“Twins once, Married twice, Money never!”

On becoming inspired…

Art reaches and teaches people like nothing else. It is one of the most powerful and compelling ways we can express our ideas, values and beliefs.

I remember studying the amazing Norman Rockwell cover art on the Saturday Evening Post at a very young age, and being moved and inspired! The images made me ask questions. Soon all I wanted to do was draw everything. Surprisingly, no one in my family cared to be able to “draw a straight line”, as the saying goes. My Dad, a press photographer, enrolled me in Art Instruction Schools. His dark room “Kathy Ann Studios” as he titled it, became my Art Studio. Later I studied with artist and portrait painter Helen Van Wyk of Hawthorne, NJ. I graduated from Glen Rock High School during one of the most turbulent times in US History, 1964-1968. I remember our choral class suddenly pierced by the loudspeaker as the news of president John F. Kennedy’s assassination blasted us up out of our seats, then crying in disbelief all the way home. The Vietnam War was escalating, civil unrest, Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated. As a teenager, it was a time of great contrast, great change and great music.

Amid all this, I graduated college with my Bachelor of Fine Arts/ Education form William Paterson University and was hired that summer as a full-time high school teacher, then married…all in a matter of months! After teaching high school for eight years, I took a leave of absence to have children. After relocating to Upper Saddle River NJ I really hit my stride. I joined Salute to Women of the Arts and had my work exhibited for the first time. I joined the Women’s Club and opened a pottery studio called The Clay Underground, while teaching elementary art part-time. I met so many wonderful people, including celebrities, and taught art to some of their children as well! The time of my life… was yet to come. I am happily married to my husband Robert, the mother of three sons; Erik, who reshapes communities with construction equipment, and twins Kevin and Kyle, both artists! I am able to balance my teaching career with my Artwork and my ever growing family, as I now have a beautiful Granddaughter Alice, and another one on the way!
Life is good!

“Teaching Art is the art of teaching discovery” | Mark Van Doran
So much has changed since my early days of teaching. The fun and excitement I get when I see kids ‘getting it’, and being engaged in the learning never gets old. There is nothing better than a career doing what I love to do, and sharing my enthusiasm with others. Over the course of my career; teaching Ceramics, Drawing and Painting, Crafts, and Digital Art, working in new mediums and applications has certainly made me a better student.

Art, like the culture it reflects, is ever changing and it entices us to change with it!