Meredith Donnelly

My role as a teacher is to provide students with a space to cultivate their abilities and ideas. I believe all students can succeed as artists and creators and should be given the opportunity to explore. Students need to understand the creative and technical aspect of their art practice as they develop as artists and thinkers, in tandem with craftsmanship and critical thinking. Critical thinking is key in furthering significance, meaning, awareness, and sensitivity to subjects, in addition to having space to make mistakes, challenge themselves, try new materials, work in collaboration, and question the why’s and how’s of creativity and the artwork of others.

While the classroom and the art studio are places to explore, question, and make, I believe they should also be spaces in which the student and teacher are comfortable to have fun, to laugh, and to be at ease together. Without a shared joy in education, this community fails to succeed. I want my students to feel comfortable getting to know me, be open to sharing, and to know that they are valued by me and their peers.

Color Study and Grid Drawing

Grades 9-11

oil pastel on paper

Art making gives students the opportunity to explore physical and emotional ideas, as well as personal and global issues, while progressing in their strengths and limitations. In my experience, the problem solving exhibited by my students has often been the most fruitful portion of their process and regularly an occasion for deeper discussion and collaboration. Teaching, learning, and art making provide avenues to ask questions, uncover truth, experience doubt, articulate vision, create something new, and understand materials, space, forms, and ideas more clearly.

Value Study

Grades 9-10

graphite and color pencil on paper