tell me a little bit better about your background as a teacher how long in there i think this is my fourth fourteenth year fourteenth year and a came from grad school university in north carolina i moved up here just to show in galleries and then i missed the feeling of art school so i was like oh i'm just going to go back and teach and create that environment and when i came to belmont there was no a p class at all so i was hired to redo the whole program and sort of as i was told by my coordinator at the time bill mcmanus to make it as good as music and so that was my mission i think feet yeah it was huge and that was my mission but it gave me a lot of leeway and flexibility to do the things i wanted to do so after a year three when i was there i implemented an a p class and it's very selective it's audition so they have to submit a portfolio that they're usually go through are wanting to submit a portfolio of eight to ten pieces that i've never seen and then it's  best kids of course we get kids that don't go through art one and two that they're so good i would say like mia who jumped past are two and there's also threw for three other kids did the same thing they did they were great in  oil and i thought they would handle e p really well so we've been doing a p class for roughly eleven years and they're the most sought after class of those twenty of the most sought after class in the state if not the nation as far as art schools coming and wanting them giving them scholarship they consistently we win the scholastic art competition which is not only a state competition it's also national so states will compete there's many categories like painting photography ceramics sculpture graphic design and they at the last ten years they've won best in the state seven years five in a row and they've this class actually we submitted twenty pieces one thousand and one now what kind of art when you were showing galleries what's here i mean i was mostly there up i was trained classically so i was a portrait painter or at the time when i was showing and sewing in boston was a landscape a lot of large rock paintings with water and know and so this class is drawing and painting and design a p one is the initial class they come into right out of say either or what are two so a p drawing and painting is the first level media is a lot little more open the drawing is more straightforward it's more about it's real is i'm coming up with their own personal voice they have to do like half the classes twelve pieces that i assigned them and then the other half is twelve pieces they've come up with with i usually i really liked oil painting until this also experimented with the computer like using photoshop and the pen tab digital design stuff and the silver but yeah they're really fun to do they're really three feet by four feet so really big and i think everyone had a lot of fun with that projects and i want to mention those are on display right now right at the  transportation building the second floor second floor yes that's great how long will they be up there for i believe through april ok and then they go then it takes on another role where it goes to national then we compete nationally to see how we do they all go to new york the nationals last year and in past years we've had colds and nationals american vision national portfolios national they switched it to new york used to be at the kennedy center in washington so i did go down a few times and i was in great it's funny it's what you  and this year i also started doing digital media and experimenting with it and kind of thing that's what i meant different i mean you know when you get when i think of art and design i kind of forget that there's that whole other realm and how long have you been using that as part of the classroom well because we don't really have we excel in the first in the basics drawing painting yeah for little printmaking because we don't have the budget or the funding to save like other schools maybe in the digital media so we got a couple pen tabs the kids actually bought their own penned because it is it's huge field right now digital art computer based order we're trying to go a little bit more in that direction but a really took off lot in the last two years we had a student gerry she introduced and she was so good at it that the other kids were like wow we need to try that so have pen tabs and then there's you know a couple kids in the classroom that have a i mean they take mine home and borrow nice and so but with kids and technology they pick it up really fast yeah are you teaching yourself kind of yeah basically  probably see but yeah and i actually drew myself or painted myself with my foot i was holding a pizza in my face is also on the pizza  that everybody knows what i'm going to do you say i was like i really most like to do things realistically as opposed to more conceptual which is why i said the thing on the back of the t shirt which is i heard myself try to be creative do one other thing that i don't usually do like acrylic usually scratch quarter it always comes pretty good i think it's for some reason i am for always something for some reason i always stick with what i'm going through it's kind of interesting that you well you know i have a bumper sticker on my car that says never apologize for your art and so it's kind of interesting to hear anyone in this group of people who you know your saw accomplished and for most people would just be so envious that even at where you are you still kind of people sometimes artists tend to not appreciate themselves but i know you appreciate your predictability is the only job they also joke that i'm co come back to me oh i'm a sophomore i like i usually like pencil because that's what i must come forward but this year i started to paint for the first time and i really like oil paint now for the scholastic our competition i used oil paints and i got a gold rush actions that's what and when you use a pencil like you were saying pencil and colored pencils how about you as  a pencil just go up and yeah charcoal to anything black and white i usually prefer it and you also like to do real realistic yeah i prefer realistic i also have trouble being creative like abstract is not and so the you had first the the pieces were