in.

ARIELLE: Growing up I lacked representation. When I was in school I didn’t have a teacher whom to look up too, not even my art teachers. So I would like to be “that” teacher for someone. I think representation is key for youth, they are trying to figure out who they are and having teachers that don’t fit the norm is key.

As to Art 4 Life, I like that it’s a very intentional program, its main focus is to expose youth to an artist work environment and teach them new art and work skills for their future careers. I think that art programs are essentials in a students life, there are so many art forms out there. I’m grateful we get a chance to show/teach different art mediums to the youth and that they get a chance to try new things.

What has been a challenge about pursuing art professionally? What has been a reward?

ADAM: Haha, pursuing creative work professionally is not for the faint of heart. There’s of a constant struggle trying to balance personal and professional goals and projects. Rewards? Peace of mind, the reward is all in your head.  

ARIELLE: It has been financially hard, teachers and artists world wide are not compensated fairly for their jobs and time. But I love sharing and being creative with others. It feels my heart with joy when I see young artist believing in their craft and trying new things.

What are some of your own creative practices?

ADAM: I’ve been taking photos for a long time now but lately (the last 2-3 years) I’ve been drawing and painting a lot more. Mostly drawing semiautobiographical short comics. Currently I’m mining a lifetime of memories and seeing how they influence the way I interpret the world. I’m also trying to assemble a box camera I picked up recently.

ARIELLE: Being curious, drawing everything, and keeping an open mind! I always take photos of where I go and whatever catches my attention when I’m walking. I always carry a little sketchbook and pencil with me because you never know when you will find something to draw.

What was one of your favorite moments during the internship?

ADAM: We did some linocut printmaking and seeing the students turn a slab of nothing into beautiful works of art was fantastic. Watching them pull those first prints, it was like watching a magic show. That, and giving them the cameras and toy cameras to take photos. It was very cool to see how they decided to document the work that was happening.  Lastly, maybe just seeing everyone so motivated. We had a couple 15 minute breaks built into the schedule everyday but more often that not students would just keep working. Everyone was just so focused and productive. 

ARIELLE: The students faces when they saw their final projects. They worked so hard to make it happen and it showed in their piece.

Do you have other projects coming up, or anything you would like to share?

ADAM: Nothing I want to mention, don’t want to jinx it.

ARIELLE: I’m slowly but surely diving more into tattooing and just moved into a new studio, so my summer project is to make the place look nice and get new clients!

 

Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Adam Collet has been taking photographs and making art since childhood. Adam went to school in Seattle, also attended Seattle Central Community College and the UW where he earned a BFA in Photography. In 2008, he began teaching and passing on an interest in art and design to the next generation. Still living in Seattle with wife, children, and cat.

Besides Adam’s photography and illustration work he’s also a Teaching Artist specializing in Visual Art with a focus on integrating Art and STEM disciplines. In addition to Arts Corps, he’s taught classes, and online content for King County Library System; Seattle Public Library; stArt Exploring, a project of Sound Transit; Seattle Parks and Rec; High Point Neighborhood House; Yesler Terrace, Youth Tutoring Program; Family Learning Program; and various schools in Highline and Seattle Public Schools.

Recent projects include Essentially Seattle – photographing essential workers for City of Seattle/SPU, from the Office of Art & Culture; Public Art Program – photographing publicly sited artworks for City of Seattle, from the Office of Art & Culture. Ethnic Artist Roster, Seattle; Creative Advantage Arts Partner Roster, Seattle; ShoreLake Artist Roster, Shoreline.

 

Arielle A Labra Campos (She/Her/They/Them) is a Queer Latinx artist born to Immigrant parents in Zimbabwe. Moving to South America at the age of 5, living in Chile and Argentina before moving to Seattle in 2018. From an early age, Arielle has explored different art forms to express and find herself. Growing up, they would spend their school breaks at their grandparents beach house in Chile. In summer playing with the waves, the sand and seashells, and in winter Arielle would fill her time with drawings, paintings and crafts. She is inspired by the feeling of belonging and her long-life connection to the sea and their creatures – utilizing blue and purple colorways, and detailed lines and dots to bring her illustrations to life. Her art often combines the creatures of the surface (humans) with oceanic themes. In her work, Arielle brings together elements that sometimes looks like they don’t belong together, bringing harmony and balance to it.

