An Artist Like Me

When Iʼm choosing an artist to introduce in my visual arts classroom, I ask myself three questions. First, will this artist help me teach my standards? Second, does this artist highlight a medium, technique, process, subject, or philosophy that I want to use to inspire my students? Third, and most importantly, does this artist represent any of my students in terms of gender identity, culture, or ethnicity?

A Personal Connection
If students can connect to an artist, thereʼs a good chance that they will think of themselves as artists as well.

I identify as female. This makes it easy for students with she/her pronouns in my classroom to think of themselves as becoming artists or art teachers. Theyʼre like me, females looking for hands-on ways to express themselves. Students who identify as male or gender-neutral might look at me and think, “Well, maybe it’s okay for her, but I’m not her.” Thatʼs why I look for inspiring artists from around the world, from the countries my students come from and from the backgrounds theyʼre growing up in. I want my students to connect with the artists I introduce them to on a personal level. I want them to see themselves in the faces of the artists from whom we learn.

Introducing Derrick Adams
In this lesson, I chose to focus on Derrick Adams, a New York–based multidisciplinary artist who celebrates contemporary Black life and culture. His work is bold, powerful, and easily relatable for students. One of his series shows the profile image of a person divided into sections with various skin tones filling in the spaces. The clothing of the subject provides clues about the person in the image. When I shared these images with students, they felt like detectives trying to crack a code, leading to rich and engaging conversations about this artistʼs work.

Segmented Profile Portraits
After our discussion, I took a profile photo of each student and printed out the images.
The following class, students placed a transparent vellum sheet over their printout and traced their profile with a fine-tipped black permanent marker. They divided the image into sections for the skin, hair, and clothing, then labeled the sections with the numbers one, three, and five for the skin and two, four, and six for the hair and clothing.

After labeling, they removed the vellum sheet. Using permanent markers, they colored in the even-numbered sections with cool colors and the odd-numbered sections with warm colors. This lesson helps introduce color theory, covering the concept of warm and cool color families, which is a second-grade standard in my district.

Framing and Reflecting
Students chose a colored sheet of paper to frame their work, decorated the frame with paint sticks, and mounted their final work for display. Some students chose to flip their vellum sheet before mounting.

As a reflection, I assigned students to photograph their final work and share it on the app Seesaw. This app allows students to record their voices and draw over their images to reflect on their work. The recordings of their reflections first went to me, and once approved, they were shared with parents. Students discussed the warm and cool colors in their work, explained their process, and highlighted Adams as the inspiration for the project. This activity allowed me to accurately assess the knowledge of each student.

An Artist Like Me
This lesson met all three of my teaching goals. I satisfied my standards by using warm and cool color families. We used the same process of segmenting the subject with color blocks that Adams did. And the best part of this lesson was when I showed a photograph of Adams on the board and a second-grade boy in the back of the room blurted out, “Hey, he looks like me!” Thatʼs when I knew this was a lesson that would stick with that young boy for life. He saw himself in the face of the artist.

I share thoughts, lessons, and tips on my classroom Instagram account @MiniMatisseArt. I encourage you to tag me if you create a lesson based on this article; I would like to celebrate you and the artists you teach!