About
I am an artist-educator living in Saco, Maine and have been teaching visual arts at Noble High School since 2011. I attended University of New Hampshire where I earned a BA in Studio Art with a concentration primarily in ceramics and painting. In Breckenridge, Colorado I worked at Colorado Mountain College as the ceramics studio assistant teaching and exploring my own studio practice as well as teaching and supervising at the Village Children’s center at Breckenridge Ski Resort. Upon returning to the east coast I learned of the Maine College of Art’s Post Baccalaureate Program in Art Education and enrolled in fall of 2008. I have always struggled to feel validated in calling myself a true “artist” as I am always nervous about showing my work and asking people to pay for my creations! The opportunity to combine my love of creating art and teaching came together over that next year at Maine College of Art & Design and at this time I am continuing my education at the College in the Post-Bacc to MAT pathway to earn my Master in Arts in Teaching.
Gallery
Artist's Statement
What is it to have a true sense of balance in one’s life? It is a concept that I find challenging to grasp and an even more difficult action to attain. I am a mother, a daughter, a wife, a friend and an artist-educator. How can I be all of these things while giving each role the equal attention and dedication to balance them all in order to live my life feeling whole and balanced? Over the course of this summer I engaged in creating artwork as part of the Post-Bacc to MAT pathway to earn my Master in Arts in Teaching from Maine College of Art & Design. The process of engagement in visual journaling brought me back to deep personal roots of drawing for the sake of drawing. I have gained a deep sense of worth in allowing myself to make time for me, the artist. No expectations, no self judgement, simply creating. As Life's responsibilities have seemed to take over in the past ten years, I lost my connection and dedication to create artwork and being an artist in earnest. This summer’s journaling process helped me to commit again to journaling practice. I explored as I worked the “whys” of my separation from “Leah as artist” to “Leah as mother/daughter/wife/teacher” and reconnected to my creative self.
In committing to this summer’s work and allowing myself to unapologetically work on my creative self for the sake of personal growth and balance, I have truly begun to find the balance in what I see as the 3 realms of my life. The final work is based on my visual journaling sketches culminating in a triptych in water soluble pencil and watercolor pencil. Throughout the process of exploring how to have balance in my life, I noticed a conscious effort in my artmaking that focused on compositional balance and correspondence of line, shape, form and movement in my visual journal entries. The final triptych represents the search for balance and harmony as I learn to balance the three areas of my life: artist, artist-teacher and mother/daughter/wife. I found great release in the process of creating this work without being overly concerned with the final product, something I always emphasize to my students.