Read More

Faculty Spotlight: Divya Rajan

Posted on Monday, October 24th, 2022 at 9:02 pm
Written by Arts Corps

Teaching Artist Divya stands in front of a plain background with side lighting. She wears a red top and gold earrings.

This month, Arts Corps wants to celebrate teaching artist, Divya Rajan, and everything she has been doing in and out of the classroom!

As the world re-emerges from the pandemic’s lockdown, our faculty have been busy at work not only creating spaces for our youth to express themselves in, but also creating their own art.

As an Arts Corps teaching artist, Divya is currently working with our programs Best Start for Kids, Out of School Time, and Creative Schools, engaging students of all ages in theatre and storytelling. As a performer herself, Divya has been working in multiple projects. 

We’re grateful to Divya for sharing more about what she does and how she does it!

 

You were involved in various storytelling partnerships these past few months. Tell us them! What did you do? 

It all started with FESTA this year – that was my first performance for the year, as well as one in a very long time. 

“Lost and Found” happened soon after. Organized by the Indian Embassy Spouses Collective, this was an exhibition of personal objects and the stories behind them. My audio story of a broken comb that I have been holding close for fifteen years now was one of the featured exhibits.

7×7 by Griot Girlz and Finding Trails by Penguin Productions gave me the opportunity to create and collaborate on devised, immersive and site-specific pieces.

With Pratidhwani’s Two Minutes of Your Time themed Coming Home, I came home to the stage, lights and a full-house of live audience. And, I also shot for my first commercial this year.

What made you decide to become a teaching artist?

Call it accidental or call it serendipity, but that is really how I became a teaching artist. I taught my first class as a teaching artist in 2011. I took it up because it felt like a fun thing to be a storyteller to visit schools and play games with kids. However, what I saw, experienced, learned, and received from kids impacted me forever.

I didn’t quite have access to art education as a child. Art was always that “extra-curricular” activity. It was exotic for people to call me creative and artistic; and yet life always boiled down to how much I scored in Math and Science. I also grew up being told that all those who pursue arts and humanities are those who are incapable of pursuing important faculties i.e. science or math.

I wanted to pursue architecture as a child. I wanted to design spaces. When a child is passionate about something, as adults we have the choice to create an environment for this passion to flourish or for this passion to be destroyed. I was that child whose passion couldn’t flourish in the environment that I was in.

From starting off as an accidental teaching artist, today I am a teaching artist by choice because I want to do my small bit to create an environment for children’s passions to flourish. Being a teaching artist is the opportunity life has given me to be that person I wish I had in my life while growing up.

How do you approach a new project or a piece that you are creating? Do you have certain processes you like to undergo?

Devising is my thing. To put it in simple words, I like to intuitively start with multiple creative exercises and allow for narratives to emerge. Once there is something I have hit upon, I start to deliberate and build a frame-work around it.

At a deeper level my process is a lot about confronting my identity, asking questions that matter of myself, embracing my vulnerability and seeking my truth. I weave this into the formal trainings I have had in theatre and what I end up creating is an integrated piece of performance art.

What is your favorite part about creating your art?

Surprises! Every time I create art, it is about confronting my uncertainties. It is chaotic. But, when the work is done, it is extremely rewarding. And, I find myself emerging a little more resilient than before.

What opportunities and challenges do you see ahead for those of us who care deeply about art, young people, and community?

Knowledge thrives when it has an application. The various reputations that art has earned over the years, in my opinion is due to the gap between the art-form and its application. Art has existed for as long as humanity has. So, it is important for us as humans to embrace the artists within ourselves. Bridging this gap between art for the sake of art; and understanding its deeper purpose and impact is a big opportunity as well as responsibility I see as an artist. 

However, although many have trodden down this path, it continues to remain an arduous task. It is going to take unlearning several generations worth of colonized perspectives, oppressive systems of power, regressive mindsets for us to get there. And, arts as a field continues to remain under-funded.