habitat we know that was a big we had a habitat show ok of some of their work and a lot of it was say charcoal the colored pencil to little mix media smaller stuff stuff they did in the beginning of the year or some of them maybe at the end alive here at that time they were working on the competition paintings they were paintings couldn't go to habitat because we had to get them to go to the show in boston with yeah and how you transport me oh well thanks well actually again based off music they go to europe i figured we should go to europe all the greatest artists in the world somehow went to paris walking in the footsteps of the masters and it came about actually because idea of an art auction to raise money because yes there's kids in belmont obviously with money those kids with no money and i believe that everybody should go if everybody should go and i used to ask other departments well the kid can't afford to go what happens  they don't go and i thought that was horrible and so i developed an art auction with parents and we got sixty five professional artists to do any work and they don't get they didn't receive any money for it we got all the restaurants and all months around the restaurants and sixty professional artists work and we used that money and we went to paris blush we go every other year to next year will be meg and mia will be going to paris and so we went last year and we go to the door say the monet's garden which is my fave one of my favorite spots it's amazing and the kids would draw the whole time they you know it was all about walking in the footsteps of artists like i said experiencing it went to the loo for the rodin  hotel and we've had the same toward guide i've had for seven to six times i've gone and she's a painter as well veronica so and so the money so now i have two years to raise that money again is that we do the auction every and we used to do it every year and then it became it became too much and then we'd have artists where it's very hard for an artist year after year to give a piece so we decided to do it every other year so next november will be doing the art auction again raising the money go in there going a pr to talk a little bit about because you said that this group and you know belmont high schoolers are quite colleges want them what's the word scouted i guess a little kind of like there is a guy gets out and i look at this sports like portfolios and they know i mean year after year before school starts in august i'm already having ten ten twelve phone calls from different colleges all over the country and we come and i can only really let four i mean we can be doing this all year and go a little more south to savannah college on design which is that a newer school or since getting more of a seemed more of a name it's has one of the best facilities i they flew me down there for years ago so it was great in the mean obviously when my kids but i took full advantage of you know going there looking at the facilities and the facilities were amazing in this state of the art state of the art animation game design fail and which are there the biggest programs now that are growing so a lot of schools will come in present and then they the kids will do a portfolio review with them right afterwards and sometimes they'll immediately say you're in no problem you know it's usually something like that i mean i look at this they have no problem getting into any one of them will get into every single art school they apply to and get money as long as they had their g p a is good enough which is not really a problem for these kids right and so when you're deciding well let's see the three of you are seniors right so you've just had to put portfolios together right so was i in the past last year i did a lot of work ab one already so i used a lot of that work and you some of the work i did beginning this year because their deadlines are usually in february so we have quite some time to write like this year's work so do when you do they want to hear about each piece as well or just sort of they want to look at it or or do they want to know your interpretation of your piece well for the usually have a side room where you can log on to the website and like upload your pieces and they usually give a box with a title dimensions and like description of each piece and like how you went about developing and like so you can explain to them like what are myself i find it such a person i mean it's you know wrong oh it's so personal that it i guess they want to know what it means to you but it doesn't in a certain way matter if it's artists are right they also do a personal interviews i let them almost like a professional interview they go in a room alone with the recruiter and they lay out their work and the recruiter will talk about specific plans like how did you do this what does this mean to where you're going with this right sort of like get oh i actually didn't apply to any art schools basically because art is for me it was kind of a newly discovered but i never i mean it kind of got into a little bit too late you going to ask you this because we're interrupting a minute or two but do you anticipate that you'll apply to art school yeah i've had several conversations with my parents about it and there's a lot of things i could do with like a lot of the our colleges like  and those are jobs that you can get out of it so i would really like to do that if i could good and how about you is that you know plan yeah i mean do you this year so i'm thinking a lot about what schools i would like any art school be lucky to have any one of you i imagine it's competitive right to get into art school yes for i don't think i don't mean for them but oh yeah general right yeah i'd say if in general depending on the program study in school pizza that's great so i want i want to thank you all first of all for coming on the show i know it's not always easy i mean you guys are artists but that doesn't mean you're i don't know you know i mean you're artistic but certain other things might be more challenging but anyway you are oh fantastic i love the t shirts that i don't know if people can see but if you know it just says you know a p history  wrestling track all kinds of things with the lightning bolt so thank you i'll be wearing one