Art Teachers Remembered In This Week's Comments

This week’s post on Hyperallergic about how awesome art teachers are sparked a lot of response, so we decided to start a little Twitter action: we re-tweeted everyone who sent us their most influential art teachers, whether it was a college professor or an elementary school instructor.

This heartwarming exercise brought together a list of all the teachers that deserve thanks, for inspiring us, for starting us out on the art world paths we’re on now, or just being great people.

Here’s to art teachers! Below is a list of all the names we got, plus those who tweeted in support.

From @TheHarwood

Love the ode to art teachers who opened our eyes. http://bit.ly/cNLJcR Mine were Ms. Ware & Mr. O in Teaneck, NJ. #gratitude

From @linda_astersage

i didn’t have any eye-opening art teachers. that’s why i was a decade older than my fellow art school classmates

From @QuintLyn

Not just one teacher, but the entire art department at the University of Mississippi rocks.

From @nicollerich

Jonathan Vaughan!! what a guyy & Andrea Raynor!! what a gal!! Graduated from Northeastern as the only painter bc of them ;)

From @tatianaberg

Ronald Bowen! Made highschool bearable, and damn fine painter to boot. I miss you, Mr. Bowen.

From me! @chaykak

Mrs. Soucie from my high school, she is really who inspired me to do art and study art history

From @masakepic

Brian Parrish, Susie Smith, Ann Wass, Mark Wright & Vanessa Jackson.

From @artalamode

my high school AP Art Hist. teacher David Bellos. Countless days studying and museum trips. Now I’m majoring in Art Hist. !!

From @thepulitzer

RT: @kr_applejack: @thepulitzer The art teacher with the biggest impact on me? Keith Freeman when I was in jr. High and HS.

From @reductive_art

Ronna Harris @ Tulane- She taught me to question everything I was doing in ptg class & was there when I really needed advice.

Also from @reductive_art

Bruno Andrade, Corpus Christi St Univ: My 1st art prof, he was so encouraging! This is where my painting obsession began.

From @CherylBernstein

Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, NZ art history professor. Showed me how to incorporate oppositional points of view into my own.

From @duanelinklater

Mr Maki and Ms Donnelly for the introductions.

From @emistijl

Jane Garnes (@janegarnes) made a huge impact on my life, and still does today. I thank her for always challenging me.

Also from @emistijl

Adam Gustavson made my art learnin’ at a non-art school worth it. He’s the reason I stuck it out, and he still inspires.

From our Tumblelog Hyperallergic LABS, we also got:

vanessajanethompson answered: My favorite art teacher is my illustration professor David Brown. He is amazing and is a valuable resource. Very caring and helpful.

mamabeargrowr answered: Christopher Baker

htmclr answered:

My middle school art teacher Mrs. Crutcher.

We also discovered a few people who knew the Hackensack teachers pictured in the post photo, including Kisha Munson, who wrote on the blogazine:

This is so great. I was born, bred, and still live in Hackensack. Mrs. Parisi was my art teacher when I was in either the 2nd or 3rd grade!

But we should mention there was one … um … not so favorable opinion by Jeremy Sapienza:

Here’s my story: I was an uninstructed ceramics wunderkind in high school and my and most of my peers’ greatest, largest, most elaborate pieces ALWAYS mysteriously “fell over” or “blew up in the kiln.” My art teacher was a bitter shrew who destroyed children’s works because they made her feel inadequate as an artist, which she was, illustrated by the fact that she taught art at a public school in a suburb of a second-tier city in a (then-)uncultured region of Florida.

(It’s now deemed “cultured” because international art fags have descended upon Miami in droves.)

Thanks to all who responded and thanks to our art teachers! Got an art teacher you love? Leave your story in the comments and we’ll keep collecting for a future post!

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