There is work to be done, and we must keep doing what we are doing.

Do you have any upcoming projects?

I am in conversation with people about potential collaborations. Hopefully, will have something brewing soon 😊

Thank you for sharing your artistry with us, Divya. We can’t wait to see what you do next!

Read More

LIT: Why I Came Back as a Class Assistant

Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 at 8:22 pm
Written by Arts Corps

 

I come from a high school that specializes in helping students to become self-reliant and learn skills through the student’s interests. This is often done by having students search for internships or be an apprentice. When I was a freshman in October of 2018 I had a vague interest in game development and was short on opportunities. 

One day my advisor Steve announced a new opportunity being offered to Big Picture Students. He told us it was an arts program that taught audio, story writing, and virtual reality development. That last one felt like a wild card. I didn’t know much about virtual reality beyond a few brief appearances in online videos or tucked away in some corner of an arcade. No matter where I saw it, it always seemed out of reach like watching an owl perched on a tree. The fact that it was offered to youth out of all people in this high school made it feel like a one-time calling. But because of my lack of experience, I hesitated to raise my hand when Steve was handing out the tour sign-up sheets. I’m not sure what took me so long to finally raise my hand, but it would change my life forever.

Arts Corps is an arts education organization whose mission is to break educational boundaries and allow youth creative minds to use their art to influence the world through various programs. I joined the first LIT program in January of 2019. LIT specialized in teaching students how to use audio software, film equipment, and virtual reality tools to make their art with the help of specialized teaching artists. It was the first year of the program so some things fell a little off track sometimes, but overall it felt like an artist’s journey. It felt like the program was growing alongside you making it; it felt less like a training course and more like it was your program. 

Each session, we’d have morning check-ins, and even though we didn’t always have much to say it helped establish great community vibes. I loved when we went into the larger parts of Seattle on our trips to art studios. Even though meeting people who work in the careers you see yourself in the future is always a motivating feeling, traversing the streets and buses made it feel like the kind of stories you’d tell your grandkids when talking about your career. I don’t get to be on foot in the bigger parts of Seattle that often so that’s what probably amplified the experience for me.

The first major VR project I worked on when joining LIT was a simple exploration experience where you could move across dream-like worlds, which is my way of saying nothing made sense or followed a theme. It was mostly me trying to get my footing with the technology but it helped that VR is totally badass.

The greatest memory I have of the program was the final presentation of my first year. I wasn’t too confident in my weird VR project. It was also a way later time to present than I was used to so I was ready to go to sleep. To make matters worse we had a lot of trouble getting our showcase equipment set up like finding out who’s headset even belonged to someone. We cycled through students each presenting what we’ve been working on for the past six months. 

When my turn came I felt a strange calmness and pride flow in. Suddenly my project didn’t seem like a failure and I started to see with the smiles of the attendees that it was a success. Whereas once, I was some lonely kid in a computer lab, now was able to work on something most people don’t even know exists. It helped that the presentation room was literally a theater, the whole thing felt like a triumphant cinematic moment on film with lights shining on us. 

I’m one of those people that beats themselves up a lot, but I always seek to improve myself. This was the first time in my life I felt like I’d made it. It started off a long chain of future successes and I realized that I could be an artist if I tried. Since then I’ve only felt my progress of self-discovery moving further.

Arts Corps has helped me find what being an artist can mean and the joy it can bring to people. They helped me get my first taste of what it’d be like to pursue my passions professionally. And it’s given me hope that more and more youth have access to their resources so the world doesn’t miss out on the creations of a young person’s mind before their creativity is limited through adulthood struggles. 

I feel the least I can do is help out Arts Corps the best I can as a classroom assistant so that when I eventually become ready to join the games industry I will have helped make the Arts Corps better for youth than when I first joined LIT. So now I’m helping the LIT team with an upcoming week-long intensive. From April 12th – 16th we’ll be helping students from grades 10-12 learn about using immersive technology for storytelling and game development. Applications are due March 19, 2021. Apply here. 

— FABIAN HERNANDEZ-ANGEL, Classroom Assistant LIT 2021

Read More