Apr 25
We Appreciate our Art Education Teaching Artists!
by: Jenny Donnelly Johnson and the Art Education Team
by: Jenny Donnelly Johnson and the Art Education Team
Visiting artist Cindy Stockton Moore at Kensington Health and Sciences Academy, February 15, 2023. Photo by Steve Weinik.
In honor of Teaching Artist Appreciation week, we are excited to highlight our incredible Teaching Artist team. Our TAs work with Mural Arts’ Art Education department to bring high-quality arts programming to young people all across Philadelphia year-round. The positive impact our TAs have on their students and within their communities is undeniable, and we are so appreciative of their skill and dedication!
The Art Education program helps students across the city unlock their creative capacities, inviting them to take risks, share their experiences, and illustrate the world as they see it. Art becomes a platform for discovery, launching the types of personal and communal experiences that can shape a student’s path for years to come. We provide both in-school and after-school arts-based programming for over 2,000 students at 25 sites across Philadelphia each year, studying everything from entrepreneurship to environmental stewardship through an artistic lens. Our Teaching Artists make all this happen!
Tai Corrienté Baucom is a colorful figurative illustrator, designer and muralist with influence from her roots and generations of family stories. She attended Moore College of Art in Design, where she received her BFA in Illustration with honors. Elaborate textiles and patterns, fashion, and nostalgic photography inspire her most. She aspires to highlight vintage glamor, with a hint of spirituality, mysticism, and mythology in her work. Every brush stroke is done with thought, intent, purpose, and love.
Brad Carney is a teaching artist specializing in bright and colorful community reflective murals. The classroom studio is a brave space to find our authentic selves and learn from each other.
Brad creates lessons and curriculum that amplify the students’ voices and allows room to grow their skills. Each year brings new collaborations with students and communities. Designs have included local historical figures, urban landscapes, and abstract interpretations of our emotions and feelings. Each project is unique and may be created from paint, glass/tile mosaic, or concrete and stone.
Timell Floyd-Sherard – Is a multimedia artist who primarily focuses in graphic design and illustration. His specialty is working with patterns to create meaningful and attractive designs. Recently graduated, he spends his time practicing different techniques across multiple designing software which includes the majority of the adobe suite. He has been involved in the Mural Arts Program since he was a student of the program in high school starting from 2012. Since then, he has been involved with various parts of the program such as the Mural Arts Apprenticeship, Internship, Murals on the Move, Mural Arts Trash academy and most recently is now an Assistant Teaching artist. His biggest goal with his art is to create cool and futuristic looking artwork and setpieces that people can enjoy.
Destin’ee Freeman is a peculiar and innovative mixed media artist born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. She specializes in portraits of unearthly maidens in surreal universes. Her biggest inspirations are astrophysics, nature elements, and alienated women.
As a multifaceted Mixed Media based artist, she primarily centers on social issues to incite dialogue; specializing in spoken word, painting, and fabric. Her artwork was recently featured as the cover art for the ‘Black Minds Publishing Mag.’ an online Multidisciplinary Arts Magazine. As Assistant Teaching Artist with the Art Ed department of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, She enjoys making connections through working with High school students to create murals and other public art projects. She assisted in editing two books for Toho Publishing; ‘Best Short Stories of Philadelphia’ and their Volume 2: Issue 1 “Duality” Chapbooks, featuring local Philadelphia writers. Her most recent written work was featured in a collaboration project between the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and The Philadelphia Dept. of Behavioral Health in a quest to mitigate the racial trauma on Black individuals and communities titled “Finding Paradise: A black Mental Health Anthology.”
I’m Carolina. I am a graphic designer and illustrator. I have a bachelor of fine arts in Graphic Design from Tyler school of art, and I work as an assistant muralist and an assistant teaching artist with Mural Arts Philadelphia. I live in Philadelphia, PA.
Jamee Grigsby studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Hussian School of Art and continues to apply her graphic skills to everything she creates. She is a Lead Teaching Artist for the Mural arts program and a well-known Mural Arts Alumni that has also helped create 17 murals around the city. Also recognized by her artist name AdoreJ. She specializes in Portraiture, Illustrations, Murals, and Design work that combines typography, pattern, shapes, and realism. She aims to share the art that expresses her view on beauty, understanding of cultural heritage and life as well as helping youth advocate their dreams and concerns through different art-making processes.
Sarah Kolker, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (BA) and Moore College of Art (MAed), was born and raised in Philadelphia and has studied health and wellness practices in Philadelphia, Jamaica, SF Bay Area and New York City. She has taught art in schools and communities for over 15 years, currently a Lead Teaching Artist for Mural Art in Arts Integration and Foundations and Innovations programs.
Michael Konrad is a Philadelphia based artist and educator. His work addresses the materials and functions of the built environment in a state of collapse. He uses everyday building materials such as bricks and lumber, along with discarded items such as plastic bags refashioned into fabric, to create his sculptures. As Lead Teaching Artist with the Art Ed department of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, Michael works with high school students to create murals and other public artworks. He is a recipient of the Fleisher Wind Challenge Award in Sculpture and Installation and regularly participates in exhibitions throughout the Philadelphia region and beyond. He has created public artworks with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, as well as Glen Foerd Historic Mansion, CFEVA’s Art in the Open, Revolution Recovery’s Recycling Artist in Residence, and Neighborhood Bike Works while in residence at the 40th Street AIR Program.
Dom Lyner is an artist/Teaching Artist and former student of the Art Education program in 2015. In his work, he puts a heavy emphasis on his artistic processes, always trying new methods to make beautiful, harmonious things in a practical way. Dom draws inspiration from religious art, nature, and finding balance in things. His biggest hope is that people find a sense of calm and tranquility when looking at his art.
Nicole Rodrigues was born in New Jersey and went to the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD where they got a BFA in Printmaking. Nicole lives and works in Philadelphia as a teaching artist with the Mural Arts Program working with children and young adults. Their work includes making illustrations, comics, prints, screen printed shirts and ceramics. Nicole’s work can provide visual insights on how people inhabit our world differently in their physical and mental states, shedding light on the connections we have to nature and our interpersonal relationships.
Teaching Artist Rebecca Simon Miller has a visual arts practice focused in oil and acrylic painting. Since beginning her MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2008, Miller’s studio work has documented the plantlife and landscape of Southeastern Pennsylvania through drawings and paintings on shaped paper and wood panel. At Alfred University (BAFA), ceramics influenced her sense of texture and materiality in mark-making. Her accumulations convey the experience of absorption, and are based in the links between nature, magic, and making. Since 2013, Miller has taught in the Mural Arts Art Education Department at nine different high school and middle school sites (and now virtually!) and has assisted in the painting and installation of a number of public murals.
Last updated: Apr 25, 2023
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