An Artist Working Within Boundaries

“I feel we have so much to offer students in the arts here, and it’s important it’s accessible to everyone,” she says. “We continue to support the kids who are artists, who want rigor and want to be pushed, and we also have students who are athletes or who want to try something new and take their first dance class.”

The visual artist and painter is in her third year on the faculty at KUA, having returned to the area to be closer to family in Vermont. She spent the previous six years at Memphis Rise Academy in Tennessee, a charter school where she served as a founding teacher, grade level chair, and advisor. She worked with younger kids while completing her master’s but found her calling teaching high school while in Memphis.

“I enjoy the process of helping kids figure out who they are as artists in a way that is more meaningful for them,” she says, “and I love helping kids develop a portfolio in their college process.”

Her early training and exposure to art came in high school, through coursework and activities as well as in summer jobs drawing caricatures and face painting at Six Flags amusement park, fairs, and parties. “I worked with a lot of professional artists and that got me excited to go to college for art and train other artists, which is where teaching came into play,” says Adams, who taught a figure drawing course at the AVA Gallery for the Upper Valley community last summer.

In January, she will exhibit her work in KUA’s Taylor Art Gallery in her show "Within Boundaries: Portraits and Studies in Limited Color." The show will be a collection figurative oil paintings from models (live study) and photography, as well as some smaller portraits. All the works explore color using limited color pallets. "The collection is all work I’ve made in the last year with the goal of making art that is process based with hopes to practice more frequently," she says.

She believes it’s important for students to see her as both a working artist and a teacher. “I’m painting and I’m drawing as I’m teaching so that students can see the work in progress,” she says. “It gives them the feeling that it’s okay to make mistakes and things aren’t always perfect on the first try. And sometimes I’m learning from them.”

That concept carries over to the artists Adams and other teachers bring into the curriculum. “I believe that students need to see that all kinds of people are making art right now, and we aren’t just looking back in history,” she says. There are plenty of people today making fantastic artwork. It’s important that students know that they’re out there. I try to teach contemporary artists. In Memphis, I taught Hispanic and African American artists because that’s who my students were, and now I get to teach a more global curriculum because that’s who I’m teaching.”